SOURCE: “Verlaine's Verbal Sensation,” in Studies in Philology, Vol. 72, No. 2, April, 1975, pp. 226–36.

In the following essay, King examines the importance of grammar and verb choice to the meaning of Verlaine's poetry.

Recent studies of Verlaine's impressionistic style have been primarily “stylo-technical” rather than stylo-linguistic. Such studies, including notably Octave Nadal's “L'Impressionnisme Verlainien” and Alain Baudot's “Poésie et Musique chez Verlaine,” have taken as their point of departure Verlaine's “Art Poétique.”¹ Intent on examining the “musicality” of Verlaine's poetry, they demonstrate the contribution of diverse technical features including versification, uneven line-length, enjambement and sound patterns. Valuable though these analyses are to an understanding of Verlaine's poetic technique, they only incidentally isolate and explain certain linguistic choices which characterize Verlaine's impressionistic poetry. Jean-Pierre Richard has described Verlaine's poetry as that of “le pur sentir.”² Though most critics readily agree, they fail to amplify this description by showing how...