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Paul-Marie Verlaine (/ v ɛər ˈ l ɛ n / vair-LEN, French: [pɔl maʁi vɛʁlɛn]; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.
- Mathilde Mauté (1870–1871)
- Arthur Rimbaud (1871–1875)
Learn about the life and works of Paul Verlaine, a major French poet and a pioneer of Symbolism and Decadence. Explore his collections, influences, love affairs, and legacy.
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Paul Verlaine (born March 30, 1844, Metz, France—died January 8, 1896, Paris) French lyric poet first associated with the Parnassians and later known as a leader of the Symbolists. With Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire he formed the so-called Decadents.
Verlaine was the only child of an army officer in comfortable circumstances. He was undoubtedly spoiled by his mother. At the Lycée Bonaparte (now Condorcet) in Paris, he showed both ability and indolence and at 14 sent his first extant poem (“La Mort”) to the “master” poet Victor Hugo. Obtaining the baccalauréat in 1862, with distinction in translation from Latin, he became a clerk in an insurance company, then in the Paris city hall. All the while he was writing verse and frequenting literary cafés and drawing rooms, where he met the leading poets of the Parnassian group and other talented contemporaries, among them Mallarmé, Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, and Anatole France. His poems began to appear in their literary reviews; the first, “Monsieur Prudhomme,” in 1863. Three years later the first series of Le Parnasse contemporain, a collection of pieces by contemporary poets (hence the term Parnassian), contained eight contributions by Verlaine.
The same year, his first volume of poetry appeared. Besides virtuoso imitations of Baudelaire and Leconte de Lisle, Poèmes saturniens included poignant expressions of love and melancholy supposedly centred on his cousin Élisa, who married another and died in 1867 (she had paid for this book to be published). In Fêtes galantes personal sentiment is masked by delicately clever evocations of scenes and characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte and from the sophisticated pastorals of 18th-century painters, such as Watteau and Nicolas Lancret, and perhaps also from the contemporary mood-evoking paintings of Adolphe Monticelli. In June 1869 Verlaine fell in love with Mathilde Mauté, aged 16, and they married in August 1870. In the delicious poems written during their engagement (La Bonne Chanson), he fervently sees her as his long hoped-for saviour from erring ways. When insurrectionists seized power and set up the Paris Commune, Verlaine served as press officer under their council. His fear of resultant reprisals from the Third Republic was one factor in his later bohemianism. Incompatibility in his marriage was soon aggravated by his infatuation for the younger poet Arthur Rimbaud, who came to stay with the Verlaines in September 1871.
Verlaine abandoned his wife and infant son, Georges, in July 1872, to wander with Rimbaud in northern France and Belgium and write “impressionist” sketches for his next collection, Romances sans paroles (“Songs Without Words”). The pair reached London in September and found, besides exiled Communard friends, plenty of interest and amusement and also inspiration: Verlaine completed the Romances, whose opening pages, especially, attain a pure musicality rarely surpassed in French literature and embody some of his most advanced prosodic experiments; the subjects are mostly landscape or regret or vituperation of his estranged wife. The collection was published in 1874 by his friend Edmond Lepelletier; the author himself was then serving a two-year sentence at Mons for wounding Rimbaud with a revolver during an emotional storm in Brussels on July 10, 1873.
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Contrition, prison abstinence, and pious reading (some in English, along with admiring study of Shakespeare and Dickens) seem to have produced a sincere return to Roman Catholicism in the summer of 1874, after his wife had obtained a separation. Leaving prison in January 1875, he tried a Trappist retreat, then hurried to Stuttgart to meet Rimbaud, who apparently repulsed him with violence. He took refuge in England and, for over a year, taught French and drawing at Stickney and Boston in Lincolnshire, then at Bournemouth, Hampshire, impressing all by his dignity and piety and gaining an appreciation of English authors as diverse as Tennyson, Swinburne, and the Anglican hymn writers. In 1877 he returned to France.
Learn about the life and works of Paul Verlaine, a French poet, Symbolist leader, and Decadent. Explore his poems, his affair with Arthur Rimbaud, his conversion to Catholicism, and his legacy.
Learn about the life and works of Paul Verlaine, a prominent French poet of the 19th century. Explore his turbulent personal affairs, his famous poems, and his impact on modern literature.
May 29, 2018 · Learn about the life and poetry of Paul Verlaine, a French symbolist poet who influenced modern literature with his fluid and impressionistic style. Explore his works, such as Saturnine Poems, Gallant Feasts, and Love, and his scandalous affairs with Rimbaud and Letinois.
Paul Verlaine, (born March 30, 1844, Metz, France—died Jan. 8, 1896, Paris), French lyric poet. After entering the civil service, he was first associated with the Parnassian poets, contributing to the first volume of the anthology Le Parnasse contemporain (1866).
