[Below, Taylor-Horrex analyzes the themes of love, active versus passive modes of loving, and irresponsibility versus responsibility in Verlaine's collections of verse Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles.]

In essence, Verlaine's poems treat the theme of the divided self: in Fêtes galantes the passive versus the active self, in Romances sans paroles the irresponsible versus the responsible self. As such, Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles take a different approach from La Bonne Chanson and Sagesse which treat the theme of the weak self to be saved, respectively, by marriage to Mathilde [Mauté] and returning to God, and where the conflict is somewhat externalised. With Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles the conflict remains firmly located within the poet's self.

Not surprisingly then, in comparison with these other collections, Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles have a predominantly emotional rather than intellectual content.

Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles deal with the theme of the divided self specifically in the area of love. In an important respect all the poems in the collections treat love. It is the central theme. Some poems present a related theme but this always refers back, directly or indirectly, to the dominant theme of love. The thematic pattern of both collections is, then, multidimensional as distinct from exclusively linear and progressive.

This is not to say that the thematic presentation is static, a random assortment of emotional moods. Both collections present a range of shifting emotional nuances, and both collections are shaped by an evolution in the nature of Verlaine's conflict with himself and consequently in his way of loving. The development from passive versus active self to a clearer confrontation of the irresponsible with the responsible self (already hinted at in Fêtes galantes) will equally be the argument of my discussion of the themes of Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles. Change is rarely satisfyingly straightforward. We often come full circle before we are able to move forward. And change does not necessarily mean improvement. This is perhaps the deepest exemplification of Verlaine's other 'art poétique', 'L'art, mes enfants, c'est d'être absolument soi-même.' . . .

In Fêtes galantes there are three distinct aspects; echoes of the paintings of [Antoine] Watteau and of the poetry of Hugo, and the themes of love and passivity. I shall consider these aspects as three 'layers' in the poems and show that, in a small number of poems, these three layers merge so as to be indistinguishable. This kind of merging, I believe, is the hallmark of Verlaine's distinctive poetry, a form of pure poetry, which creates its own world and terms of reference and is the vital link with Verlaine's poetic art of the finest poems of Romances sans paroles.

In one important respect the title of Fêtes galantes is its theme, for it denotes the complex nature of the detached perspective on love, that least detached of emotions. Verlaine's title is commonly attributed to the influence of Watteau's eighteenth-century genre of painting of the same name, and to Victor Hugo's poem, "La Fête chez Thérèse" (Les Contemplations, I, 22, 1840, published 1856). Watteau (1684-1721) is credited with having developed the genre of the fête galante. Broadly speaking, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the fête galante was an idealised country scene peopled by aristocratic figures, originally the new élite of the city which, under the Regency, and in rivalry with the court after the death of Louis XIV, went to the 'country' (in reality the Paris suburbs) to 'commune with nature'. . . .

Watteau's art enjoyed a revival of interest in the midnineteenth century; Hugo, [Théodore] Banville, [Théophile] Gautier and especially Baudelaire responded to it. The revival was doubtless one element of the more general reaction against an age of materialism, of bourgeois mediocrity, the impulse towards the lowest common denominator of imaginative understanding. It was after all the age which could prosecute Les Fleurs du mal and Madame Bovary. Poems on the fête galante theme were also written by Banville, Gautier and Baudelaire. It is well documented that Verlaine enjoyed Watteau's painting and, especially, responded to the Goncourt brothers' [Edmond and Jules] studies of eighteenth-century art. . . .

[An] underlying assumption of Fetes galantes is the notion of the mask which conceals the feeling person. . . . Above all the onlooking Pierrot of Watteau's painting encapsulates Verlaine's own distancing of himself from the world of emotions which is the substance of Fêtes galantes. Indeed a number of critics have traced the probable pictorial originals of some of Verlaine's Fête galante poems. What matters of course is what Verlaine made of these and doubtless other related inspirations. Clearly he responded to the Watteau who used the artifice of the fête galante to explore essential and natural truths of the human condition. Obviously this 'impersonality' would appeal to a young poet still closely identified with the Parnassian movement. Watteau's figures appear to seek harmonious happiness with the right partners; some succeed, some fail. The couples, partners in dance and song, symbolise the psychological truths of harmony and fulfilment; the distant, isolated figures, the absence of this fulfilment. The apparently lighthearted fête galante mode explores with complete seriousness the life of the emotions. The paradox does not stop here. This life itself brings with it numerous ambiguities. The very artificiality which has revealed these essential human truths and aspirations also asks the spectator such questions as 'can these scenes of harmony be trusted; is such harmony possible, and if so, how long does it last?' The apparent légèreté of the paintings, an aspect too readily seized upon and used to dismiss Watteau, is only apparent. We have only to consider the central female figure in L'Embarquement pour Cythère moving away from the island, her head turned wistfully towards the paradise she is leaving, to understand this.

Verlaine responded, then, to Watteau's use of the impersonal stylised mode as a means of seriously exploring the intensely personal world of love and its disappointments. Watteau achieves an impersonal, some would say objective, means of studying that which is most personal. He gave Verlaine an example of how he might usefully distance himself from the emotions he knows most intimately; usefully because in Fêtes galantes the emotional confusion is located in the conflict between active and passive modes of loving. . . .

