|
 Paul Verlaine
France Belgium
|
 |
 |
From a petted childhood in Metz, then in Paris, from annual Belgian holydays in Paliseul at his aunt Louise till 1862, Paul Verlaine kept nostalgia of a lost paradise.
In 1862, employed with much leisure in the Paris town hall, he begins attending litterary circles. As far back as 1865, as a critic at the Art, he writes about Baudelaire. In 66, he publishes the Poèmes Saturniens where, more radical than the romantic spleen, the "damned poets wide part of misfortune" already stands out.
a love wound inflicted by his cousin Elisa leads him into alcohool and dissolute living. In 69, the Fêtes Galantes, comes out. He marries Mathilde Mautê aged 17. A short blessed time when hecomposes the Bonne Chanson. In 1871, he answers to Rimbaud "Come dear great soul, you are looked forward.."
It's the beginning of a shared fall into hell. Both wander and quarrel in Belgium and England. In July 1873, in Brussels, Verlaine twice shots Rimbaud. He is imprisoned in Mons. In 1874 Romances sans Paroles comes out. He then lives through a genuine conversion to Catholicism that he refers to in Cellulairement. Released in 1875, he retires in the Trappe convent in Chimay, then starts again to England.
On his return, while working at Sagesse, Delahaye offers him his teacher job in Rethel. There he makes friends withe the youngLucien Letinois. In 80, after a trip in England they settle as farmers in Juniville near Rethel. In 1882, the farm is seized, in 83, Lucien dies of typhoid. Verlaine mother buys Lêtinois farm and settles there with Paul. But, downhearted and after a vain attempt to reconciling with Mathilde, he relapses into alcohool and threatens his mother with a knife. He is imprisoned in Vouziers from the 13th of April to the 13thd of Mai. Ruined, he comes back to Paris where he dies famous, but alone and needy in 1896.
Eaten up with self contradictions - sensual and mystical, libertine while fond of order, poet in a time of scientist materialism - Paul Verlaine upsets the wonderful academism of his master Baudelaire. Reflecting these inner conflicts, the subtle mixing of harmony and dissonance, of balance and imbalance in his poetry, confers on his verse a quite new spontaneity and freedom ! |
|
