Songs Without Words

The dissolute, erratic leader of the decadents and one of the early symbolists, Verlaine wrote 18 volumes of verse in alternating moods of sensuality and mysticism. He and the Poet Rimbaud, 10 years younger, wandered throughout Europe together, until their relationship ended when Verlaine shot his companion in Brussels in 1873 and was imprisoned for two years. Sagesse (1881), his collection of religious poems of great melodic and emotional beauty, is generally considered his finest volume. In his famous poem Art Poetique, Verlaine stressed the primary importance of musicality in poetry over description. Mallarme called the collection in which it appears, Jadis et Naguere (1884), "almost continuously a masterpiece . . . disturbing as a demon's work," and described Verlaine's skill as that of a guitarist. 020