Paul Verlaine Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Geoffrey Brereton

Critical Essay by Geoffrey Brereton

SOURCE: "Paul Verlaine," in An Introduction to the French Poets: Villon to the Present Day, 1956. Reprint by Methuen and Company, 1957, pp. 174-85.

In the following excerpt, Brereton briefly outlines Verlaine's artistic development and literary influence.

The deplorable Verlaine—for so, from the moral point of view, he must be considered—traversed in his life various psychological crises which, if lived experience alone were decisive, should have yielded poetry comparable to Baudelaire's. Yet, for all his self-inclusion among the poètes maudits or "doomed poets" of the eighties, Verlaine is not a Satanic, or even a tragic, figure. It is not possible to take him so seriously, nor does he often demand it. When he does, one is inclined to smile rather than to participate. It is always "pauvre Lélian" in trouble again, never a clairvoyant fellow man playing on one's own fears and vices. Certainly he can sometimes be touching, with...
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