Verlaine, Paul 1844-96
French poet

He was born in Metz. He was educated at the Lyc�e Condorcet and entered the Civil Service. Already an aspiring poet, he mixed with the leading Parnassian poets and writers in the caf�s and salons. Answering their battle cry 'Art for art's sake', against the formless sentimentalizing of the Romantic school, he gained recognition by contributing articles and poems to their avant-garde literary magazines, especially the short-lived Le Parnasse contemporain. The youthful morbidity of his first volume of poems, Po�mes saturniens (1866, 'Saturnine Poems'), was criticized by Charles Sainte-Beuve as trying vainly to outdo Baudelaire. The evocation of the 18th century, provided the backdrop to his second work, F�tes galantes (1869, Eng trans Gallant Parties, 1917), considered by many his finest poetical achievement. His love for 16-year-old Mathilde Maut�, whom he eventually married, was expressed in La Bonne chanson (1870, 'The Pretty Song'). During the Franco-Prussian War (1870) Verlaine did guard duty in Paris and then served as press officer for the Communards. The birth of a son could not resolve his marital difficulties and he escaped (1872) to Flanders, Belgium and England, engaging in a homosexual affair with the fledgling poet Arthur Rimbaud, ten years his junior. Their friendship ended in Brussels in 1873, when Verlaine, drunk and desolate at Rimbaud's intention to leave him, shot him in the wrist. His overpowering remorse made it psychologically impossible for Rimbaud to leave, so he staged an incident in the street and had Verlaine arrested, unaware that the police, searching for a motive, would suspect immorality. Verlaine was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, and his past associations with the Communards disqualified him from any intercession by the French ambassador. Romances sans paroles (1874, Eng trans Romances Without Words, 1921) were written in Mons prison, where he studied Shakespeare in the original, and after his wife had left him, he turned Catholic (1874). He unsuccessfully attempted to enter a monastery on release, taught French at Stickney, Lincolnshire, and St Aloysius' College, Bournemouth (1875), where he completed his second masterpiece Sagesse (1881, 'Wisdom'), full of the spirit of penitence and self-confession that appeared again in Parall�lement (1889, 'In Parallel'). In 1877 he returned to France to teach English at the Coll�ge of Notre Dame at Rethel. There he adopted a favourite pupil, Lucien L�tinois, for whom he acquired a farm at Coulommes and whose death of typhus (1883) occasioned Amour (1888, 'Love'). Po�tes maudits (1884, 'Accursed Poets'), comprising critical studies, were followed by the short stories Louis Leclerc and Le Poteau (1886, 'The Stake'), sacred and profane verse Liturgies intimes (1892, 'Intimate Liturgies') and �l�gies (1893). Verlaine is the master of a poetry which sacrificed all for sound, in which commonplace expressions take on a magic freshness. He lived during his last years in Parisian garret poverty, relieved by frequent spells in hospitals and finally by a grand lecture tour in Belgium, the Netherlands and England (1893), the last sponsored in part by William Rothenstein, who drew several portraits of him.

Bibliography: C Morire, Paul Verlaine, po�te maudit (1947)