保羅·魏爾倫（Paul Verlaine，1844-1896年）是一名法國詩人。是象徵主義派別的早期領導人。象徵主義者嘗試把詩歌從傳統的題材和形式中脫離出來。魏爾倫的詩歌以優雅、精美且富有音樂性而著稱。他在梅斯出生，1871年在巴黎時深受年輕詩人亞瑟·蘭波影響。與妻子分居後，他和蘭波過上了放蕩不羈的生活，並淪落成酒鬼。1873年在與蘭波爭吵時開槍打傷了他，因此被判入獄兩年。

保爾·魏爾倫（Paul Verlaine，1844年3月30日－1896年1月8日），法國象徵派詩人。

生平

生於法國洛林地區的梅斯，在巴黎接受教育，畢業後成為一個公務員。他很早就開始寫詩，一開始受到巴納斯詩派的影響，欣賞詩人勒貢特·德·列爾。1866年出版第一部詩集《憂鬱詩篇》（Poèmes saturniens），儘管聖勃夫對詩集評價不高，他卻由此聲名鵲起。

法蘭西第三共和國成立後，魏爾倫加入了國民自衛軍，成為巴黎公社中央委員會的宣傳部長。五月流血周發生後，巴黎公社遭鎮壓，魏爾倫也躲了起來。

1871年8月他回到巴黎，結識了詩人阿爾圖爾·蘭波。他很快拋棄了妻子和孩子，和蘭波去了倫敦。1873年7月他在喝醉酒後用槍擊傷了蘭波，導致他被捕，並關入蒙斯的監獄。他在監獄中收到離婚通知書，蘭波也離開了他。

出獄後，他離開蒙斯，回到故鄉居住了一段時候，又去英國教法語和繪畫。1877年返回法國，在勒泰勒的中學任教。1881年，他回到巴黎出版他的詩集《明智》（Sagesse），一舉成名。

1883年，魏爾倫最喜歡的男學生患白喉死了。他的母親也於3年後去世。他開始過一種潦倒的生活，在窮睏、酗酒和疾病的折磨下長期住院，並把不多的版稅花在兩個中年妓女身上。在這段時間裏，他寫了不少作品，如：《平行》、《悲歌》等。

雖然晚年生活貧睏，他在法國文學界的名聲卻如日中天。1894年，他在勒貢特·德·列爾死後被選為“詩王”。1895年他寫出最後的一本詩集《死亡》。

他於1896年去世，巴黎的公衆為他舉行了葬禮。

作品

詩集：

• 《明智》
• 《無字浪漫麯》
• 《憂鬱詩章》

值得一提的是，德布西著名的《月光》靈感正來自於魏爾倫的《月光麯》。

影響與評價

魏爾倫與馬拉美、蘭波並稱象徵派詩人的“三駕馬車”，在法國詩歌史上占有重要的地位。與馬拉美、蘭波等晦澀的詩風相比，魏爾倫的詩更加通俗易懂、琅琅上口，因此受到普通讀者的喜愛。

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