Paul Verlaine

research all too appropriate for my way out

Paul Verlaine, inspirator to debussy

"Paul Verlaine read Baudelaire's famed Les fleurs du mal ('The flowers of evil') at the age of fourteen, and decided to become a poet. He was born in Metz and moved to Paris, where he had a simple job at the city hall. Besides this respectable existence, he led a secret life: he visited brothels and bars, and grew acquainted with the so-called Parnassiens, a group of poets revolving around Leconte de Lisle. They rejected emotional poetry (Lamartine, Musset), and wrote impersonal but strongly visual poems under the adage l'art pour l'art, inspired by classical antiquity and exotic regions. The group derived its name from the magazine Le Parnasse contemporain, in which Verlaine published poems at the age of 22, in 1866. His life as a bohemian was increasingly determined by his addiction to absinthe, a strongly alcoholic, bright green liqueur that became fashionable among decadent poets as 'the green fairy'.
Le Parnasse contemporain was published by book trader Lemerre, the representative of a small religious fund. On 20 February 1869 Lemerre acted as publisher of Verlaine's collection Fêtes galantes, printed at the author’s cost in an edition of 350 copies. This was his third volume of poetry after Poèmes saturniens (1866) and poems about lesbian love Les amies (1867). The title was derived from a painting by Watteau. The Louvre opened its Lacaze room in 1867 with work by 18th-century painters like Watteau, Fragonard and Boucher, all of whom were admired by Verlaine. The poems based on them are about love in an artificial world. The characters from the commedia dell'arte (Pierrot, Arlequin and others) also formed a source of inspiration, having been celebrated before in 17th-century poetry. Charm is a key word in this work. "
-KBnetherlandsexhibits


goodnight.

En Sourdine
(Fetes Galantes.)

CALM where twilight leaves have stilled
With their shadow light and sound,
Let our silent love be filled
With a silence as profound.

Let our ravished senses blend
Heart and spirit, thine and mine,
With vague languors that descend
From the branches of the pine.

Close thine eyes against the day,
Fold thine arms across thy breast,
And for ever turn away
All desire of all but rest.

Let the lulling breaths that pass
In soft wrinkles at thy feet,
Tossing all the tawny grass,
This and only this repeat.

And when solemn evening
Dims the forest's dusky air,
Then the nightingale shall sing
The delight of our despair.

Soleils Couchants
(From Potmes Saturniens.)

PALE dawn delicately
Over earth has spun
The sad melancholy
Of the setting sun.
Sad melancholy
Brings oblivion
In sad songs to me
With the setting sun.
And the strangest dreams,
Dreams like sun that set
On the banks of the streams,
Ghost and glory met,
To my sense it seems,
Pass, and without let,
Like great suns that set
On the banks of streams.