Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

[KALKI]

The French lyric poet known for the musical quality of his verse, wrote the French poem, "Savitri."
Paul-Marie Verlaine (/vɛərˈlɛn/; French: [vɛʁlɛn]; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with 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 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 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 a poet of promise and originality.

Marriage and military service

Verlaine's private life spills over into his work, beginning with his love for Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville. Mathilde 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.

He 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 the Pas-de-Calais.

Verlaine returned to Paris in August 1871, and, in September, he received the first letter from Arthur Rimbaud. By 1872, he had lost interest in Mathilde, and effectively abandoned her and their son, preferring the company of his new lover. Rimbaud and Verlaine's stormy affair took them to London in 1872. In Brussels in July 1873 in 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 colored recollections of his life with Mathilde on 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 traveled to England, where he worked for some years as a teacher, teaching French, Latin and Greek, and drawing at a grammar school in Stickney in Lincolnshire. From there he went to teach in Boston, before moving to Bournemouth.
While in England he produced another successful collection, Sagesse. He returned to France in 1877 and, while teaching English at 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 Complete Works are available in critical editions from the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.

• Libretti for Vaucochard et Fils 1er and Fisch-Ton-Kan (1864)[14] (music by Chabrier)
• Poèmes saturniens (1866)
• Les Amies (1867)
• Fêtes galantes (1869)
• La Bonne Chanson (1870)
• Romances sans paroles (1874)
• Sagesse (1880)
• Les Poètes maudits (1884)
• Jadis et naguère (Verlaine) (1884)
• Les Mémoires d'un veuf (1886)
• Amour (1888)
• À Louis II de Bavière (1888)
• Parallèlement (1889)
• Dédicaces (1890)
• Femmes (1890)
• Hombres (1891)
• Bonheur (1891)
• Mes hôpitaux (1891)
• Chansons pour elle (1891)
• Liturgies intimes (1892)
• Mes prisons (1893)
• Élégies (1893)
• Odes en son honneur (1893)
• Dans les limbes (1894)
• Épigrammes (1894)
• Confessions (1895)

Verlaine became keenly interested in Hindu mythology during his high school days. His enthusiasm was such that he said:

"Par Indra! que c'est beau, et comme ca vous degotte la Bible, l'Evangile et toute la degueulade des Peres de l'Eglise."

"By Indra! how beautiful this is and how much better than the Bible, the Gospel and all the words of the Fathers of the Church."

(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993 part II p. 241).