July 20, 2011
Verlaine, Rimbaud - and John Ashbery
The poetry of these men, once lovers, ranges from the Parnassian to the revolutionary
Edmund White
"These two books define the opposite ends of the poetic spectrum, though they were written by two men who were briefly lovers and composed at times not so very far apart. Paul Verlaine’s Poèmes saturniens (1866) was his first book and owes much to the melodiousness of the Parnassian poets of the day such as Leconte de Lisle, and to the suave sensuality of Baudelaire. Everything in it makes perfect sense. Rimbaud’s Illuminations was probably written ten years later, though it was not published until 1886 – in fortnightly instalments in a review called La Vogue (and its author might not even have been aware of its publication). It is a revolutionary work, and initiates the penchant for “difficult” poetry that was to become characteristic of the twentieth century. Most of its poems are in prose; others are in free verse (said to be the first examples of free verse in French). Some of them are icy and futuristic. Almost nothing in the book seems autobiographical – quite in contrast to Une Saison en enfer, the volume of Rimbaud’s that preceded it.
This is not to say that Verlaine, in his more traditional way, did not want to be modern – even in the poems now translated by Karl Kirchwey as Poems Under Saturn. In fact Verlaine was always praising the “modernity” and “melancholia” of Baudelaire. In an article Verlaine wrote at the same time as the publication of Poèmes Saturniens he attacked the Romantic idea of inspiration and of “life” and “human nature” and came out in favour of a poetry completely mastered, controlled and formal. Nor did he in his best work present “themes” that preceded and were external to the actual poems; as we read we feel that we are watching those poems materialize under his pen, just as Chopin’s Nocturnes come to life under his improvising fingers. Nevertheless, since this first book brought together some very early poems written in his collège days as well as his most up-to-date experiments, it is something of a grab-bag, and anything but consistent or programmatic..." -continued
This is not to say that Verlaine, in his more traditional way, did not want to be modern – even in the poems now translated by Karl Kirchwey as Poems Under Saturn. In fact Verlaine was always praising the “modernity” and “melancholia” of Baudelaire. In an article Verlaine wrote at the same time as the publication of Poèmes Saturniens he attacked the Romantic idea of inspiration and of “life” and “human nature” and came out in favour of a poetry completely mastered, controlled and formal. Nor did he in his best work present “themes” that preceded and were external to the actual poems; as we read we feel that we are watching those poems materialize under his pen, just as Chopin’s Nocturnes come to life under his improvising fingers. Nevertheless, since this first book brought together some very early poems written in his collège days as well as his most up-to-date experiments, it is something of a grab-bag, and anything but consistent or programmatic..." -continued