I suggest that Fêtes galantes can be considered as a coherent collection of poems with a definite structure, that of an emotional life, much as we find in Hugo's Les Contemplations or Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. The first and last poems of Fêtes galantes ("Clair de lune" and "Colloque sentimental") function as a kind of framework to the ever-changing picture of emotional life on the canvas of the remaining twenty poems. These two poems operate to achieve a 'distance' comparable to that of Watteau's paintings. This is in no way a verbal transcription of Watteau's mode of painting. "Clair de lune" is, literally, a scene setter. All the main elements of the collection are present in this poem and indeed the first line 'Votre âme est un paysage choisi', is the key to the collection. Firstly, the landscape is identified with the soul, the poet's and, quite possibly, our own. The scenes depicted in the remaining poems will ultimately be statements about the poet's and our own emotional landscape. Secondly, it is a 'paysage choisi'; it has a particularity, a uniqueness, a stylisation; in short, an artificiality which will permit an exploration of the natural life of the emotions. . . .

[In] "Clair de lune" a stylised world is established, one which is then further transformed. This is the artificial, transfigured, self-enclosed fête galante world of which the remaining poems are a part. Never again are we reminded that this world is the poet's/our own soul. We are invited once and for all to enter fully into this world.

"Colloque sentimental" repeats the ambiguity of the opening poem. One of the characters in the dialogue appears to doubt that any part of the couple's experience of 'bonheur' ever happened. At the very least s/he does not remember. There is additional uncertainty: the characters seem like ghosts; and by whom are they overheard? It is not altogether certain they were heard. All might equally have been imagined by the poet/reader. In this sense, then, the poem casts a further ambiguity, this time retrospective, over the entire collection. The suggestive power of the emotions is all the stronger for this uncertainty. In a sense the very quality of our existence is put in doubt. So equally there may be a move back on the part of the disbelieving character from the enclosed fête galante world to a familiar reality. We seek refuge from uncertainty in the certain reality of disbelief. An emotional shift such as this is entirely appropriate to what is ultimately a thematic ambiguity.

Each of the poems [in Fêtes galantes] deals with love from a particular angle. In fact the themes, that is, emotional attitudes towards love, cover a very wide range, from lighthearted enjoyment to despairing isolation. Moreover, these related themes are dealt with in groups of poems, so that a number of aspects of the same theme are offered in a kaleidoscopic presentation. "Pantomime" and "Sur l'herbe" give a specifically lighthearted picture of the playfulness of relationships, in Watteauesque terms. The commedia dell 'arte characters engage in the playful stages of 'l'amour naissant'. Colombine, in "Pantomime", feels love dawning. The lover in "Sur l'herbe" indulges in the stock language of adoring the loved one. This light-heartedness is picked up later in "En bateau."

In "L'Allée", "A la promenade", "Dans la grotte", "Cortège" and "Les Coquillages", Verlaine intensifies this idealised love game into a stylised sensual idealism which includes the erotic. "L'Allée" offers a detailed portrait of a woman loosely based on the blason device, used in the sixteenth century and dating back, via the poets of the Middle Ages, to Antiquity. It is a device whereby a woman's beauty is detailed from head to toe. . . .

In "A la promenade" the poem following "L'Allée", the same scene is entered more intimately, for it is presented from the point of view of one of the lovers. . . .

"Dans la grotte" employs consciously archaic eighteenth-century poetic diction to express the lover's complete submission to the pain of love in this idealised love world. . . .

"Cortège" and "Les Coquillages" present essentially the same stylised loving in even more elaborate terms. "Cortège", clearly inspired by Watteau's painting of the same name, nonetheless captures the quintessential artificiality of the scene in such a way that the pet monkey gazing at the woman's décolletage and the negro attendant peeping at his mistress's ankles function like sixteenth-century emblems to symbolise repressed desire strong enough to be lust. Such feelings are spoken in the first person in the erotic poem "Les Coquillages", clearly modelled on eighteenth-century erotic poetry, such as "Le Sein" from Tableaux by Parny.

Matters taken a stage further are presented in the theme of emotional and sensual surrender in "Les Ingénus", "Mandoline" and "En sourdine". In "Les Ingénus" Verlaine depicts the emotional surrender in the early stages of a relationship. . . .

"Mandoline" captures the precise moment when the lovers, their exquisite clothes, their style their happiness, their shadows, all blend perfectly with the moonlight, the music, the quivering breezes. This precise moment of total harmony of sensations, emotions, physicality, is encapsulated in intense movement. . . .

With the poem "Cythère" the ideal world of total surrender is achieved. Cythera, the island of Aphrodite's temple, has long been a favoured subject of painters and poets, Watteau and Baudelaire among them. Verlaine is writing very much within this tradition. The poem's theme is ideal love, a world of passivity, of complete sensual gratification. . . .

The theme of love has so far been presented as a mainly positive and pleasurable experience. Nonetheless, love's less attractive aspects are at least hinted at in some of these poems, "Cythère" for example. Other poems deal more directly with these issues. . . .

[L]ove does not last. The longest poem, "En patinant", uses the familiar device of the passing seasons to depict the passing of love. In this poem there is a further dimension, the idea of manipulation. . . .

Failure, despair, and fear are dealt with more directly in "Le Faune", "L'amour par terre" and "Colloque sentimental". Like its more positive counterpart, "Mandoline", "Le Faune" fixes the precise moment when the lover realises that love will not last. . . .

Despair of love lasting is polarised into the themes of innocence and corruption in "Fantoches" and "Colombine". In 'Fantoches' the evil commedia characters Scaramouche and Polichinelle seemingly plot in the moonlight while Colombine steals away to her handsome lover. Love asserts itself over evil and, it is hoped, will assuage the lovers' distress. In "Colombine", on the other hand, Colombine is presented as an evil manipulator of her innocent lovers. . . .

