保罗·魏尔伦（Paul Verlaine，1844-1896年）是一名法国诗人。是象征主义派别的早期领导人。象征主义者尝试把诗歌从传统的题材和形式中脱离出来。魏尔伦的诗歌以优雅、精美且富有音乐性而著称。他在梅斯出生，1871年在巴黎时深受年轻诗人亚瑟·兰波影响。与妻子分居后，他和兰波过上了放荡不羁的生活，并沦落成酒鬼。1873年在与兰波争吵时开枪打伤了他，因此被判入狱两年。

保尔·魏尔伦（Paul Verlaine，1844年3月30日－1896年1月8日），法国象征派诗人。

生平

生于法国洛林地区的梅斯，在巴黎接受教育，毕业后成为一个公务员。他很早就开始写诗，一开始受到巴纳斯诗派的影响，欣赏诗人勒贡特·德·列尔。1866年出版第一部诗集《忧郁诗篇》（Poèmes saturniens），尽管圣勃夫对诗集评价不高，他却由此声名鹊起。

法兰西第三共和国成立后，魏尔伦加入了国民自卫军，成为巴黎公社中央委员会的宣传部长。五月流血周发生后，巴黎公社遭镇压，魏尔伦也躲了起来。

1871年8月他回到巴黎，结识了诗人阿尔图尔·兰波。他很快抛弃了妻子和孩子，和兰波去了伦敦。1873年7月他在喝醉酒后用枪击伤了兰波，导致他被捕，并关入蒙斯的监狱。他在监狱中收到离婚通知书，兰波也离开了他。

出狱后，他离开蒙斯，回到故乡居住了一段时候，又去英国教法语和绘画。1877年返回法国，在勒泰勒的中学任教。1881年，他回到巴黎出版他的诗集《明智》（Sagesse），一举成名。

1883年，魏尔伦最喜欢的男学生患白喉死了。他的母亲也于3年后去世。他开始过一种潦倒的生活，在穷困、酗酒和疾病的折磨下长期住院，并把不多的版税花在两个中年妓女身上。在这段时间里，他写了不少作品，如：《平行》、《悲歌》等。

虽然晚年生活贫困，他在法国文学界的名声却如日中天。1894年，他在勒贡特·德·列尔死后被选为“诗王”。1895年他写出最后的一本诗集《死亡》。

他于1896年去世，巴黎的公众为他举行了葬礼。

作品

诗集：

• 《明智》
• 《无字浪漫曲》
• 《忧郁诗章》

值得一提的是，德布西著名的《月光》灵感正来自于魏尔伦的《月光曲》。

影响与评价

魏尔伦与马拉美、兰波并称象征派诗人的“三驾马车”，在法国诗歌史上占有重要的地位。与马拉美、兰波等晦涩的诗风相比，魏尔伦的诗更加通俗易懂、琅琅上口，因此受到普通读者的喜爱。

Biography

Early life

Born in Metz, Verlaine was educated at the Lycée Impérial Bonaparte (now the Lycée Condorcet) in Paris and then took up a post in the civil service. He began writing poetry at an early age, and was initially influenced by the Parnassien movement and its leader, Leconte de Lisle. Verlaine's first published poem was published in 1863 in La Revue du progrès, a publication founded by poet Louis-Xavier de Ricard. Verlaine was a frequenter of the salon of the Marquise de Ricard (Louis-Xavier de Ricard's mother) at 10 Boulevard des Batignolles and other social venues, where he rubbed shoulders with prominent artistic figures of the day: Anatole France, Emmanuel Chabrier, inventor-poet and humorist Charles Cros, the cynical anti-bourgeois idealist Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Théodore de Banville, François Coppée, Jose-Maria de Heredia, Leconte de Lisle, Catulle Mendes and others. Verlaine's first published collection, Poèmes saturniens (1866), though adversely commented upon by Sainte-Beuve, established him as a poet of promise and originality.

Marriage and military service

Mathilde Mauté became Verlaine's wife in 1870. At the proclamation of the Third Republic in the same year, Verlaine joined the 160th battalion of the Garde nationale, turning Communard on 18 March 1871.

