Paul Verlaine

What have you done, you standing there
In floods of tears?
Tell me what you have done
With your young life?

Paul-Marie Verlaine (March 30 1844 – January 8 1896) was a French Symbolist poet. He is often characterized as a poète maudit and an example of fin-de-siècle decadence in literature.

Quotes

By far the worst pain
Is not to understand
Why without love or hate
My heart's full of pain.

Translations and page-numbers are from Martin Sorrell (trans.) Selected Poems (Oxford University Press, 1999)

When you choose your words, no need to search
In strict dictionaries for pinpoint
Definitions. Better the subtle
And heady Songs of Imprecision.

• Les sanglots longs
  Des violons
  De l'automne
  Blessent mon cœur
  D'une langueur
  Monotone.
  • The long sobs of
    The violins
    Of autumn
    Lay waste my heart
    With monotones
    Of boredom.
  • "Chanson d'automne", line 1, from Poèmes saturniens (1866); Sorrell p. 24

• Et je m'en vais
  Au vent mauvais
  Qui m'emporte
  Deçà, delà,
  Pareil à la
  Feuille morte.
  • And so I leave
    On cruel winds
    Squalling
    And gusting me
    Like a dead leaf
    Falling.
  • "Chanson d'automne", line 13, from Poèmes saturniens (1866); Sorrell p. 27

• La lune blanche
  Luit dans les bois;
  De chaque branche
  Part une voix
  Sous la ramée.
  • White moon gleaming
    Among trees,
    From every branch
    Sound rising into
    Canopies.
  • "La lune blanche", line 1, from La Bonne Chanson (1872); Sorrell p. 57

• Il pleure dans mon cœur
  Comme il pleut sur la ville.
  Quelle est cette langueur
  Qui pénètre mon cœur?
  • Falling tears in my heart,
    Falling rain on the town.
    Why this long ache,
    A knife in my heart.
  • "Il pleur dans mon cœur" line 1, from Romances sans paroles (1874); Sorrell p. 69

• C'est bien la pire peine
  De ne savoir pourquoi
  Sans amour et sans haine
  Mon cœur a tant de peine!
  • By far the worst pain
    Is not to understand
    Why without love or hate
    My heart's full of pain.
  • "Il pleur dans mon cœur" line 13, from Romances sans paroles (1874); Sorrell p. 71

• Qu'as-tu fait, ô toi que voilà
  Pleurant sans cesse,
  Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voilà
  De ta jeunesse?
  • What have you done, you standing there
    In floods of tears?
    Tell me what you have done
    With your young life?
  • "Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit", line 13, from Sagesse (1880); Sorrell p. 111

"Art poétique", from Jadis et naguère (1884)

• De la musique avant toute chose,
  Et pour cela préfère l'Impair
  Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air
  Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose.
  Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point
  Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise:
  Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise
  Où l'Indécis au Précis se joint.
  • Let's hear the music first and foremost,
    And that means no more one-two-one-twos…
    Something more vague instead, something lighter
    Dissolving in air, weightless as air.
    When you choose your words, no need to search
    In strict dictionaries for pinpoint
    Definitions. Better the subtle
    And heady Songs of Imprecision.
  • Line 1; Sorrell p. 123

• Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance!
  • Colour's forbidden, only Nuance!
  • Line 14; Sorrell p. 125

• Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou!
  Tu feras bien, en train d'énergie,
  Du rendre un peu la Rime assagie.
  Si l'on n’y veille, elle ira jusqu’où?
  Ô qui dira les torts de la Rime!
  Quel enfant sourd ou quel nègre fou
  Nous a forgé ce bijou d'un sou
  Qui sonne creux et faux sous la lime?
  • Grip eloquence by the throat and squeeze
    It to death. And while you're about it
    You might corral that runaway, Rhyme,
    Or you'll get Rhyme Without End, Amen.
    Who will denounce that criminal, Rhyme?
    Tone-deaf children or crazed foreigners
    No doubt fashioned its paste jewellery,
    Tinplate on top, hollow underneath.
  • Line 21; Sorrell p. 125

• Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure
  Éparse au vent crispé du matin
  Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym…
  Et tout le reste est littérature.
  • You must let your poems ride their luck
    On the back of the sharp morning air
    Touched with the fragrance of mint and thyme…
    And everything else is LIT-RIT-CHER.
  • Line 33, Sorrell p. 125

Quotes about Verlaine

• Anna Margolin was greatly influenced by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; among the Germans, by Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke; and among the Yiddish poets, by Itsik Manger and Avrom Sutzkever.
  • Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin by Shirley Kumove (2005)

• That time, that excitement, I will always remember,/like a song without words, like a poem by Verlaine.
  • Anna Margolin "The Song of a Girl" poem in Drunk from the Bitter Truth, translated from Yiddish

• Two of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience are the lives of Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin: both of them men who have passed years in prison: the first, the one Christian poet since Dante; the other, a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia.
  • Oscar Wilde, in De Profundis (1897)