Across the collection, the distinctive theme of love is developed in an equally distinctive way. There is a deepening emotional richness. In general the poems up to "En patinant" are fairly straightforward depictions of a happy, lighthearted love. "En patinant" marks a turning point; with the theme of manipulation, the darker side of love is introduced. From this point on, the poems are more complex with the additional dimension of the more negative aspects of love discussed above. This interplay of positive and negative aspects of love, I suggest, is the source of the richness of the later poems as of the essential thematic progression.

If we take together the three commedia/Watteauesque poems, "Pantomime", "Fantoches" and "Colombine", it is possible to see this symbolised in the way the character of Colombine is developed. In "Pantomime", Colombine is surprised by love; she is tender and gentle. In "Fantoches" she actively seeks her lover, whilst in "Colombine" she has become a cruel manipulator, she is active rather than passive, and this activity is perceived as malign. As a commedia character, she symbolises, from a safe distance, somewhat in the manner of Watteau's artificiality, the range of emotions associated with love and which Fêtes galantes explores. As a character associated with love, the Colombine figure may be considered to represent the increasingly complex treatment of love across the collection.

"A la promenade", "A Clymène" and "Les Indolents" suggest a modus vivendi in the face of this despair, this 'fate'. . . .

The stance adopted with its logic, 'Le rare est le bon. Donc mourons' is specifically amoral with its implied (conventional) equation of death with sex. The tone of the poem is no less so. . . .

"A la promenade" and "A Clymène" approach the theme of amorality from a different angle. In "A la promenade" we are told quite simply that the lovers are 'Cæurs tendres, mais affranchis du serment'. As in Watteau's paintings, they are absolved of all responsibilities and are free to pursue their pleasures, their search for the right partner in defiance of fate. The liyed reality of such a world is the theme of the beautiful poem, "A Clymène". As in "En sourdine" the poem traces the process of invoking passivity, of relaxing control. This time the power of the loved one is specifically in the domain of sensations. Here too Verlaine self-consciously uses Baudelairian correspondances. (Baudelaire's sonnet "Correspondances explores the symbolic connections of perfume, sound and colour.) In "A Clymène" the effect on the poet's senses, backed up by the 'authority' of another poet's experience, is offered as a justification of the poet's surrender. The repeated construction 'Puisque' leading to the final 'Ainsi soit-il!' which, translated, means 'Amen', has, as in "Les Indolents", a semblance of logic. In addition the strikingly liturgical quality of the verse seems to offer further justification. Amorality, then, a refusal of responsibility, some would say decadence, a seizing of the moment, is both an aspect of love and may well be a way of dealing with love's transience. The 'Ainsi soit-il' which closes "A Clymène" is more than the quasi-religious acquiescent welcoming of love that it may first appear to be. As I have suggested above, the syntax of 'Puisque . . . Ainsi soit-il' offers a justification, a legitimisation of amorality. The world of "Les Indolents" operates on just such a legitimised assumption. . . .

A critic has referred to this amorality as 'libertinage sophistiqué'. This seems to me accurate, but I believe the amorality to be a great deal more than this. As such it is the principle connection with Verlaine's vision of love in Romances sans paroles. In "Les Ingénus" the amoral is specifically a freedom from commitment. . . . It may equally be viewed as a special world where such commitments are irrelevant, if not rejected. Certainly this last attitude would constitute the darker side of freedom. Another way of considering the matter would be to suggest that it is a world of irresponsibility, attempted, if not chosen. The amoral, then, may usefully be seen as the irresponsible. Verlaine's investigation of the nature of love has led him to the verge of taking responsibility, a point beyond which he has chosen not to go. The amoral fête galante world strongly and permanently hints at a world of irresponsibility as a way of life.

It is in this context that I want to suggest that beneath the overt theme of love there lies a theme less directly expressed; it is the theme of passivity. Each poem can be seen as an evocation of a state of passivity. In a fundamental sense this is the key to Verlaine's poetic vision and art. This theme is suggested throughout the collection and is the mood through which the dominant theme of love is filtered. In Verlaine's case the evocation of states of passivity may usefully be viewed as the aesthetic counterpart of his own lived refusal to take responsibility for himself, his actions, his moods, his decisions. It is an astounding and, in some ways, a horrendous transmutation of lived experience into art. The impossible lands of Fêtes galantes, as indeed of Romances sans paroles, have their genesis in that which is only too possible.

As with the theme of love, the states of passivity cover a wide range. "Les Coquillages", "Dans la grotte" and "A Clymène" evoke the pleasure of letting go, of achieving the perfect passivity of physical pleasure. As suggested, the theme of "En sourdine" is the process of bringing about a state of passivity, here a form of receptivity to nature, in such a way that the individual and nature become one on some plane of exquisite pleasure, which is detailed further in "A Clymène" J. P. Richard refers to this process as the removal of 'le moi conscient' of the thinking self, to allow the world of sensations alone to come into being. Passivity too can be discerned in the theme of manipulation; the victims are passive in "En patinant". Passivity is equally the inability or refusal to do anything about this manipulation and the resultant isolation ("Fantoches"). It is vulnerability in "En bateau", fear and loss of control over one's destiny ("Le Faune"). Above all, in "A la promenade", "A Clymène" and "Les Indolents", passivity is manifested in amorality which is legitimised into a way of life in the fête galante world; refusal of commitment is proposed as an ethos. It is a serious proposition and one which Verlaine explores much further in Romances sans paroles.

This layering of themes, one overt, one suggested, is, of course, appropriate to the presentation of mainly nonintellectual themes. I want to go further and suggest that the way the themes are presented also emerges as a theme in its own right. These structures are the nearest the poems get to being 'intellectual'. After all, the world of emotions has to be set down. For the sake of clarity, four distinctive modes of presenting the emotions can be discerned.