He became head of the press bureau of the Central Committee of the Paris Commune. Verlaine escaped the deadly street fighting known as the Bloody Week, or Semaine Sanglante, and went into hiding in the Pas-de-Calais.

Relationships with Rimbaud and Létinois

Plaque in Brussels

Paul Verlaine in 1893; photograph by Otto Wegener

Verlaine returned to Paris in August 1871, and, in September, he received the first letter from Arthur Rimbaud, who admired his poetry. He urged Rimbaud to come to Paris, and by 1872, he had lost interest in Mathilde, and effectively abandoned her and their son, preferring the company of his new lover. Rimbaud and Verlaine's stormy affair took them to London in 1872. In Brussels in July 1873 in a drunken, jealous rage, he fired two shots with a pistol at Rimbaud, wounding his left wrist, though not seriously injuring the poet. As an indirect result of this incident, Verlaine was arrested and imprisoned at Mons, where he underwent a re-conversion to Roman Catholicism, which again influenced his work and provoked Rimbaud's sharp criticism.

The poems collected in Romances sans paroles (1874) were written between 1872 and 1873, inspired by Verlaine's nostalgically colored recollections of his life with Mathilde on the one hand and impressionistic sketches of his on-again off-again year-long escapade with Rimbaud on the other. Romances sans paroles was published while Verlaine was imprisoned. Following his release from prison, Verlaine again traveled to England, where he worked for some years as a teacher, teaching French, Latin and Greek, and drawing at a grammar school in Stickney in Lincolnshire. From there he went to teach in nearby Boston, before moving to Bournemouth. While in England he produced another successful collection, Sagesse. He returned to France in 1877 and, while teaching English at a school in Rethel, fell in love with one of his pupils, Lucien Létinois, who inspired Verlaine to write further poems. Verlaine was devastated when Létinois died of typhus in 1883.

Final years

Verlaine's last years saw his descent into drug addiction, alcoholism, and poverty. He lived in slums and public hospitals, and spent his days drinking absinthe in Paris cafés. However, the people's love for his art was able to resurrect support and bring in an income for Verlaine: his early poetry was rediscovered, his lifestyle and strange behaviour in front of crowds attracted admiration, and in 1894 he was elected France's "Prince of Poets" by his peers.

His poetry was admired and recognized as ground-breaking, and served as a source of inspiration to composers. Gabriel Fauré composed many mélodies, such as the song cycles Cinq mélodies "de Venise" and La bonne chanson, which were settings of Verlaine's poems. Claude Debussy set to music Clair de lune and six of the Fêtes galantes poems, forming part of the mélodie collection known as the Recueil Vasnier; he also made another setting of Clair de lune, and the poem inspired his Suite bergamasque. Reynaldo Hahn set several of Verlaine's poems as did the Belgian-British composer Poldowski (daughter of Henryk Wieniawski).

His drug dependence and alcoholism caught up with him and took a toll on his life. Paul Verlaine died in Paris at the age of 51 on 8 January 1896; he was buried in the Cimetière des Batignolles (he was first buried in the 20th division, but his grave was moved to the 11th division—on the roundabout, a much better location—when the Boulevard Périphérique was built).

Style

Verlaine drinking absinthe in the Café François 1er in 1892, photographed by Paul Marsan Dornac

Much of the French poetry produced during the fin de siècle was characterized as "decadent" for its lurid content or moral vision. In a similar vein, Verlaine used the expression poète maudit ("cursed poet") in 1884 to refer to a number of poets like Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Aloysius Bertrand, Comte de Lautréamont, Tristan Corbière or Alice de Chambrier, who had fought against poetic conventions and suffered social rebuke or were ignored by the critics. But with the publication of Jean Moréas' Symbolist Manifesto in 1886, it was the term symbolism which was most often applied to the new literary environment. Along with Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Paul Valéry, Albert Samain and many others began to be referred to as "Symbolists." These poets would often share themes that parallel Schopenhauer's aesthetics and notions of will, fatality and unconscious forces, and used themes of sex (such as prostitutes), the city, irrational phenomena (delirium, dreams, narcotics, alcohol), and sometimes a vaguely medieval setting.

In poetry, the symbolist procedure—as typified by Verlaine—was to use subtle suggestion instead of precise statement (rhetoric was banned) and to evoke moods and feelings through the magic of words and repeated sounds and the cadence of verse (musicality) and metrical innovation.

