|
|
Paul Verlaine (1844 - 1896)
Not long after his second volume of verse, Fetes Galantes, was published, Verlaine married Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville, who was only sixteen at the time. The marriage was doomed from the beginning. Verlaine had strong homosexual tendencies and a fearsome temper, and was a violent drunk. He and Mathilde quarreled constantly, and he often beat her. Still, he thought enough of Mathilde to dedicate his volume of poems, La Bonne Chanson, to her. Soon after their marriage came the period of the Paris Commune, during which Verlaine worked as a press officer. The commune's collapse was soon followed by the birth of Paul and Mathilde's son, Georges, and the arrival of Arthur Rimbaud. The teenage poet had sent some of his work to Verlaine and the elder poet, impressed by the boy's budding genius, had invited him to come to Paris and stay in the Verlaine home. The friendship between Rimbaud and Verlaine soon developed into a gay relationship. It also sparked an intensifying of Verlaine's quarrels with Mathilde, which became even more violent. Verlaine's rages during these altercations became so great that he once set fire to Mathilde's hair with a candle, and even threw his infant son against a wall. Interestingly, Verlaine and Rimbaud's relationship had its share of violence as well, but with Rimbaud as the abuser. Eventually leaving Mathilde, Verlaine ran off with Rimbaud to London, living there and in areas of northern France and Belgium for two years. Both continued to write and to revel in the bohemian lifestyle. On July 12, 1873, the two men were staying in Brussels when Rimbaud informed Verlaine that he wished to part company with him. An argument ensued, at the climax of which Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the hand. Verlaine was arrested and the Brussels police, suspicious of his relationship with Rimbaud, forced Verlaine to undergo a medical examination, with the physician's notation of Verlaine's dilated rectum being taken as evidence that Verlaine and Rimbaud had engaged in anal sex. Because of his youth, Rimbaud was considered an innocent that had been led astray by his older companion (actually the other way around), and sent home to France, while Verlaine was sentenced to two years in prison. During his imprisonment Verlaine converted to Catholicism and composed a number of confessional and cathartic poems, collected in Romances sans Paroles (Songs Without Words), which many later considered his masterpiece. He also wrote a treatise on poetry which became the Bible of the Symbolist movement. Released from prison and now divorced from Mathilde, Verlaine lived for a time with Trappist monks before traveling to Germany in an attempt to reconcile with Rimbaud. Rimbaud scorned his former lover, even beating him with a club. Verlaine then traveled to England, living and working there for a time as a French teacher. Returning to France in 1877, Verlaine taught at the college at Rethel, eventually starting a love relationship with one of his students, Lucien Létinois. For a time Verlaine attempted the life of a farmer with Lucien, but the farm they owned together went bankrupt, as did a second one. Around this same time, Verlaine began publishing the poems Rimbaud wrote during their time together, and both Rimbaud and Verlaine were beginning to command a following in France, though Rimbaud, now living and working as a trader in East Africa, considered his earlier poetic works to be "slop." Sargesse (Wisdom), a collection of Verlaine's most mature works, appeared in 1881. In 1883, Lucien died from typhoid. Five years later, Verlaine would eulogize Lucien in his poem, "Amour." In 1894, Verlaine was elected Paris' Prince of Poets. Despite his growing popularity and prestige, Verlaine, perhaps partly because of grief at the loss of Rimbaud, Lucien, and the recent death of his mother, began slipping back into his old ways. The latter part of his life alternated between heavy drinking and hospital stays, with an increased output of writing throughout. Among his works during this period was a collection of anonymous homoerotic poems, including the now infamous, "Ode to an Asshole." Verlaine's love life alternated between two aged prostitutes and Bibi-la-Purée, an eccentric gay man with a penchant for stealing umbrellas. Money, whether from admirers, speaker fees, writing, or the government pension that had been arranged for him, came and went, usually through drinking. His health, meanwhile, deteriorated rapidly, with Verlaine suffering a range of ailments from cirrhosis to diabetes. Finally, on 8 January 1896, Paul Verlaine died of congestive heart failure. His funeral was attended by thousands who thronged around his casket during its final journey to Batignolles cemetery. Paul Veraline was one of the pivotal influences on the Symbolists, though he distanced himself from the movement later in life. Like Rimbaud's poems, Verlaine's work, though classical in form, had a style which anticipated free verse. Verlaine was a major influence on the modernists, particularly Harold Acton and Jean Cocteau. In 1911, a monument to Verlaine was erected at the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Verlaine's relationship with Rimbaud was alluded to by Bob Dylan on his album Blood On the Tracks, and depicted rather sensationally in the 1995 film, Total Eclipse, with David Thewlis as Verlaine and Leonardo DiCaprio as Rimbaud. Little Blue Light - Paul Verlaine Paul Verlaine et ses oeuvres poétiques
|
|||||||||
