Misplaced Pages

#0

25-585: The name is derived from the original Parnassian poets' journal, Le Parnasse contemporain , itself named after Mount Parnassus , home of the Muses of Greek mythology . The anthology was first issued in 1866 and again in 1871 and 1876, including poems by Charles Leconte de Lisle , Théodore de Banville , Sully Prudhomme , Stéphane Mallarmé , Paul Verlaine , François Coppée , Nina de Callias , and José María de Heredia . The Parnassians were influenced by Théophile Gautier and his doctrine of " art for art's sake ". As

50-492: A burst of enthusiasm like this – L'Art poétique was after all an expression of his own beliefs about poetry. Verlaine's relationship with Rimbaud was dramatised in the 1964 Australian TV play A Season in Hell and the 1995 film Total Eclipse , based on Christopher Hampton 's 1967 play of the same name. Later musical settings of Verlaine's works include: Verlaine's Complete Works are available in critical editions from

75-586: A drunken, jealous rage, he fired two shots with a pistol at Rimbaud, wounding his left wrist, though not seriously injuring the poet. As an indirect result of this incident, Verlaine was arrested and imprisoned at Mons , where he underwent a re-conversion to Roman Catholicism , which again influenced his work and provoked Rimbaud's sharp criticism. The poems collected in Romances sans paroles (1874) were written between 1872 and 1873, inspired by Verlaine's nostalgically coloured recollections of his life with Mathilde on

100-730: A poet of promise and originality. Mathilde Mauté became Verlaine's wife in 1870. At the proclamation of the Third Republic in the same year, Verlaine joined the 160th battalion of the Garde nationale , turning Communard on 18 March 1871. Verlaine became head of the press bureau of the Central Committee of the Paris Commune . Verlaine escaped the deadly street fighting known as the Bloody Week, or Semaine Sanglante , and went into hiding in

125-551: A reaction to the less-disciplined types of romantic poetry and what they considered the excessive sentimentality and undue social and political activism of Romantic works, the Parnassians strove for exact and faultless workmanship, selecting exotic and (neo-)classical subjects that they treated with the rigidity of form and emotional detachment. Elements of this detachment were derived from the philosophical work of Schopenhauer. The two most characteristic and most long-lasting members of

150-584: A school in Rethel , fell in love with one of his pupils, Lucien Létinois , who inspired Verlaine to write further poems. Verlaine was devastated when Létinois died of typhus in 1883. Verlaine's last years saw his descent into drug addiction , alcoholism , and poverty. He lived in slums and public hospitals, and spent his days drinking absinthe in Paris cafés. However, the people's love for his art resurrected support and brought in an income for Verlaine: his early poetry

175-599: A toll on his life. He died in Paris at the age of 51 on 8 January 1896; he was buried in the Cimetière des Batignolles (he was first buried in the 20th division, but his grave was moved to the 11th division—on the roundabout, a much better location—when the Boulevard Périphérique was built). A bust monument to Verlaine sculpted by Rodo was erected in 1911. It sits in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Much of

200-519: The French poetry produced during the fin de siècle was characterized as " decadent " for its lurid content or moral vision. In a similar vein, Verlaine used the expression poète maudit ("cursed poet") in 1884 to refer to a number of poets like Stéphane Mallarmé , Arthur Rimbaud , Aloysius Bertrand , Comte de Lautréamont , Tristan Corbière or Alice de Chambrier , who had fought against poetic conventions and suffered social rebuke, or were ignored by

225-600: The Fêtes galantes poems, forming part of the mélodie collection known as the Recueil Vasnier ; he also made another setting of Clair de lune , and the poem inspired the third movement of his Suite bergamasque . Reynaldo Hahn set several of Verlaine's poems as did the Belgian-British composer Poldowski (daughter of Henryk Wieniawski ) and German composer Anna Teichmüller . Verlaine's drug dependence and alcoholism took

250-702: The Pas-de-Calais . Verlaine returned to Paris in August 1871, and, in September, received the first letter from Arthur Rimbaud , who admired his poetry. Verlaine urged Rimbaud to come to Paris, and by 1872, he had lost interest in Mathilde, and effectively abandoned her and their son, preferring the company of Rimbaud, who was by now his lover. Rimbaud and Verlaine's stormy affair took them to London in 1872. In Brussels in July 1873, in

275-407: The 1866 collection. The following table lists (in alphabetical order) 99 poets who contributed to La Parnasse contemporain . Indicated for each poet is the number of poems that appeared in the three collections (1866, 1871, 1876): Paul Verlaine Paul-Marie Verlaine ( / v ɛər ˈ l ɛ n / vair- LEN ; French: [pɔl maʁi vɛʁlɛn] ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896)

SECTION 10

#1733086029000

300-526: The admirers of Verlaine's work was the Russian language poet and novelist Boris Pasternak . Pasternak went so far as to translate much of Verlaine's verse into Russian. According to Pasternak's mistress and muse , Olga Ivinskaya , Whenever [Pasternak] was provided with literal versions of things which echoed his own thoughts or feelings, it made all the difference and he worked feverishly, turning them into masterpieces. I remember his translating Paul Verlaine in

325-510: The city, irrational phenomena ( delirium , dreams, narcotics , alcohol), and sometimes a vaguely medieval setting. In poetry, the symbolist procedure—as typified by Verlaine—was to use subtle suggestion instead of precise statement ( rhetoric was banned) and to evoke moods and feelings through the magic of words and repeated sounds and the cadence of verse (musicality) and metrical innovation. Verlaine described his typically decadent style in great detail in his poem "Art Poétique," describing

