Verlaine, Paul
Verlaine, Paul ( 1844 – 96 ),French poet. Some of his poems appeared in Le Parnasse contemporain of 1866 ; his Poèmes saturniens were published in the same year, and his Fêtes galantes in 1869 . From the end of 1871 he came under the influence of Rimbaud and their violently emotional homosexual relationship culminated in Verlaine's arrest and imprisonment, in 1873 , for wounding Rimbaud with a revolver. His most interesting work, characterized by an intense musicality and metrical inventiveness, appeared in Romances sans paroles in 1874 . His influential ‘Art poétique’ (‘De la musique avant toute chose’) dates from the same time, but remained unpublished for ten years. Sagesse (a religious work, written after his conversion to Catholicism) appeared in 1881 , Jadis et naguère in 1884 , and in the same year he published a number of short studies of contemporary...
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