Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine - By Stefan Zweig - Authorized Translation by O. F. Theis - Paul-Marie Verlaine (30 March 1844 - 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siecle in international and French poetry. Born in Metz, Verlaine was educated at the Lycee Imperial Bonaparte (now the Lycee Condorcet) in Paris and then took up a post in the civil service. He began writing poetry at an early age, and was initially influenced by the Parnassien movement and its leader, Leconte de Lisle. Verlaine's first published poem was published in 1863 in La Revue du progres, a publication founded by poet Louis-Xavier de Ricard. Verlaine was a frequenter of the salon of the Marquise de Ricard (Louis-Xavier de Ricard's mother) at 10 Boulevard des Batignolles and other social venues, where he rubbed shoulders with prominent artistic figures of the day: Anatole France, Emmanuel Chabrier, inventor-poet and humorist Charles Cros, the cynical anti-bourgeois idealist Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Theodore de Banville, Francois Coppee, Jose-Maria de Heredia, Leconte de Lisle, Catulle Mendes and others. Verlaine's first published collection, Poemes saturniens (1866), though adversely commented upon by Sainte-Beuve, established him as a poet of promise and originality.