Firstly, in "Pantomime" and "A la promenade", for instance, Verlaine uses the device of contrast. Pierrot's practical activity of eating is contrasted with Colombine's passive reception of love to underline the theme of isolation, and the contrast between callousness and feeling, corruption and innocence, conventional masculine and feminine principles. The word 'contraste' is actually used in "A la promenade" to emphasise the enigmatically playful quality of idealised love scene. The woman's cold gaze is contrasted with her generous smile. . . .

This contrast between appearance and reality is tightened into a paradox in a number of poems, notably "L'Allée", and "Dans la grotte". Paradox, the second mode, is obviously of the essence of the fête galante world, dealing as it does with artificial appearance and emotional truth. "L'Allée", which precedes "A la promenade", is a purely external portrait of the lovers of the latter poem. . . .

"A Cythère", "Mandoline" and "En sourdine" present a world within the world of Fêtes galantes, the third mode. "A Cythère" is the pure, perfect world of sensations. This plane of rarefied existence is doubtless the world experienced, in movement, by the characters in "Mandoline" as they 'Tourbillonnet dans l'extase'. In its more relaxed form this world is that to which the lovers aspire in "En sourdine". . . .

[The] fourth mode, I term a dialectic. In the abstract, dialectic may be defined as follows: one emotional state is taken to the extreme point where it brings into being its opposite emotion. This is comparable to the essence of Mallarmé's Symbolist undertaking, 'après avoir trouvé le Néant, j'ai trouvé le Beau'; it is only by encountering total negation that the poet can imagine its opposite, 'l'Idéal'. Verlaine's dialectic, of course, operates on an emotional level. The happiness in "En sourdine" cannot last. In addition, the letting go of the thinking self runs so close to self-annihilation that the conscious self reasserts itself. And this takes the form of despair in "En sourdine", despair at the loss of the conscious self, or equally at not being able to escape its control, at not being able to achieve the emotional ideal of total passivity. Certainly there is too the despair of the deeper parts of the emotional self which are usually suppressed. . . .

On a more mundane level, a mode of presentation such as this conveys the understandable fear that happiness will not last. "Le Faune" demonstrates this very clearly. There is too, something here of the dynamic of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Each of these suggested approaches has its truth. Not surprisingly, there is overall a greater incidence of this dialectical presentation of the theme in the second half of the collection "Mandoline", "A Clymène", "Les Indolents", "Colombine", "En sourdine"), which is obviously a factor in the greater complexity noted in the thematic development of the collection.

I suggested earlier that the way the theme is presented constitutes a theme in its own right. The three 'layers' of themes in Fêtes galantes, love, passivity and the mode of presentation, blend in 'En sourdine'. Here the willed gradual surrender and resultant despair, which is nothing other than vulnerability, is a dialectical process. Emotions work like this. The world of "En sourdine" is more recognisable than that of "Cythère" for instance. In "En sourdine" we are invited to participate in the gradual process of passivity, in "Cythère" to witness an idealised world. This art of merging layers in "En sourdine" marks an important link with the poetic art of Romances sans paroles.

The significant connections between Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles are the themes of love and passivity, their links with the positing of an amoral world where responsibility is refused, and the expression of this in a form of pure poetry. As such Fêtes galantes contains elements of this, Verlaine's art of symbolist impressionism. By using the fête galante mode, Verlaine has explored these issues in a safe, detached way. He distances himself from the highly personal and confused emotions to clarify the conflict between active and passive modes of loving. In Romances sans paroles the same issues are examined in a more personal way, and so, more deeply. In so far as "En sourdine" expresses the experience of willed passivity more intimately than the other poems in the collections, it is the key connecting poem between the two collections. In Fêtes galantes, Verlaine is an onlooker, gazing at the Watteauesque painterly poems which he creates. He is a spectator. In Romances sans paroles, the more specifically musical poems, Verlaine is more profoundly engaged. "En sourdine", with its stated musicality, points the way.

As with Fêtes galantes, the themes of Romances sans paroles are predominantly emotional states. To the familiar themes of love and passivity is added that of freedom. .. . I shall consider three ways in which Romances sans paroles develops from Fêtes galantes; firstly, the use of the Romances sans paroles mode with its subdivisions, secondly the resultant double perspective of external reality and inner emotional reality which permeates the collection, and finally how the presentation of the themes focuses the conflict noted in Fêtes galantes between active and passive ways of loving into the issue of responsibility versus irresponsibility, the issue which, I believe, accounts for the uneven quality of the poetry in this collection. There is, quite simply, a marked contrast between a 'poésie pure' of delicious passivity, free from moral values, a poetry of presentation (as distinct from representation), and a poetry of unsubtly expressed emotions, clearly autobiographical in nature. Fêtes galantes presents a wholly imagined inner world where ethos and emotional state are unified in the specifically pure, amoral world of "A la promenade", "A Clymène" and "Les Indolents". In Romances sans paroles this is not the case.

Romances sans paroles explores further the fête galante world and, as it were, tests out these imaginary lands. As we shall discover, the lands are visited and yet it is impossible to remain there. Emotions and ethos are ultimately found to be in conflict. This is because Verlaine is forever torn between the pull of freedom and the temptation of security, and refuses to choose one or the other. I consider that this unresolved gap between the delicious emotional state, its pain as well as its pleasure, and the ethical basis on which it is founded, generates the best and worst of Verlaine's poetic art and is the halimark of Romances sans paroles. In view of this it seems to me crucial to adopt two approaches to the collection: firstly that of 'poésie pure', poetry in its own right, and secondly a biographical approach in the case of a number of poems, specifically the fourth and sixth "Ariettes oubliées", "Birds in the night", "Child wife", "A Poor Young Shepherd" and "Beams". Apart from the "Ariettes oubliées", these poems contain little that I consider to be of purely aesthetic merit. They are largely versified self-pity and/or anger directed towards Mathilde [Mauté, his wife].

