Paul Verlaine Books

Having been brought up in a liberal culture which automatically assumed (and taught) that the adolescent rebel Rimbaud was a far more important poet than his old fuddy-duddy "conventional" lover, Paul Verlaine, it is very interesting to read Verlaine's actual poetry and compare it with the so-called poetry of Rimbaud, and to realize that Verlaine was, by miles and miles, the greater poet of the two.

As often is the case with general volumes of poetry, or books available in many editions, a good reveiw necessarily consists of two parts: first a review of the original material, and then a review of the specific edition.

For the original material, Verlaine is an amazing poet. He represents possibly the first and greatest lyrical poet to be initiated into modernity. His lyricism is not baroque, whimsical, or decadent - it is haunted and beautifull. It is like the music of Chopin (as it could be said that Rimbaud's is closer to that of Liszt). He represents a unique tract among the many poetic styles gestating in a Paris newly thrust into what we call modernity. There was the cynical and disolute Baudelaire, the ribald and frenzied Rimbaud, and then the melancholy and lyrical Verlaine. These three writers could easily be seen as a trifecta of greatness: they together represent the principal moods that have dominated literature to follow in their tracks.

The editions of a poets works, however, should certainly be considered independent of the poems themselves. Translation and selection of poems from such a broad body of work is both highly prejudicial, and (perhaps as a result) also creates a unique beauty in each seperate edition.

This edition, though, is a stand out among others available. First, because it probably is the largest English collection of Verlaines work (170 poems or so) and second because it's assembly, tranlations, and annotation reveal a very profound thoughtfullness on the part of the translator and editor, Martin Sorrell.

Most selections of Verlaines work are contrite and myopic, pick only certain early poems which have been translated and anthologized ad nauseum with no greater depth than that of a poem-a-day desk calendar or the litterary equivalent of easy listening music. In contrast, Sorrell's presentation is symphonic. The poems he has selected are true to the life of the poet - complete with ragged edges and blissfull moments.

How could one appreciate Verlaine's true genius if he is only shown in an artificial, sacrine, sanatized way? Sorrell boldly includes a large amount of poems from Verlaine's later work, largely disparaged by other critics, and provides very thoughtfull annotations about the inspirations, impacts, and ultimate relevance of each poem.

In this way Sorrell has created a very thoughtfull meditation on the life and work of Verlaine, and shares it with his audience so even a layman can appreciate it.

There is also a parallel French Text, which I find indespensible. Although not all of the translations are done the same way I would, diversity is what makes literature beautifull, and I am very interested to see the relationship between Sorrell's scholarship of Verlaine's life and the way in which he translates Verlaine's verses. This is a valuable tool not found if you were to simply read a French edition of Verlaine's poems or preuse an anthology.

In the end, this book is a excellent illustration of why translations and collections can be usefull even to people who have already read Verlaine in French.

[...] At any rate, for those who are not familiar with the movement, I would suggest reading, in this order: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Mallarme, as that is the sequence in which they came to the fore of French Lit (though you could make the case that Veralaine and Rimbaud were contemporaneous, I would suggest that Verlaine's most important work came after his interchange with Rimbaud). Since these are the most influential French poets of the modern era, and had an impact on every modern "movement" that occured in literature thereafter, you can not go wrong with any of them. There are those who contend that poetry especially is lost in translation. I would agree, yet all these poets are represented by "facing" texts these days. The original text is mirrored by the translation on the opposite page. Oxford and Penguin both are good choices. The translators are uniformally well-educated and erudite, the printing is excellent and the overall scholarhip, including introductions, is top-notch. You can't go wrong with these editions.

Verlaine is perhaps my favourite poet--many of his poems are exceptionally beautiful, salacious even. However he wrote prolifically, and as is often the case with prolific artists, his work is of uneven quality. Nevertheless, at his best, Paul Verlaine's poetry is among the most remarkable that I've ever read. I highly recommend this collection.

