SOURCE: "Verlaine's Decadent Manner," in Paul Verlaine and the Decadence, 1882-90, Manchester University Press, 1974, pp. 124-40.

Here, Stephan describes some decadent elements and themes in Verlaine 's works.

For a quarter of a century now it is Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles that Verlaine critics have esteemed the most highly. Phenomenological critics have examined the psychological tensions of Fêtes galantes, where Verlaine seeks to compensate for the amorous frustrations of real life by projecting an imaginary world of commedia dell' arte figures enjoying an endless orgy of desire and gallantry unmarred by sexual achievement. Romances sans paroles is seen as a universe shimmering with sensations which hover for ever just this side of extinction. In his rendering of their fadeur, in his translations of these sensations into musical-verbal equivalents, Verlaine has developed a brilliant mode of communication with his reader, for these equivalences sensorielles which...