In Fêtes galantes Verlaine dealt with the themes of love, passivity and amorality in a detached way, through the fête galante world. Romances sans paroles is distinctly less detached in its treatment of these themes. In the place of the fête galante framework there is the mode of the Romances sans paroles, wordless songs, which are subdivided into "Ariettes oubliées", "Paysages belges", "Simples fresques" and "Aquarelles", that is, musical as well as pictorial modes, linked by the notion of the significance of the unexpressed. While Romances sans paroles clearly refers to Mendelssohn's 'Songs without words', the 'Romance' is also a sung elegy, emotional in substance and without complicated dramatic presentation. The genre itself conveys the idea of musicality, of experiences that transcend the limitations of words, a questioning of the power of words. . . . There is too the idea that there is no name for the experience which Romances sans paroles collectively portrays. This is less to do with morality, or its absence, than to suggest the uniqueness of a love affair, of which homosexuality is but one element. In short, another plane of existence is involved, as in Fêtes galantes. In Fêtes galantes this world of delicious passivity was lived vicariously through the commedia characters, with the notable exception of "En sourdine" where the experience is considerably less limited by the specific figures. In Fêtes galantes there is an outer reality, that of the fête galante world, and an inner reality, the truth of human emotions. With Romances sans paroles the outer reality is the fact and circumstances of the relationship with [Arthur] Rimbaud, and Mathilde; the inner reality, the intimate experience of this relationship, what it felt like. The experience is neither vicarious nor transposed beyond recognition. Both realities are the poet's. There is, then, no one clear mode to give specificity to the experience. On the contrary, like music, it is evoked in the very process of its unfolding. "En sourdine" came nearest to this kind of poetry in Fêtes galantes. The mode of the Romances sans paroles is entirely appropriate to this art of symbolist impressionism which presents, not represents.

Within this overall genre it seems to me worth considering the titles of the separate sections. "Ariettes oubliées", the first section, contains the quintessentially Verlainian poetry. The 'Ariette' certainly refers to the musical comedy, Ninette à la cour, by the eighteenth-century dramatist, Favart, from which the opening epigram is taken. Rimbaud discovered these plays in the library at Charleville. As the name implies, an 'Ariette' is a small aria. Its distinctive quality is an unaccompanied melody. The melody is the theme, that is, the ephemeral quality of the emotions, possibly a reason for the use of the diminutive. The melody's accompaniment derives from the words' rich suggestiveness, connotative, phonological and metrical. Given the fact that Verlaine named this particular section later (they were originally to have been called Romances sans paroles), there is, as Bornecque suggests, a retrospective view; the experience of the relationship, of its emotional essence, has been forgotten by Rimbaud.

"Paysages belges" obviously recalls the setting of Fêtes galantes, 'Votre âme est un paysage choisi' ("Clair de lune"). The equivalence between landscape and emotions now applies in reverse; the Belgian landscape is that of the poet's soul, it is seen through the poet's emotional being. This section is a continuation of the emotional world of "Ariettes oubliées" and is more outward looking. The subdivision, "Simples fresques" (fresco art implies painting directly on to wet plaster), suggests the seizing of the bare essential elements of the experience, in the form of sparse landscape details. It is the art of the precise nuance and of the rapid gesture. "Aquarelles" continues the painting mode. The water colours may be considered the visual equivalent of "Ariettes oubliées". The pictorial detail of the landscape is fused with the emotional landscape. There is a shift in emphasis from music in the first section, to painting in the final section, which denotes a move away from the completely personal world of emotions and sensations in its complex unfolding process ("C'est l'extase", "Ariette" I) to a world where details from a 'recognisable' external world depict a particular emotional attitude ("Green"). . . .

Each section is linked with a place visited by Verlaine and Rimbaud. "Paysages belges" obviously recalls Belgium, "Birds in the night" and "Aquarelles" are from the London experience, while "Ariettes oubliées" probably covers the entire experience, certainly the early Paris-based relationship, and that on a far more essential level. It is the 'paysage intérieur' of merging emotions and sensations, Verlaine's own Cythère, the journey to and from the island of ideal love. A number of critics assign each section to a particular person in Verlaine's life at this time. The general consensus appears to be thus: "Ariettes oubliées"—nostalgia for Mathilde; "Paysages belges"—Rimbaud; and "Aquarelles"—return to Mathilde. I see an emotional truth and logic in this. After all, Verlaine found it difficult to leave Mathilde and presumably to live, for him, a more adult, homosexual life. On balance, though, I believe the sections signify in a different manner. Each division presents a different location for a particular stage in the relationship with Rimbaud, beginning with the self-enclosed world of emotions ("Ariettes"), the life of adventure in Belgium ("Paysages belges") and then London ("Aquarelles"). Cutting across these sections is the conflict between the reluctance to leave Mathilde and security, and the tempting freedom with Rimbaud. Verlaine's attacks on Mathilde are, after all, externalised fear and cowardice. The straightforward circumstantial adventure is accompanied by a far more complex refusal of this freedom. Even so, each section has its own coherence, recalling the 'blocks' of poems in Fêtes galantes; for instance "Ariettes oubliées" presents kaleidoscopic perspectives on the physical, emotional and artistic relationship, ranging from sensual pleasure through the 'morality' of the situation, to regret at the loss of the stable conventional marriage that freedom has demanded.

