Verlaine: Prince of Poets By Lawrence Hanson

Verlaine livres

Verlaine Prince of PoetsThis nearly sixty year old biography of one of France s most significant and influential nineteenth century poets still stands up to scrutiny but it is very much about the man and his milieu rather than the poetry This suits me but it may not suit other readers. Verlaine kindle books There are plenty of poems quoted but always in French without translation which might be just as well given the difficulty of adequate translation The Hansons there are two authors credited do little to explain why Verlaine is poetically important or how the poems are constructed. Verlaine poems pdf What we have instead is a well drawn account of a rather weak and self destructive petit bourgeois who simply happened to have a remarkable talent for the innovative use of his own language at a time when French literature was ready for a worthy heir to Ronsard.

Paul verlaine books

The Hansons give us a sometimes acerbic vision of French Parisian literary culture where the few very different genii of the age from Hugo and Baudelaire through Mallarme and Rimbaud to and beyond Verlaine stand within a world of second rate poetasters and opportunists. Verlaine chess board Verlaine in particular is given as a type not of failure in himself he was far from a poetic failure in terms of reputation in his latter years but of social failure His genius was eventually recognised but the snobbery and ambitions of his less likable peers refused to see it when it failed to suit them. Verlaine les sanglots longs des violons The authors account of the pompous.

Verlaine pfp

Ridiculous funeral orations of men who had little time for Verlaine when he was alive make this poor weak man seem infinitely decent and memorable than his memorialists This combination of social stupidity and holy fool is familiar today. Verlaine livres It was the younger generation who appreciated the poet We can see Verlaine as not only a standing rebuke alongside Mallarme to the pretensions of the self styled Parnassians but as an important trigger for the cultural movement known as Symbolism without being a Symbolist himself. Verlaine les sanglots longs des violons The final years are Dickensian with a seedy life amongst seedy characters in a chaotic world of polyamorous adventuring with gold digging harlots and gentlemanly sojourns in hospitals to recover from perpetual self indulgence a model of irresponsibility and transitory pleasures. Pdf verlinken auf bestimmte seite There is much acute psychological insight in the biography although one has a suspicion that the Hansons determination to tell a good story has occasionally notably in the early years allowed them to go too far in presuming to know what Verlaine and others actually thought. Verlaine chess board How true this is all is as an account of Verlaine s and others inner life may be considered with a little scepticism but it is a tale well told.

Pdf verlinken auf bestimmte seite

The cultural context seems to be judged appropriately and the total picture is than plausible. Verlaine bsd Whether Verlaine was a repressed ephebophile is not over easy to judge even allowing for the discretion of 1950s biography He protested vigorously against claims of homosexuality though suspicion led him to his worst jail term but something tells me that he protests a shade too much The pattern of sentimental and emotional attraction to young men without always much judgment involved is not incompatible with hetero sexual adventures and lust for a young wife and prostitutes and a discovery of the Church as restraint for excess These are far from contradictory impulses. Verlaine bsd One is reminded here of the gap between the sublime musical genius that was Mozart and the scatological reality of the man but it is the man that matters here and through the man one gets fascinating insights into French culture between the Romantics and the Symbolists. Verlaine chesskid Verlaine s life might be said to have been in three Acts before Rimbaud during Rimbaud and after Rimbaud Meeting and engaging with the wayward demonic genius Arthur Rimbaud was the making and the unmaking of Paul Verlaine This book is good at explaining how and even probably why. Verlaine les sanglots longs Before Rimbaud Verlaine was a lazy talent enjoying himself with a group of Parisian literary types rather his inferior he not knowing and they not appreciating the fact Something of a hedonist Verlaine might have been a foot note in literary history if he had stuck there. Verlaine paul Rimbaud appears as the self centred demon child dominating a man whose sexual instincts can only be described as complex perhaps bisexual perhaps quasi ephebophiliac perhaps merely repressed in the homosexual department but definitely complex. Verlaine chesskid Verlaine the older man becomes oddly submissive trailing around behind this young little demon whose own remarkable ego psychopathic contribution to literature is well known plunging the depths of poverty and dissipation everything leading eventually to violence and imprisonment. Verlaine nyc This is where the book is at its best The Hansons are good at bringing the little sociopath and his weak acolyte to life and the truth is there in plunging the depths Verlaine also in many ways came alive and was then able to deploy his remarkable talent The high point of the book is perhaps the visit of both men to London The Hansons give us insights here and later into the differences between French and British culture and help us understand why Verlaine otherwise the quintessential Parisian by adoption was so Anglophile. Verlaine chess board The third act after Rimbaud is the man transformed into a very curious European combination of the controlled French Catholic and the dissipated and self destructive bohemian who was able to churn out lines of genius until his inevitable physical collapse and death. Verlaine don juan The psychology of the emotionally confused and passionate free spirit in a society of rules is often expressed by the alternation of excess and evasion all within an attempt to make those rules one s own as if they were eternally true The contradictions are absurdities but they are the space in which poetry is made The role of Rimbaud was possibly to allow the older Verlaine to come to terms with excess to reject the role given to him by society and then to find a path way to religion as containment zone for his desires. Kindle verlaine poet In many ways the Verlaine of the Third Act is interesting than the Verlaine of the Second Act though this latter fascinates those who like a good story The redemption after an intense breakdown in the monastic conditions of a Belgian jail creates a model of mauvaise foi for study. Tom verlaine book collection As in the Mozart case self awareness is not a necessity for great work On the contrary the skill of the man is just one honed on thousands of hours of simply thinking about life and contradiction in terms of poetic form instead of through ratiocination. Verlaine and rimbaud Verlaine does not have to be a good or great man or very clever or even enormously interesting in himself In the end he just has to have had a peculiar genius that is a technique for expressing what hundreds of thousands of men may feel but cannot express. Verlaine bsd The chaos of his life and his mistakes ending in a ridiculous last few years are transformed into creative gold This biography is a good and readable guide not to how this was achieved by Verlaine but one showing that it was achieved out of the raw material of a distinctive personality Chess I have this book but it is called instead Fool of God Not Prince of Poets I prefer my title In any case this book gives great detail of the 1860s 1890s Paris literary scene Really spends a lot of time on the multitude of Parnassian poets but also spends a good amount on his relations with Rimbaud Then heads into his years in prison and finally as a street poet in Paris living with prostitutes and guzzling absinthe as he scammed his way humorously into French lore Great and worthwhile read Not much like the character in the DiCapprio film Much stoic humble yet still emotionally needy: Verlaine texte The probable truth is that Verlaine s poetic impulse and genius arose from his lack of self knowledge and his contradictions.

Verlaine bsd

Prince of poets. Verlaine epub reader In the meantime a sort of displacement of the intellect into intense bursts of poetic language that were true to the moment and could speak to others equally conflicted.Eamon Loingsigh Chess