L’Affaire Verlaine – Rimbaud

Originally presented at the T.W. Wood Gallery & Arts Center – Montpelier, VT

Paul Verlaine was born ten years earlier than Rimbaud, in 1844. The spoiled, only child of an army officer, Verlaine displayed early talent as well as audacity — he sent his first poem, at age 14, to the master, Victor Hugo. Upon graduation, he worked by day as a clerk, and spent his nights writing, drinking and carousing in the literary cafes with his contemporaries, Stephane Mallarme, Villiers de Isle-Adam, and Anatole France. This group later became known as the Symbolists, a revolutionary group of artists who sought to convey meaning by suggestion rather than direct statement.

Born in 1854, in the northeastern town of Charleville, Arthur Rimbaud was the son of an army captain and a local farmer’s daughter. When Rimbaud was six, his father left and he and their mother raised his siblings. Like Verlaine, Rimbaud was a remarkable student and showed a precocious talent, writing poetry as early as age eight. His first poem was published when he was just sixteen. He was to revolutionize French poetry forever with his dictum that a poet must “make himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses.”

In late August of 1871, at the advice of a friend, Rimbaud sent copies of some new poetry to Verlaine in Paris, who was taken aback by the brilliance of the work. Verlaine summoned him to Paris and thus began their tumultuous relationship.

From their first encounter, Verlaine was powerfully drawn to Rimbaud, whose arrogance and provocative behavior shocked the established literary circles of Paris The two men formed a passionate relationship that was often fueled by absinthe and hashish and characterized by love and cruelty, inspiration and antagonism, separations and reconciliation’s.

Rimbaud, encouraged Verlaine to leave his wife and infant son and the two traveled together throughout Europe. In July 1873, after Rimbaud once again threatened to leave; Verlaine shot Rimbaud and was imprisoned for two years on charges of violence and sodomy.

While Verlaine was in prison, Rimbaud returned to Roche, near his childhood home, and finished A Season in Hell, an account of his spiritual descent and his failure in art and love. While in prison, and forced into abstinence of both alcohol and sex, Verlaine rediscovered his Roman Catholicism. Upon his release, he sought out Rimbaud, and the two met for the last time. When Rimbaud repulsed Verlaine’s attentions, their relationship ended forever.