The collection as a whole has rather less coherence. There is the overall pattern of a decline in emotional intensity and subtlety. The collection begins with the exquisite "C'est l'extase", the assertion of the reality of the least tangible of experiences, and ends with "Beams", with its theme of surrender in love. However, in "Beams" the presentation is utterly conventional and Hugolian in tone. There are two possible explanations for the decline. Firstly, the inevitable diminution of intense experience. Secondly, there may well be some cynical mockery, ever the perspective of Verlaine in exile. Certainly a poem such as "Beams" bears a strong resemblance to the less impressive poems from La Bonne Chanson and later Sagesse. Whatever the truth of the matter, the fact remains that the poetry in Romances sans paroles ranges from the exquisite to the banal and the ludicrous.

It seems to me too that a double perspective operates. Just as the fête galante world, by its very nature, ultimately doubts the existence of the harmony it depicts, so Romances sans paroles is pervaded by an atmosphere of retrospective fatalistic melancholy, a strong sense of past, present, and future preconditioned by the past, far more marked than in Fêtes galantes (cf. "Le Faune", "L'Amour par terre"). Accordingly there is a greater awareness of the gap between ideal and reality than in Fêtes galantes. In "C'est l'extase", for instance, the moment of sublime happiness is immediately questioned 'C'est la nôtre, n'est-ce pas?' Many of the poems are permeated by this fatalistic doubt. Some are entirely composed of it, for instance the eighth "Ariette", "Dans l'interminable . . . " From the beginning in Romances sans paroles there is the certainty that harmonious happiness will not last. In the light of this and for the sake of clarity, I shall discuss each section separately with respect to the treatment of the themes of love, passivity and freedom.

In "Ariettes oubliées" the theme of love is not articulated as such. Instead the poems variously explore finely nuanced facets of the state of being in love. The theme of passivity too pervades this section in the sense that, with the exception of IV, the poems are about a sensual and emotional state in which the poet finds himself. The theme of passivity is united with the theme of freedom, for the poems evoke an attitude of complete surrender, a letting go, including the fearful dimensions of such a situation. Together, then, the nine "Ariettes" present the essence of the Verlainian emotion of total surrender to love; each poem constitutes an aspect of the entire experience which is thus unfolded in its finely nuanced, ever-changing process. The "Ariette", "C'est l'extase" is one of the best examples of this. . . .

Just as the first poem evoked sensual perfection and doubts, and the second a spiritual ideal and certain doubts, so poem III completes this opening cycle of experience. It is a poem of melancholy. The tragedy is that the poet does not know why he is so desolate:

C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon coeur a tant de peine!
(13-16)

This, the essence of despair, has an unresolved quality which focuses and expresses directly that of I, the demand for reassurance, and of II, the certainty of imperfection.

Together, the first three "Ariettes" convey the entire and extreme range of Verlaine's experience, which is consistently presented as an unfolding process: we are taken through the process with the poet. The remaining "Ariettes" are rather more varied in that they treat specific aspects of this experience and differ considerably in tone. With the possible exception of VI, poems IV-IX deal with the various forms of pain the relationship inevitably entails.

"Ariette" VI is of quite a different order. It is Verlaine's version of Rimbaud's 'Ma Bohème', a half mocking poem of joyous wandering. . . .

Compared with "Ariettes oubliées", the "Paysages belges" are generally more outward-looking, as the title suggests. The themes of love, passivity and freedom are present in the poet's receptivity to the Belgian landscape, which, of course, is simultaneously his emotional landscape. In contrast to the "Ariettes" which unfolded sensations and emotions, "Paysages, belges" tend to pile up sensations in a manner which resembles Rimbaud's poems of sensations, Illuminations. "Voyance" includes pure receptivity to sensations. Nonetheless the poems are never exclusively verbal impressionism. They have their emotional depth.

"Walcourt" and "Charleroi", like "Bruxelles: Simples fresques", form diptychs which depict the pleasure and the pain of the exile in freedom. The mood of "Walcourt" recalls that of "Ariette" VI with its jolly conclusion to the brief and rapid description of the town through which Verlaine and Rimbaud walked on their way to Brussels in 1872, . . . and which led him to compare the two friends with happy wanderers, whereas usually the wandering Jew is seen as a tragedy. On the other hand, the opening line of "Charleroi", 'Dans l'herbe noire / Les Kobolds vont' echoes the eighth "Ariette", 'Dans l'interminable / Ennui de la plaine' just as the questioning, 'On sent donc quoi?' echoes that of "Ariette" V, 'Qu'est-ce que c'est que ce berceau soudain?'. In both instances despair is manifested in an unbridged gap between the senses, emotions and the faculty of understanding. In "Le piano . . . " the poet's memory fails to recall the origin of the sensations; in "Charleroi" the intellect fails to understand both the sensations and their source. The situation becomes worse still in the first of the "Bruxelles" poems, "Simples fresques": there is a near-failure of feeling. Like the fresco which fades with time, the poem deals with the passing of time, and so, of love and memory. . . .

However, the defiance of passing time and of failure of emotions is not guaranteed, for the achievement of emotional happiness is uncertain. The first "Fresque" had questioned whether the experience had ever happened, so frail is memory. The desperate tone of "Fresque" II conveys more of an unfulfilled wish than of certainty. The doubts and ambiguities posed in the ninth "Ariette" persist.

