ABSTRACT
French censorship. In 1869 Fêtes galantes appeared, a collection of pastoral poems. In 1870, while still enamoured of a friend, Lucien Viotti, Verlaine married Mathilde Mauté, with whom he had a son, Georges. However, a year later Verlaine began his stormy relationship with Rimbaud who had written to him admiringly from the French provinces and turned up in Paris. Their attraction on meeting was instant and Verlaine was torn between his relationship with his wife, whom he treated rather badly, and his affair with Rimbaud, which was also not without its difficulties. La Bonne Chanson (1870) celebrates Verlaine’s wife. His Romances sans paroles (1874), in contrast, focused on the sensual experiences he had had with Rimbaud, with whom he had something of a sadomasochistic relationship. Verlaine and Rimbaud travelled in England and Belgium where their relationship came to a violent end when, in 1873, Verlaine shot Rimbaud in his wrist during an argument and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for this assault. During his imprisonment he had a religious conversion. He composed Cellulairement (1875, published in its complete form only in 1992). After his release Verlaine tried to effect a reconciliation, first with Rimbaud, and then with his wife Mathilde. Both attempts failed, and Verlaine had an itinerant existence for a time, teaching in France and in England. In 1878 he met Lucien Létinois with whom he fell in love. They settled on Létinois’s parents’ farm in the Ardennes, and in 1881 Verlaine published his first collection of religious poems, Sagesse. In 1882 Verlaine returned to Paris; a year later Létinois died. Verlaine returned with his mother, now providing financial and emotional support for him, to the country, and Verlaine published a collection of both old and new poetry, Jadis et naguère (1884), which was not nearly as successful as his portraits of poets, Poètes maudits, of the same year. He wrote a second series of Poètes maudits in 1888 in which he included a self-portrait. Arrested and imprisoned for one month for violence against his mother, Verlaine returned to Paris after his release, where he lived in reduced circumstances. He was eventually reconciled with his mother and she joined him in Paris. He published more volumes of religious verse, including Amour (1888) and Bonheur (1891), but also a more sensually inspired collection, Parallèlement (1889). In 1888 he fell in love with the younger painter Frédéric-Auguste Cazals with whom he had a relationship. The last ten years of Verlaine’s life were plagued by rheumatism affecting one of his legs, and periods in and out of hospital. He produced the autobiographical works Mes hôspitaux (1891) and Mes prisons (1893), detailing his experiences of institutional confinement. In Confessions (1895) he revisited his early life and career. In 1895 he also published Rimbaud’s Poésies completes. His own Hombrès (published posthumously in 1904) contained fifteen poems celebrating the male body and homosexuality. Verlaine’s work as a poet has to some extent been overshadowed by the mythologizing of his relationship with Rimbaud. This relationship has been the object of several representations, including Bertolt BRECHT’S play Baal and Christopher HAMPTON’S play Total Eclipse.
