Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine was a French poet, writer and critic who lived from 1844 to 1896 and is counted among the central figures of fin-de-siecle poetry in France and beyond. Born in Metz into a middle-class family, he published his first collection, Poemes saturniens, in 1866 at the age of twenty-two. His career is linked with the Symbolist, Parnassian and Decadent movements, and he is remembered for the musical quality of his verse, its fluid sound and its delicate shades of feeling. His stormy relationship with the younger poet Arthur Rimbaud ended in 1873 when he wounded Rimbaud with a revolver in Brussels, and he was sentenced to two years in prison, where he returned to the Catholic faith and wrote the collection Sagesse. Verlaine is also known as one of the poetes maudits, the accursed poets, a phrase he made popular. Composers such as Debussy and Faure set his poems to music.