"Chevaux de bois" is quite different in theme, tone and length from the other poems in "Paysages belges". Its loud, exciting evocation of a fairground scene anticipates the early twentieth-century simultaneity of Apollinaire's and Cendrars's poetry of urban life. . . .

The closing poem, "Malines", constitutes a farewell to this cycle of poems, depicting as it does scenes glimpsed from a train. The poem is characterised by silence especially after the noisy activity of "Chevaux de bois". The train's carriages are rooms for intimate communication:

Chaque wagon est un salon
Où l'on cause bas et d'où l'on
Aime à loisir cette nature
Faite à souhait pour Fénelon.
(17-20)

And communication is but part of a more general harmony ('cette nature'). The allusion to Fénelon's doctrine of quietism completes the picture of silent harmony. This, an emotionally gentle close to the cycle, gives a note of completion contrasting with the section "Aquarelles" which follows after the vicious interlude of "Birds in the night" in which Verlaine criticises his young wife. The Belgian experience has been explored and understood: that of London will remain unresolved. In "Aquarelles" the theme of freedom is treated rather differently from the two previous sections. There is less consistent welcoming of freedom. In "Green" and "Spleen", love and passivity take the form of a full and open receptivity to the fleeting, essential moment in the emotional life. . . .

In "Spleen" the poet is slave to his emotions.

In contrast, the London-based "Streets", I and II, present respectively a lighthearted farewell to the loved one and a vivid street scene in London. The poems' joyful energy conveys a momentary freedom, real or imagined, from the loved one, be it freedom from wanting Mathilde or from the depths of surrender to Rimbaud. It does not matter. What does matter is the mature understanding that happy memories are the positive reward of this freedom:

Mais je trouve encore meilleur
Le baiser de sa bouche en fleur,
Depuis qu'elle est morte à mon coeur.
(10-12)

"Streets" II is an example of the clear, fresh vision that emotional freedom can bring, . . . The poem, entirely a painted scene, and comparable in this to some of Rimbaud's Illuminations, is one of the few where the landscape (or, in this case, townscape) is free from any signs of reference to an inner landscape. This absence itself of course informs us of the poet's freedom from distress. Nothing interferes with his detailed and original observations of the world around him. Passivity can be this constructive receptivity to the external world. Here absence of love is seemingly the condition of freedom.

Together "Child wife", "A Poor Young Shepherd" and "Beams" are about love. They enact, respectively, the process of leaving Mathilde, the early stages of love and the playful surrender to a new lover. The tone of these poems is markedly different from that of the other poems in the collection, with the exception of "Birds in the night", although it is marginally prefigured in "Streets". The three poems have a Hugolian tone of declamation: love from a great distance and an impressive height. The child wife is told, 'Et vous n'aurez pas su la lumière et l'honneur / D'un amour brave et fort' (17-18). It is a stance of love, not the experience of love: 'Elle se retourna, doucement inquiète / De ne nous croire pas pleinement rassurés' ("Beams" 13-14). The emotions were raw at the beginning of this third cycle ("Green", "Spleen"), now they are hardened. The issue of freedom has been resolved' by evasion into externalised imagined scenes of parting, courtship and acquiescence to a new love, as it has into a poetic style which contrasts to the point of parody with the authentic Verlainian style.

In discussing Fêtes galantes, I referred to three themes, love, passivity and the mode of treatment, and suggested that the blending of these three in 'En sourdine' made that poem a significant link with Romances sans paroles. In Romances sans paroles the themes of love, passivity and freedom blend with the mode of treatment. In "Ariette" II ("Je devine . . . ") the unfolding presentation is appropriate to the theme of spiritual love; so too, and at the other extreme, is the chronological narrative of the popular song genre, to the unsubtle and strong emotions expressed in "Birds in the night". Running through the entire collection is a further layer. It is the pattern of emotional harmony and discord, a moving away from or towards one of these polarities. Some of the poems begin in a state of harmony and move towards discord. Thus "Ariette" V ("Le piano que baise . . . ") opens with a full evocation of finely nuanced sensations and progresses towards troubled questioning. "Ariette" IX ("L'ombre des arbres") on the other hand remains harmonious in its consistent evocation of disappointment. Harmony does not necessarily imply happiness, although the harmonious joy in "Walcourt" does involve both.

It is illuminating to consider the first and last three poems of Romances sans paroles in the light of this emotional pattern. As I have shown, the first three "Ariettes" constitute a small cycle of poems in their own right, for they deal with the full range of Verlainian experience, sensual ecstasy, spiritual ideals and despair, all of which are expressed as an unfolding experiential process. The last three poems, "Child wife", "A Poor Young Shepherd" and "Beams" also constitute an independent cycle of poems in their externalised stance of parting and loving anew. As such both 'cycles' offer vignettes of the Verlainian experience, both are harmonious in their tonal consistency. The first cycle is authentic, the second, an unconvincing pose. However, unlike "Colloque sentimental" (Fêtes galantes), the lack of conviction in the second cycle does not cast a retrospective ambiguity over the whole collection. Instead it opens up questions concerning the diminution of the poems' quality, and so, the uneven quality of the poetry in the collection as a whole.

The key factor is the theme of freedom. If we consider the poems in their order of arrangement, which is not necessarily the order of composition, a picture emerges. In the first three "Ariettes" freedom is of the essence of the experience, for the poems convey the poet's acceptance of the positive and negative aspects of the experience. The reassurance he seeks in "C'est l'extase", the doubt itself, is part of the experience, as is the failed spiritual perfection in "Je devine . . . " and the failure to understand the source of despair in "Il pleure ... " In the last three poems Verlaine adopts a pose of freedom, leaving a woman, beginning a new relationship; even the acquiescent love in "Beams" is playful. Put another way, the first three "Ariettes" do not question the ethical basis for this freedom, the situation is enjoyed and accepted for what it is; by the stage of the last three poems, the matter has been confronted and sidestepped.

