(1844-1896)
_Poèmes Saturniens,_ 1866; _Fêtes Galantes,_ 1869; _La Bonne Chanson,_
1870; _Romances sans Paroles,_ 1874; _Sagesse,_ 1881; _Les Poètes
Maudits,_ 1884; _Jadis et Naguère,_ 1884; _Les Mémoires d'un Veuf,_
1886; _Louise Leclercq_ (suivi de _Le Poteau, Pierre Duchatelet, Madame
Aubin),_ 1887; _Amour,_ 1888; _Parallèlement,_ 1889; _Dédicaces,_ 1890;
_Bonheur,_ 1891; _Mes Hôpitaux,_ 1891; Chansons _pour Elle,_ 1891;
_Liturgies Intimes,_ 1892; _Mes Prisons,_ 1893; _Odes en son Honneur,_
1893; _Elégies,_ 1893; _Quinze Jours en Hollande,_ 1894; _Dans les
Limbes,_ 1894; _Epigrammes,_ 1894; _Confessions,_ 1895; _Chair_, 1896;
_Invectives,_ 1896; _Voyage en France d'un Français_ (posthumous), 1907.
The complete works of Verlaine are now published in six volumes at
the Librairie Léon Vanier (now Messein); the text is very incorrectly
printed, and it is still necessary to refer to the earlier editions
in separate volumes. _A Choix de Poésies,_1891, with a preface by
François Coppée, and a reproduction of Carrière's admirable portrait,
is published in one volume by Charpentier; the series of _Hommes
d'Aujourd'hui_ contains twenty-seven biographical notices by Verlaine;
and a considerable number of poems and prose articles exists, scattered
in various magazines, some of them English, such as the _Senate;_ in
some cases the articles themselves are translated into English, such
as "My Visit to London," in the _Savoy_ for April, 1896, and "Notes on
England: Myself as a French Master," and "Shakespeare and Racine," in
the _Fortnightly Review_ for July, 1894, and September, 1894. The first
English translation in verse from Verlaine is Arthur O'Shaughnessy's
rendering of "Clair de Lune" in _Fêtes Galantes,_ under the title
"Pastel," in _Songs of a Worker,_ 1881. A volume of translations
in verse, _Poems of Verlaine,_ by Gertrude Hall, was published in
America in 1895. In Mr. John Gray's _Silverpoints,_ 1893, there are
translations of "Parsifal," "A Crucifix," "Le Chevalier Malheur,"
"Spleen," "Clair de Lune," "Mon Dieu m'a dit," and "Green."
As I have mentioned, there have been many portraits of Verlaine. The
three portraits drawn on lithographic paper by Mr. Rothenstein, and
published in 1898, are but the latest, if also among the best, of a
long series, of which Mr. Rothenstein himself has done two or three
others, one of which was reproduced in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in 1894,
when Verlaine was in London. M. F. A. Cazals, a young artist who was
one of Verlaine's most intimate friends, has done I should not like to
say how many portraits, some of which he has gathered together in a
little book, _Paul Verlaine: ses Portraits,_ 1898. There are portraits
in nine of Verlaine's own books, several of them by M. Cazals (roughly
jotted, expressive notes of moments), one by M. Anquetin (a strong
piece of thinking flesh and blood), and in the _Choix de Poésies_ there
is a reproduction of the cloudy, inspired poet of M. Eugène Carrière's
painting. Another portrait, which I have not seen, but which Verlaine
himself calls, in the _Dédicaces, un portrait enfin reposé,_ was done
by M. Aman-Jean. M. Niederhausern has done a bust in bronze, Mr.
Rothenstein a portrait medallion. A new edition of the _Confessions,_
1899, contains a number of sketches; _Verlaine Dessinateur,_ 1896, many
more; and there are yet others in the extremely objectionable book of
M. Charles Donos, _Verlaine Intime,_ 1898. The _Hommes d'Aujourd'hui_
contains a caricature-portrait, many other portraits have appeared in
French and English and German and Italian magazines, and there is yet
another portrait in the admirable little book of Charles Morice, _Paul
Verlaine,_ 1888, which contains by far the best study that has ever
been made of Verlaine as a poet. I believe Mr. George Moore's article,
"A Great Poet," reprinted in _Impressions and Opinions,_ 1891, was the
first that was written on Verlaine in England; my own article in the
_National Review_ in 1892 was, I believe, the first detailed study of
the whole of his work up to that date. At last, in the _Vie de Paul
Verlaine,_ of Edmund Lepelletier, there has come the authentic record.