350-558: The contemporary poetry scene) is composed of three volumes of poetry collections, published in 1866, 1871 and 1876 by the editor Alphonse Lemerre , which included a hundred French poets, such as Leconte de Lisle , Théodore de Banville , Heredia , Gautier , Catulle Mendès , Baudelaire , Sully Prudhomme , Mallarmé , François Coppée , Charles Cros , Nina de Callias , Léon Dierx , Louis Ménard , Verlaine , Villiers de L'Isle-Adam and Anatole France . The mid/late 19th century French literary movement Parnassianism took its name from

375-489: The critics. But with the publication of Jean Moréas ' Symbolist Manifesto in 1886, it was the term symbolism which was most often applied to the new literary environment. Along with Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Paul Valéry , Albert Samain and many others began to be referred to as "Symbolists." These poets would often share themes that parallel Schopenhauer's aesthetics and notions of will, fatality and unconscious forces , and used themes of sex (such as prostitutes ),

400-408: The day: Anatole France , Emmanuel Chabrier , inventor-poet and humorist Charles Cros , the cynical anti-bourgeois idealist Villiers de l'Isle-Adam , Théodore de Banville , François Coppée , Jose-Maria de Heredia , Leconte de Lisle, Catulle Mendes and others. Verlaine's first published collection, Poèmes saturniens (1866), though adversely commented upon by Sainte-Beuve , established him as

425-509: The movement were Heredia and Leconte de Lisle . Despite its French origins, Parnassianism was not restricted to French authors. Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of Parnassians, Olavo Bilac , Alberto de Oliveira 's disciple, was an author from Brazil who managed carefully to craft verses and metre while maintaining a strong emotionalism in them. Polish Parnassians included Antoni Lange , Felicjan Faleński , Cyprian Kamil Norwid and Leopold Staff . A Romanian poet with Parnassian influences

450-777: The one hand and impressionistic sketches of his on-again off-again year-long escapade with Rimbaud on the other. Romances sans paroles was published while Verlaine was imprisoned. Following his release from prison, Verlaine again travelled to England, where he worked for some years as a teacher, teaching French, Latin, Greek and drawing at William Lovell's school in Stickney in Lincolnshire. From there he went to teach in nearby Boston , before moving to Bournemouth . While in England, he produced another successful collection, Sagesse . Verlaine returned to France in 1877 and, while teaching English at

475-749: The poetry collection. The first volume contained les Épaves and Nouvelles Fleurs du mal by Baudelaire , and early Mallarmé and Verlaine , avant-garde poets of the time. No poem by Arthur Rimbaud was included in any of the three volumes. Rimbaud is known to have read the first collection at a time when he was developing his poetry (sometime between 1866 and 1870). In a letter dated May 15, 1871 Rimbaud mentions by name dozens of poets who were included, referring to some of them as "idiots", "imbeciles", "schoolboys" et cetera. In that letter Rimbaud praises Charles Baudelaire, Theophile Gautier, Theodore de Banville, Leconte de Lisle, Albert Merat, and Paul Verlaine. He does not mention Mallarmé, who had 11 poems published in

500-600: The primacy of musicality and the importance of elusiveness and "the Odd." He spoke of veils and nuance and implored poets to "Keep away from the murderous Sharp Saying, Cruel Wit, and Impure Laugh." It is with these lyrical veils in mind that Verlaine concluded by suggesting that a poem should be a "happy occurrence." Numerous artists painted Verlaine's portrait. Among the most illustrious were Henri Fantin-Latour , Antonio de la Gándara , Eugène Carrière , Gustave Courbet , Frédéric Cazalis , and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen . Among

525-552: The term Parnassian pejoratively to describe competent but uninspired poetry, “spoken on and from the level of a poet’s mind”. He identified this trend particularly with the work of Alfred Tennyson , citing the poem " Enoch Arden " as an example. Many prominent Turkish poets of Servet-i Fünun were inspired by Parnassianism such as Tevfik Fikret , Yahya Kemal Beyatlı and Cenap Şahabettin. Le Parnasse contemporain Le Parnasse contemporain ("The Contemporary Parnassus ", e.g.,

SECTION 20

#1733086029000

550-487: Was Alexandru Macedonski . Florbela Espanca was a Parnassian Portuguese poet (Larousse), as was Cesário Verde . British poets such as Andrew Lang , Austin Dobson and Edmund Gosse were sometimes known as "English Parnassians" for their experiments in old (often originally French) forms such as the ballade , the villanelle and the rondeau , taking inspiration from French authors like Banville. Gerard Manley Hopkins used

575-679: 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 . Born in Metz , Verlaine was educated at the Lycée Impérial Bonaparte (now the Lycée Condorcet ) in Paris and then took up a post in the civil service . He began writing poetry at an early age, and

600-596: Was initially influenced by the Parnassien movement and its leader, Leconte de Lisle . Verlaine's first published poem was published in 1863 in La Revue du progrès , a publication founded by poet Louis-Xavier de Ricard . Verlaine was a frequenter of the salon of the Marquise de Ricard (Louis-Xavier de Ricard's mother) at 10 Boulevard des Batignolles and other social venues, where he rubbed shoulders with prominent artistic figures of

625-506: Was rediscovered, his lifestyle and strange behaviour in front of crowds attracted admiration, and in 1894 he was elected France's "Prince of Poets" by his peers. Verlaine's poetry was admired and recognized as ground-breaking, and served as a source of inspiration to composers. Gabriel Fauré composed many mélodies , such as the song cycles Cinq mélodies "de Venise" and La bonne chanson , which were settings of Verlaine's poems. Claude Debussy set to music Clair de lune and six of

#0