Verlaine described his typically decadent style in great detail in his poem "Art Poétique," describing the primacy of musicality and the importance of elusiveness and "the Odd." He spoke of veils and nuance and implored poets to "Keep away from the murderous Sharp Saying, Cruel Wit, and Impure Laugh." It is with these lyrical veils in mind that he concluded by suggesting that a poem should be a "happy occurrence."

Portraits

Numerous artists painted Verlaine's portrait. Among the most illustrious were Henri Fantin-Latour, Antonio de la Gándara, Eugène Carrière, Gustave Courbet, Frédéric Cazalis, and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen.

• 

  by Frédéric Bazille
  1867
 
• 

  by Eugène Carrière
  1890
 
• 

  by Edmond Aman-Jean
  1892
 
• 

  by Isaac Israëls
  1892
 
• 

  by Edouard Chantalat
  1898
  Posthumous,
  from a photograph.

Historical footnote

Chanson d'automne

• In preparation for Operation Overlord, the BBC via Radio Londres had signaled to the French Resistance that the opening lines of the 1866 Verlaine poem "Chanson d'automne" were to indicate the start of D-Day operations. The first three lines of the poem, "Les sanglots longs / Des violons / De l'automne" ("Long sobs of autumn violins"), meant that Operation Overlord was to start within two weeks. These lines were broadcast on 1 June 1944. The next set of lines, "Blessent mon coeur / D'une langueur / Monotone" ("wound my heart with a monotonous languor"), meant that it would start within 48 hours and that the resistance should begin sabotage operations especially on the French railroad system; these lines were broadcast on 5 June at 23:15.

In popular culture

• Among the admirers of Verlaine's work was the Russian language poet and novelist Boris Pasternak. Pasternak went so far as to translate much of Verlaine's verse into Russian. According to Pasternak's mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya,

  Whenever [Boris Leonidovich] was provided with literal versions of things which echoed his own thoughts or feelings, it made all the difference and he worked feverishly, turning them into masterpieces. I remember his translating Paul Verlaine in a burst of enthusiasm like this -- L'Art poétique was after all an expression of his own beliefs about poetry.

• In 1943, Richard Hillary, author of The Last Enemy, quoted Verlaine (Sagesse) in his poem. 
• In 1964, French singer Léo Ferré set to music fourteen poems from Verlaine and some from Rimbaud for his album Verlaine et Rimbaud. He also sang two other poems (Colloque sentimental, Si tu ne mourus pas) in his album On n'est pas sérieux quand on a dix-sept ans (1987).^{[citation needed]}
• Soviet/Russian composer David Tukhmanov has set Verlaine's poem to music in Russian and French (cult album On a Wave of My Memory, 1975).
• Guitarist, singer and songwriter Tom Miller (better known as Tom Verlaine, leader of the art rock band Television) chose his stage name as a tribute to Verlaine.
• New Zealand indie rock band The Verlaines are named after Verlaine. Their most popular song "Death and the Maiden" references his shooting of Rimbaud.
• The time Verlaine and Rimbaud spent together was the subject of the 1995 film Total Eclipse, directed by Agnieszka Holland and with a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, based on his play. Verlaine was portrayed by David Thewlis and Leonardo DiCaprio played Rimbaud.
• The poem Crime of Love was set to music for the album Feasting with Panthers, released in 2011 by Marc Almond and Michael Cashmore. It was adapted and translated by Jeremy Reed.
• Bob Dylan's iconic "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," has the lyric, "Situations have ended sad; Relationships have all been bad; Mine've been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud".
• Singer Lydia Loveless has a song called 'Verlaine Shot Rimbaud' on her album Somewhere Else.

Works in French (original)

Verlaine's Complete Works are available in critical editions from the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.

Works in English (translation)

Although widely regarded as a major French poet -- to the effect that towards the end of his life he was sobriquetted as "Le Prince des Poètes" (The Prince of Poets) in the French-speaking world -- surprisingly very few of Verlaine's major works have been translated in their entirety (vs. selections therefrom) into English. Here's a list to help track those known to exist.

See also

• Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation
• Poète maudit
• Zutiste

References