An honest and instructed life of Verlaine has long been wanted, if only
as an antidote to the defamatory production called _Verlaine Intime,_
made up out of materials collected by the publisher Léon Vanier in
his own defense, in order that a hard taskmaster might be presented
to the world in the colours of a benefactor. A "legend" which may
well have seemed plausible to those who knew Verlaine only at the
end of his life, has obtained currency; and a comparison of Verlaine
with Villon, not only as a poet (which is to his honour), but also as
a man, has been made, and believed. Lepelletier's book is an exact
chronicle of a friendship which lasted, without a break, for thirty-six
years--that is, from the time when Verlaine was sixteen to the time
of his death; and a more sane, loyal and impartial chronicle of any
man's life we have never read. It is written with full knowledge of
every part of the career which it traces; and it is written by a man
who puts down whatever he knows exactly as he believes it to have
been. His conclusion is that "on peut fouiller sa vie au microscope:
on y reconnaîtra des fautes, des folies, des faiblesses, bien des
souffrances aussi, avec de la fatalité au fond, pas de honte véritable,
pas une vile et indigne action. Les vrais amis du poète peuvent donc
revendiquer pour lui l'épithete d'honnête homme, sans doute très
vulgaire, mais qui, aux yeux de certains, a encore du prix."
In 1886 Verlaine dedicated _Les Mémoires d'un Veuf_ to Lepelletier,
affirming the resolve, on his part, to "garder intacte la vielle amitié
si forte et si belle." The compact has been kept nobly by the survivor.
It may, indeed, be questioned whether Lepelletier does not insist a
little too much on the bourgeois element which he finds in Verlaine.
When a man has suffered under unjust accusations, it is natural for
his friends to defend him under whatever aspect seems to them most
generally convincing. So it is interesting to know that for seven years
Verlaine was in a municipal office, the Bureau des Budgets et Comptes,
and that later, in 1882, he made an application, which was refused,
for leave to return to his former post. Lepelletier reproaches the
authorities for an action which he takes to have precipitated Verlaine
into the final misery of his vagabondage. He would have lived quietly,
he says, and written in security. Both assumptions may be doubted. What
was bourgeois, and contented with quiet, was a small part of the nature
of one who was too strong as well as too weak to remain within limits.
The terrible force of Verlaine's weakness would always, in the process
of making him a poet, have carried him far from that "tranquilité d'une
sinécure bureaucratique" which Lepelletier strangely regrets for him.
It is hardly permitted, in looking back over a disastrous life which
has expressed itself in notable poetry, to regret that the end should
have been attained, by no matter what means.
On moral questions Lepelletier speaks with the authority of an intimate
friendship, and from a point of view which seems wholly without
prejudice. He defends Verlaine with evident conviction against the
most serious charges brought against him, and he shows at least, on
documentary evidence, that nothing of the darker part of his "legend"
was ever proved against him in any of his arrests and imprisonments.
Drink, and mad rages let loose by drink, account, ignobly enough, for
all of them. In the famous quarrel with Rimbaud, which brought him into
prison for eighteen months, the accusation reads:
"Pour avoir, à Bruxelles, le 10 juillet, 1873, volontairement portés
des coups et fait des blessures ayant entraîné une incapacité de
travail personnel à Arthur Rimbaud."
The whole account of this episode is given by M. Lepelletier in great
detail, and from this we learn that it was by the merest change of
mind on the part of Rimbaud, or by sudden treachery, that the matter
came into the courts at all. Lepelletier supplies an unfavourable
account of Rimbaud, whom he looks upon as the evil counsellor of
Verlaine--probably with justice. There is little doubt that Rimbaud,
apart from his genuine touch of precocious power, which had its
influence on the genius of Verlaine, was a "mauvais sujet" of a selfish
and mischievous kind. He was destructive and pitiless; and having done
his worst, he went off carelessly into Africa.
It will surprise some readers to learn that Verlaine took his degree
of "bachelier-ès-lettres," and that on leaving the Lycée Bonaparte he
received a certificate placing him "au nombre des sujets distingués
que compte l'établissement." He was well grounded in Latin, and fairly
well in English, and at several intervals in his life attempted to
master Spanish, with the vague desire of translating Calderon. At an
early period he read French literature, classical and modern, with
avidity; translations of English, German and Eastern classics; books of
criticism and philosophy.
"Il admirait beaucoup Joseph de Maîstre. _Le Rouge et le Noir_
de Stendhal avait produce sur lui une forte impression. Il avait
déniché, on ne sait où, une Vie de sainte Thérèse, qu'il lisait avec
ravissement."
