Paul Verlaine was born Paul-Marie Verlaine on 30 March 1844 in Metz, then a French garrison city in Lorraine, and died in Paris on 8 January 1896. Few poets have made a more decisive contribution to the sound, atmosphere, and inward freedom of modern French verse, and few have lived so visibly within the contradictions that their work explores. Verlaine could write with extraordinary delicacy about rain, moonlight, p…
“Do not give my address to anyone. My family, M. Istace and Nouveau are the only ones who know my present Thebaid. Absolute silence, even to old comrades.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, French Symbolists, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sensuality, Tenderness, Wonder
In the autumn of 1871, as France was still reeling from the trauma of the Franco-Prussian War and the violent suppression of the Paris Commune, a child was born in the Mediterranean port town of Sète who would become one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary intellects. Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry entered the world on October 30th, in a region where the brilliant southern light seemed to sharpe…
“The natural is boring.”
Neighbourhood:
French Symbolists, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sensuality, Tenderness
