Verlaine

by Joanna Richardson

Book by Richardson, Joanna

432 pages, Hardcover

Published September 23, 1971

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Drably written and without much to say about the poems. But even the barest dossier of this man contains memorably horrific scenes. Three stillborn siblings preceded little Paul; Mme Verlaine preserved them in jars of alcohol (and, as her husband was an army officer, presumably moved them from post to post). Late one night in the summer of 1869, the twenty-five-year-old poet returned - full of absinthe, with a companion - to the flat he shared with his now widowed mother. A family friend who was staying with them heard a cry from Verlaine’s room, and she rushed in to find him brandishing a sabre before his mother and demanding she give him 200 francs. Verlaine’s companion seized him from behind while his mother and the family friend wrested the sabre away. Disarmed but not pacified, Verlaine wrenched open the cupboards, drew out the foetal jars and shattered them on the floor. After gathering the remains and burying them in the courtyard, his mother and the family friend sat up with him until morning, “struggling with the wretched man from one to eight,” during which vigil Verlaine at one point knocked his mother down, clutched her throat and declared that he was going to kill her and then himself. Remarkably, the family friend’s letter records this as the second time in her visit that she witnessed Verlaine wave a sabre and threaten murder-suicide.


And this:

Established writers came to see him: Anatole France, Huysmans and Mallarmé. Foreign critics were followed by publishers and editors. There were artists of every degree, working on sketches or “official” portraits. Aesthetes and society women sat beside the poet’s bed; humble friends arrived from the Latin Quarter (and some of them, said Rodenbach, were so poor that they came to share his hospital meals). Bulletins on Verlaine’s health were published in the papers. In summer, under the plane trees in the courtyard or the garden, draped in his Public Assistance dressing-gown, wearing his hospital cap, Verlaine presided over Socratic conversations which became part of the literary scene. A visit to Verlaine in hospital became a form of snobbery, a cult among the intelligentsia…In the last years of Verlaine’s life, the hospitals of Paris would have fought for the honour of having him.

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[Jim Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s hard to go wrong writing the life of such a fascinating, complex and talented poet. But Richardson somehow manages to bungle it with her primitive theories as to the source of his homosexuality, the lack of any deep analysis of his poetry (which she only prints in French), and her apparent dislike for her subject. The book is filled with useful info, but ultimately was a disappointment. Hopefully someone with a more nuanced outlook has written a better biography since this was published!