Great lyrical poet of France Paul Verlaine was born on March 30, 1844, in city Metz.
He has left bright record of what he felt and seen, on spirit and expression similar with later creativity of Blok, Chechov and other newest writers, and was also connected by strings of deep relationship with young impressionistic artists of France, Scandinavian countries and Russia.
The artists of this type were surrounded by the new urban reality, other, than Pushkin and Stendhal. Streets just have been covered by asphalt and have been illuminated by gas. Factories grew, as mushrooms, the daily newspapers spread. Extreme growing of railways, becoming a part of existence of each child, in different dependence on that, whether his childhood flew by in a train by night city or the night trains flied by his poor childhood.
On this, in a new fashion covered street, shadows were different from what they were in Balzac’s times, people passed by in a new fashion, and it should be drawn in a new fashion, in the consent with it’s nature. However a main novelty of a street were not lanterns and telegraphic wires, but whirlwind of egoism, which flew by with sharpness of an autumn wind and, like fallen leaves from parkways, brought to sidewalks poverty, prostitution and other “charms” of this time. This whirlwind rushed in eyes of each man and it was the center of a picture. It’s breath has formed a point of view of the new artists.
They wrote in points and half-tones, not because thay wanted so and that they were symbolists. The reality itself was a symbolist, it was in transitions and meant more than made, and served more as a sign of something then satisfied. Everything was displaced and has got mixed up, old and new, church, country, city and nation.
He was the son of a colonel, and when a boy was sent from a province to Paris in a closed educational institution. He married in 1870. Here the Destiny has sent him the malicious genius, that monster of talent, which was a brawler, original and poet — teenager Artur Rimbaud.
He has dug out this “beginner” somewhere and has invited him in Paris.The further existence of Verlain is filled with tears of his wife and child. Verlaine and Rimbaud wandered along large roads of France and Belgium, lived in London. Once in Bruxelles after large quarrel Verlaine has run out, following Rimbaud, who wanted to go away from him, two times has shot him, has wounded him, was arrested and is sentenced by court to the biennial conclusion in prison. After it Rimbaud has set off to Africa.
He has died in the winter 1896 year, not adding an anything amazing to for a long time to already usual glory, surrounded by respectful attention of youth and imitators.
Paul Verlaine Poems
IN THAT CAFE CROWDED WITH FOOLS WE STOOD…
| In that cafe crowded with fools we stood Just us two for the hideous turpitude of liking men; they never thought, the cunts. We sat on their dim-witted innocence Their standard loves, their tiny gold rules While holding to our principles and tools We swung and parried to our heart’s content Veiled in a cloud on peaceful pipes had sent Like Zeus and Hera in their nebulous bed Till our two Punch noses glad and red Wiped by our fingers with delightful squeezed Under our table jetted great white sneezes. |
Translation by Roland Grant and Paul Archer
SPRING
| Tender, the young auburn woman, By such innocence aroused, Said to the blonde young girl These words, in a soft low voice:”Sap which mounts, and flowers which thrust, Your childhood is a bower: Let my fingers wander in the moss Where glows the rosebud “Let me among the clean grasses “So that pleasure, my dear, Her dear rare body, harmonious, Beauteous thighs, upright breasts, “Little one, let us see if your bed |
Translation by Roland Grant and Paul Archer
PENSIONNAIRES
| The one was fifteen years old, the other sixteen And they both slept in the same little room. It happened on an oppressive September eve — Fragile things! blue-eyed with cheeks of ivory.To cool their frail bodies each removed Her dainty chemise fresh with the perfume of amber. The younger raised her hands and bent backwards, And her sister, her hands on her breasts, kissed her. Then fell on her knees, and, in a frenzy, And during all that time the younger counted |
Translation by Francois Pirous
MOONLIGHT
| Your soul is like a painter’s landscape where charming masks in shepherd mummeries are playing lutes and dancing with an air of being sad in their fantastic guise.Even while they sing, all in a minor key, of love triumphant and life’s careless boon, they seem in doubt of their felicity, their song melts in the calm light of the moon, the lovely melancholy light that sets |
1867
Translation by C.F. MacIntyre
THE SKY IS, THERE ABOVE THE ROOF…
| The sky is, there above the roof, so blue! so calm! The tree-top, there above the roof is swaying its twigs.The bell is, through the cloistral hush, churning its sweet tones. The bird is, from out of the tree-top chanting its sorrow. My Lord, my Lord, there is the Life, What have you done, o you, |
1873