Biography

Conduit à l’écriture par Baudelaire et ses Les Fleurs du mal, PAUL VERLAINE (1844-1896), ami des poètes Parnassiens, publia son premier recueil, Poèmes saturniens en 1866. Après la mort de sa cousine Elisa Déhée dont enfant il était amoureux, il fit paraître Les Fêtes galantes (1869). Il écrivit en 1870, La bonne chanson, pour sa femme Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville. Un an plus tard il recevait la lettre d’un garçon nommé Arthur Rimbaud. Les deux poètes entamaient une relation à la fois passionnée et turbulente jusqu’au 12 juillet 1873 où Verlaine, ivre, tirait au pistolet sur Rimbaud, le blessant au poignet. Verlaine fut condamné et emprisonné dix-huit mois qui furent une opportunité pour son œuvre : il étudia Shakespeare et Cervantes et écrivit Romances sans paroles. Après la sortie de prison, Verlaine abandonnait la vie de bohème en se convertissant au catholicisme. Dans ses dernières années, il a souffert d’alcoolisme et de nombreuses affections, vivant dans les taudis et les hôpitaux publics, buvant l’absinthe dans les cafés. Les amoureux de l’art le sauvèrent en réunissant des fonds pour ses soins. En 1894 il fut élu par ses pairs « Prince des poètes ». Le 8 janvier 1896, il mouru à Paris.

PAUL VERLAINE (1844-1896) was inspired to write by Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal. He befriended the Parnassian poets in Paris, and published his first book of poetry, Poèmes saturniens, in 1866. After the death of his cousin Elisa Déhée, whom he had loved as a child, he published Les Fêtes galantes in 1869. He wrote La bonne chanson to his wife Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville in 1870, but a year later he received a letter from a boy named Arthur Rimbaud and the two began a passionate but turbulent relationship which lasted until July 12, 1873, when Verlaine got drunk and shot Rimbaud in the wrist. He was jailed for eighteen months, which turned out to be fortunate for his career, as he studied Shakespeare and Cervantes and wrote Romances sans paroles. After his release, he gave up the bohemian life and converted to Catholicism. Toward the end of his life he suffered from alcoholism and various ailments, living in slums and public hospitals and drinking absinthe in cafés. However, kindly art lovers rescued him and provided funds for his care. In 1894 he was elected “Prince of Poets” by his peers. He died in Paris on January 8, 1896.

DAVID LUNDE‘s poems and translations have appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Triquarterly, Kansas Quarterly, Northwest Review, and others. His work has been included in forty anthologies. He is the author of eleven books of poems and translations, including Nightfishing in Great Sky River (Anamnesis Press, 1999); The Carving of Insects (Renditions, 2006), the collected poems of Bian Zhilin, co-translated with Mary M.Y. Fung, which won the 2007 PEN USA Translation Award; Instead (Mayapple Press, 2007); Breaking the Willow (White Pine Press, 2008); and 300 Tang Poems (White Pine Press, 2011).