So there is an unresolved conflict in the collection between emotional freedom and its ethical basis. This, the crucial and poignant discord, cuts across the collection and is the source of its tension. This discord concerns the issue of a Chosen irresponsibility. In Fêtes galantes Verlaine justifies his amorality, and "Ariettes" IV and VII, "Birds in the night" and "Child wife" deal with the same matter, this time in the form of an irresponsibility not chosen, together with the attendant guilt and indictment of the beloved. These poems, circumstantially autobiographical, contrast with the other poems in the collection by dealing with specifically ethical matters. "Ariettes" IV and VII present respectively the homosexual life with Rimbaud and the leaving of Mathilde, representing conventional heterosexual security; bohemianism versus social integration. In offering a justification for 'amorality', "Ariette" IV develops the theme of "A Clymène" (Fêtes galantes). In this "Ariette" Verlaine's justification is an uncharacteristically assertive demand for forgiveness, 'Il faut . . . nous pardonner les choses'. It is obviously possible to read this line as referring to some undisclosed violation of an unstated code. Indeed the vagueness is the very condition to which he refers; homosexual love was inadmissible in nineteenth-century France and, as Oscar Wilde put it, 'dared not speak its name'. There is possibly a sense of sin in the choice of the word 'pardonner', given Verlaine's subsequent reconversion to Catholicism during his imprisonment in Mons prison after the shooting incident, and in view of the fact that he was given the maximum sentence of two years' hard labour, less for shooting at Rimbaud than for practising sodomy with a minor. In "Ariette" IV, Verlaine insists on a life of freedom which, given the reference to the poets as 'filles', is doubtless passive in the sense of rejecting coventional notions of masculinity. Depending on one's point of view, the seventh "Ariette" ("O triste . . . ") captures, as I have suggested, the paradox of being separated without being separate; equally it could convey the self-pity of a man who cannot have his cake and eat it.

"Birds in the night" evokes a similarly ambiguous response. It is by far the longest poem in the collection, narrating the poet's emotional life with a woman from the beginning of the relationship to a parting which clearly does not constitute the end of the relationship. The overt theme of the poem is the poet's forgiveness of the woman. I do not doubt the sincerity of this, given Verlaine's collections of poems such as La Bonne Chanson and Sagesse I find the criterion of sincerity difficult with respect to poetry and prefer to leave it aside as being ultimately unuseful for assessing the merits of a poem. In the final analysis the poem should stand on its own. Letting "Birds in the night" do just that, I find it has little aesthetic merit, with its banal verse form, rhyme scheme and relentless list of undoubtedly powerful but nonetheless crassly expressed emotions. And indeed I find that in the place of any such merit the emotional content intrudes itself. This is the point: the poem refuses any response of the order which we are accustomed to give to most of the poems in the collection. Instead it presents itself with a tone of appalling self-pity and cowardly self-justification. The same is true of "Child wife" which begins, 'Vous n'avez rien compris à ma simplicité'. As with "Birds in the night", the fact that Verlaine obviously believes such assertions is ultimately irrelevant. For the overt theme of self-pity and cruel criticism of Mathilde's understandably annoying childish behaviour is contradicted by a tone of quite staggering indictment of the young wife. The poem ends with a grandiose and ludicrous Hugolian utterance indicating all that the young wife has missed through her failure to understand her husband. Presumably the Hugolian echoes are further justification for the criticism of the wife. Hugo's life is doubtless the ideal to which all poets and wives should aspire. Adèle Hugo had, after all, 'understood' her husband's infidelities.

These four poems, autobiographical, and expressing the tension between freedom and security, are Verlaine's 'Saison en enfer'. Fêtes galantes had presented an ethos of freedom from responsibility in the transposition to the imaginary fête galante world. In Romances sans paroles the matter is focused into a choice between a free, 'immoral' life with Rimbaud or a life of conventional security with Mathilde. Verlaine seems to choose neither; or rather he refuses to choose. In the last analysis, the direction chosen is irrelevant; what matters is the choice between responsibility and amorality. Verlaine does not even choose to be amoral; this is the ultimate, and damaging, irresponsibility. His change of lifestyle with Rimbaud has hardly proved to be the free amoral world imagined in Fêtes galantes. The promise of the fête galante world has not been realised. The poet is faced instead with the consequences of his chronic refusal to choose; they are aesthetic as well as ethical consequences.

The quality of the poetry in Romances sans paroles is patchy compared with that of Fêtes galantes. Verlaine's best art is written under the successfully self-deceiving illusion of acceptance that love is passive irresponsibility. Moreover, in these poems, particularly the "Ariettes", the positive and negative dimensions of the situation are maturely explored. However, in the poems where no such illusions are created, and where a more recognisably personal matter intrudes, Verlaine simply misses the essence of the moment in question. So, it is when he deals with the serious source of his delicious irresponsibility and which he ultimately evades by blaming Mathilde for everything, that the poetry borders on the banal. In such poems Verlaine misses the core of the emotion: 'Tout le reste est littérature'. This, the last line from "Art poétique", Verlaine's own criticism of 'unmusical' poetry, judges, sadly, its own author. With Verlaine's critique in mind, together with his own dramatic lapses from this ideal of musicality, it is time to turn our attention to the large question of music in Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles, beginning with Verlaine's art of versification.