He was absorbed in Baudelaire, Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, Banville; he
read Pétrus Borel and Aloysius Bertrand. The only poem that remains
of this early period is the "Nocturne Parisien" of the _Poèmes
Saturniens,_ which dates from about his twentieth year. Jules de
Goncourt defined it as "un beau poème sinistre mêlant comme une Morgue
à Notre-Dame." Baudelaire, as Sainte-Beuve, in a charming letter of
real appreciation, pointed out, is here the evident "point de départ,
pour aller au delà."
The chapter in which Lepelletier tells the story of the origin of the
most famous literary movement since that of 1830, the "Parnasse," is
one of the most entertaining in the book, and gives, in its narrative
of the receptions "chez Nina" (a _salon_ which Lepelletier describes
as the ancestor of the "Chat Noir"), a vivid picture of the days when
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and François Coppée were beginners together.
Nina de Villars was one of the oddest people of her time: she made a
kind of private Bohemia for poets, musicians, all kinds of artists and
eccentric people, herself the most eccentric of them all. It was at her
house that the members of the "Parnasse" gathered, while they selected
as their more formal meeting-place the _salon_ of Madame Ricard. It is
not generally known that Verlaine's _Poèmes Saturniens_ was the third
volume to be issued by the house of Lemerre, afterwards to become a
famous "publisher of poets," and it was in this volume that the new
laws of the Parnasse were first formulated--that impassivity, that
"marble egoism," which Verlaine was so soon to reject for a more living
impulse, but which neither Leconte de Lisle nor Héredia was ever to
abandon. When one thinks of the later Verlaine, it is curious to turn
to that first formula:
Est-elle en marvre où non, le Vénus de Milo?
Verlaine's verse suddenly becomes human with _La Bonne Chanson,_ though
the humanity in it is not yet salted as with fire. It is the record of
the event which, as Lepelletier says, dominated his whole life; the
marriage with Mathilde Maute, the young girl with whom he had fallen in
love at first sight, and whose desertion of him, however explicable,
he never forgot nor forgave. Nothing could be more just or delicate
than Lepelletier's treatment of the whole situation and there is no
doubt that he is right in saying that the young wife "eût une grande
responsabilité dans les désordres de l'existence désorbitée du poète."
Verlaine, as he says, "était bon, aimant, et c'était comme un souffrant
qu'il fallait le traiter." "Vous n'avez rien compris à ma simplicité,"
he wrote long afterwards, addressing the woman of whom Lepelletier
says, "Il l'aima toujours, il n'aima qu'elle."
With his marriage Verlaine's disasters begin. Rimbaud enters his life
and turns the current of it; the vagabondage begins, in France and
England, and the letters written from London are among the most vivid
documents in the book: thumbnail sketches full of keen observation.
Then comes his imprisonment and conversion to Catholicism. Here
Lepelletier, while he gives us an infinity of details which he alone
could give, adopts an attitude which we cannot think to be justified,
and which, as a matter of fact, Verlaine protested against during
his lifetime. "Cette conversion fut-elle profonde et véridique?" he
asks; and he answers, "Je ne le crois pas." That his conversion had
much influence on Verlaine's conduct cannot be contended, but conduct
and belief are two different things. Sincerity of the moment was his
fundamental characteristic, but the moments made and remade his moods
in their passing. The religion of _Sagesse_ is not the less genuine
because that grave and sacred book was followed by the revolt of
_Parallèment._ Verlaine tried to explain--in the poems themselves, in
prefaces, and in conversation with friends--how natural it was to sin
and to repent, and to use the same childlike words in the immediate
rendering of sin and of repentance. This _naïveté,_ which made any
regular existence an impossibility, was a part of him which gave a
quality to his work unlike that of any other poet of our time. At
the end of his life hardly anything but the _naïvetê_ was left, and
the poems became mere outcries and gestures. Lepelletier is justly
indignant at the action of Vanier in publishing after Verlaine's
deaths the collection called _Invectives,_ made up of scraps and
impromptus which the poet certainly never intended to publish. Here we
see part of the weakness of a great man, who becomes petty when he puts
off his true character and tries to be angry. "J'ai la fureur d'aimer,"
he says somewhere, and there is no essential part of his work which is
not the expression of some form of love, grotesque or heroic, human or
divine.
Of all this later, more and more miserable part of the life of
Verlaine, Lepelletier has less to tell us. It has been sufficiently
commented on, not always by friendly or understanding witnesses. What
we get in this book, for the first time, is a view of the life as a
whole, with all that is beautiful, tragic, and desperate in it. It is
not an apology: it is a statement. It not only does honor to a great
and unhappy man of genius; it does him justice.