Paul-Jean Toulet was born on 5 June 1867 in Pau, in the Béarn region of southwestern France, and died on 6 September 1920 at Guéthary, on the Basque coast. He occupies a singular place in French literature: neither wholly Symbolist nor conventionally modernist, neither simply a Decadent aesthete nor merely a regional poet of nostalgia. He was a writer of poems, novels, criticism, aphorisms, and journalism, but his la…
“Le bonheur est une petite chose que l'on grignote, assis par terre, au soleil.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, French Symbolists, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Peace
In the fading light of Victorian England, when the certainties of empire began to crack and a fin-de-siècle weariness settled over the literary world, Ernest Christopher Dowson emerged as one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of his generation. His brief, tragic life—spanning a mere thirty-two years from 1867 to 1900—produced poetry of such delicate melancholy and exquisite craftsmanship that it continues to ca…
“I was in a condition too lyrical even for the society of poets.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
