VERLAINE, PAUL. - Poet and initiator of the French Symbolist movement, b. at Metz on 30 March 1844, d. at Paris on 8 Jan. 1896.

In Paris, where the family had moved in 1851, V. was initiated into literature; from 1864 to '71 he held a municipal post, from which he was removed for his revolutionary sympathies. His first volumes of verse had little resonance: Poèmes saturniens (1866); Fêtes galantes (1869); La bonne chanson (1870), where a new tone, between ironic and sincerely moved, makes its way among Parnassian and Baudelairean reminiscences. Then V.'s existence was overwhelmed by alcohol abuse and by a morbid passion for Arthur Rimbaud, the very young, prodigious poet whom he revealed and who, with him, was an initiator of Symbolism. They fled together to Belgium and to London: in Brussels, on the way back, after a year of dissipation, V. wounded his friend in a dispute and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment (1873). He left prison at the beginning of 1875, detoxified or nearly so, once again a believer in the faith of his childhood; for some years he devoted himself to teaching, at Stickney, Bournemouth (England) and Rethel. Meanwhile the Romances sans paroles (1874) appeared, verses perfectly answering in their vibrant musicality the dictates of the Art poétique (which was, however, published only ten years later, in Jadis et naguère), and Sagesse (1881), an admirable collection of the anxieties and remorse that ac-

-rigi, sinking ever lower into misery and vice, while an ever wider chorus of admiration and enthusiasm gathered among the new literary generations around his work, which was exhausted in Parallèlement (1889), reflecting his simultaneous impulse toward God and toward sin, and other collections of cruder and more uneven verse (Amour, Chansons pour elle, Bonheur, Liturgies intimes), as well as in the uneven and capricious prose of certain books of reminiscences (Les poètes maudits, 1888; Mes hôpitaux, 1891; Mes prisons, 1893; Confessions, 1895; Voyage en France, 1907).

Bibliography12 works

BIBL.: ed.: Oeuvres complètes, Paris 1925-27; and Oeuvres posthumes, ibid. 1926-29. Studies: E. Lepelletier, P. V., ibid. 1907; P. Martino, V., ibid. 1924; A. Van Bever and M. Monda, Bibliogr. et iconogr. de V., ibid. 1926; R. Clauzel, Sagesse de P. V., ibid. 1929; F. Porché, V. tel qu'il fut, ibid. 1935; O. Ornelli, V., poeta intelligente, Rome 1935; C. Cudnot, Etat présent des études verlainiens, Paris 1938; D. Valeri, Il vero V., in Saggi e note di lett. francese moderne, Florence 1941; L. Morice, V., le drame religieux, ibid. 1946; F. Carco, V. poète maudit, ibid. 1948; B. Croce, P. B., in Lettre de poeti, Bari 1950, pp. 174-87.

Enzo Bottasso

@incollection{ec12_verlaine_paul, author = {Bottasso, Enzo}, title = {Verlaine, paul}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {1282--1283}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/verlaine-paul} }

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Verlaine, Paul

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