Verlaine (1844-1896)

Reading in French is so incredibly good for my language skills. I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose; the reason my English is so good is because I’ve spent so much time with my nose in a book. I remember being at primary school (another of those resurfacing memories caused by teaching in one) where occasionally someone would ask me how to spell something or what the right usage of a word was, and I would tell them without thinking about it. Seeing long words and uncommon grammatical structures in front of your eyes helps you recognise what’s right and what’s wrong instinctively. I like reading biographies in French because they’re interesting yet factual, apart from the occasional 'Paul Verlaine fled to London again like a bat out of hell' they’re blessedly free of complicated metaphors or double meaning or philosophical debate and so very easy to understand even if the vocabulary and the grammar are more advanced than I’m used to (i.e. more so than ‘Direct Soir’).

Anyway, Paul Verlaine is a nasty piece of work. The spoilt only child of an indulgent mother who kept her miscarried foetuses in jars, PV is classic self-obsessed wild artist type, keeps losing decent jobs obtained through connections, drinks, whores, eventually marries nice little French girl and before she even gives birth to their son is running around Europe with young poet Rimbaud (who, this biography says, is an intolerable peasant type who insults everybody and abuses PV dreadfully.) After he shoots Rimbaud in the arm (!) he goes to prison, during which he, remarkably, embraces Catholicism. Renouncing all vices, he writes religious poetry. When he gets out he runs to Stuttgart to find and convert Rimbaud, who is having none of it (PV spoils his case slightly by going for a romantic walk with R and frantically trying to embrace him.) After this fiasco he lives in England by himself teaching French for a while. (At some point the poor wife finally dumps him.) Comes back to France, indulges pastoral fantasies, develops various ill-considered attachments to young men who remind him vaguely of Rimbaud. (Still drinking and whoring throughout.) Works as English teacher by virtue of his time spent there, invents technique of talking French with an English accent (no, seriously, his pupils must all say Bon-jewer Mon-sewer Verlayne when he comes in). When his poetry takes off, he surrounds himself with young protégés who remind him vaguely of Rimbaud. (All these are mentioned in the biography as ‘young men who remind him of his own dear son, forbidden to him since the separation’ (balls).

Aged about 50 but looking about 80, he catches on to the wheeze of foreign lecture tours fairly late in life, and, dressed like a tramp, staggers around Europe mumbling incoherently before room after room of aghast foreign academic and literary circles, gleefully spending his fees on, yup, drink and whores.

Dies in excruciating (and not entirely undeserved, in the opinion of this biography reader) pain.

Another reason I like reading biographies is the occasionally breathtaking gulf between how a person appears to the world – in where they live, who they know, how they dress – and the work produced by that inner hidden self that can so outshine the former. Why were all those Belgian and English literary circles so surprised at the disparity between the poetry that had inspired them to meet the author, and the reality of the man himself? In my edition of French Grazia a couple of weeks ago there was a short interview with some yummy intellectual, now aspiring film director, who gave Rimbaud as his main influence. Une Saison en Enfer is cited with reverence as a pivotal literary work. Rimbaud gave up writing when he was 21 and his life was a mess through his leg amputation to his early death. I don't know what to take from this.

Is the gap between the mundane and the visionary at its greatest for the artist? If so, are these great works produced because their real lives are so crummy? Or are their real lives so crummy because they can’t handle the magnitude of the creative force inside them?

Or is this gulf present for everyone? In which case, every single person is a mass of emotions and desires and beautiful, poignant thoughts and impulses hidden behind an ordinary face and body, nondescript clothes, an undistinguished existence. The artists don’t have more feeling than everyone else, they are just the lucky ones who manage to squeeze some of it out. And when they do, we turn to them in awe and admiration, exclaiming, ‘that’s just what I wanted to say!’ projecting our own mute experience of feeling into their words, their pictures, their music.

I'd like to talk to a French person about Verlaine and Rimbaud, and see if they think the end product was worth it. I can't get very far at all without hitting words I don't understand, and being put off by too many exclamation marks and dot dot dots. (Or maybe they are just rubbish.)