'The reader seems to have some disaster of far vaster import than he can fathom. That is the mysterious effect of Mallarme's poetry. One gets a strange emotional effect past analysis'. So declares translator C.F. MacIntyre of a typically impenetrable Mallarme sonnet. Unfortunately, it's an effect the non-French reader will never experience. In translation, somebody like Robert Frost once said, what is lost is the poetry, and no other writer exemplifies this truism more clearly than Mallarme. Most translations will at least yield some sort of broad narrative or imagistic or intellectual sense. Mallarme's self-contained, bookish, exquisitely artificial poetry (Borges was a fan) exists on a plane beyond sense. It is an intensely intricate agglomeration of sounds, forms, distorted grammar, codes and riddles whose 'meaning' is not literal. Mallarme is usually compared to a costumier, jeweller or musician, such is this artisan's devotion to the poem as crafted object. The only real way to translate Mallarme is not to find literal English equivalents for his words as printed, but to find new word-constructions with sounds and resonances that transmute the originals' spirit, rather than sense. But if the translator had that kind of gift, s/he wouldn't be wasting it on Mallarme translations. Despite MacIntyre's best efforts, then, literal Mallarme in English sounds like the worst kind of sub-decadent pot-pourri, like the imitations of French Symbolism Oscar Wilde churned out in his youth. [...]This does not mean the volume is useless. French students struggling with the originals can use the translations as a kind of grammatical glossary, and will find MacIntyre's synopses and explanatory notes, with background and critical infomration, helpful, if dated. The casual reader, however, will find much to enjoy. After a few poems (including the famous 'Herodiade' and 'L'apres-mide d'un faune'), I gave up struggling with Mallarme, and gave into the pleasures of MacIntyre's annotations. A real-life Charles Kinbote, he doesn't even seem to like Mallarme very much: one poem 'is built up of so much nothing, like a fragile pastry of whipped cream. It is artful in the worst sense of the word... He should have had a stern editor! (As I have)'; 'Line 4 is particularly good, [a critic] insists, because it suppresses the classic caesura! I don't think many readers would suffer if the whole sonnet had been suppressed'. He refers to Mallarme's art as a 'dead end', execrates 'his miserably bungled up French', and cheerfully admits that he doesn't really understand the poems! So what qualified him to translate them?! A delectable egotism blows through the pages, from its overheated, homoerotic dedication, and the unwarranted, though very welcome, detours into autobiography and war memories, to the Olympian sneers at previous commentators. Published in sexually unliberated 1957, MacIntyre is forced to euphemise Mallarme's detailed and relentless erotics, which leads to some splendid tongue-twisting; the frequent suspicion that MacIntyre himself misses the point of a poem like 'What silk...' ('the mouth will not be sure/in its bite of finding savor,/unless he, your princely lover,/breathe out, diamond-like, in your/considerable tuft the cry/of Glories stifled as they die'), which he says is about a woman brushing her hair at the mirror (!), is quashed by his mocking one persistently misreading critic: 'Really now. I wish I still had Herr Wais's niaive innocence. I really do'. Barmy, endearing and delightful.

One of the world's most respected masters of the art of Erotica has recently published what is perhaps his masterpiece. William Maltese has for years been one of the most consistently praised writers in the field.

"Ardennian Boy" is a remarkable book. It tells the explosive story of the two Nineteenth Century French poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud and their sexual affair that shocked the world and ultimately brought a stint in a Belgian prison for the unfortunate Verlaine.

This story of course has been told before, but never like this. Mr. Maltese has put the sex back into the story where it belongs. Explicit, hot, dirty sex as it was most likely experienced by the poets. Of course this is not a biography, but a novel, so Maltese has taken some liberties, imagining what "must have been" between the lines of the well-documented actual events. In addition, the novel is enhanced by liberal samplings of the poetry itself in sparklingly sexy new translations by Professor Drewey Wayne Gunn.

The affair between Verlaine and Rimbaud lasted less than two years. But oh! What an affair! Rimbaud was only a 15-year-old country boy from the Ardennes region of France (hence the title) when he sought out Verlaine, ostensibly for advice and help with his literary career. From the first moments, the recently married and terminally "bourgeois" Verlaine fell hard for the sexy young teen.

Mr. Maltese skillfully follows the trajectory of the torrid affair from Paris, to rural Charleville, back to Paris many times, to Brussels, to London, and back to Brussels (where the shooting incident leads to the conviction and jail time for Verlaine.) The reader becomes exhausted from all the explosive, exciting action so beautifully and volcanically described by the master story-teller, William Maltese.

No fan of gay erotica should miss this fine book that's presently short-listed on the Lambda Literary Awards list for erotica! It is not only a novel; it is a great anthology of the work of both poets. In a well-written and scholarly appendix to the book, a factual history of the poets and their work is summarized, along with references to the actual titles of the original French poems and where the interested and/or scholarly reader can find the originals.

Don't miss this one. It is HOT!

I still remember a maybe 13 years old girl who stole a book of poems from the shelves in her mother room. They were, as I read on the preface, poems that Paul Verlaine has written during his relationship with Arthur Rimbaud. Really I didn't find any clue of this relationship in that book, but I cherished the memory of this love. I remember that the preface underlined the age difference between Verlaine and Rimbaud (10 years) but said nothing about the fact that Arthur was 16 years old when he met Paul. When he coscientely and willingly seduced the older poet.

In Ardennian Boy, Arthur admits that he didn't find Paul physical attractive, seems an excuse, but in this case we can absolutely believe when Arthur says that he is attracted by the genius of Paul Verlaine, the greater poet in Paris, excluse himself of course. Even if Arthur is younger, he is the why and the how of the story. He is him who drags Paul out of his bourgeois life. But what they have together is not a romance, a pure love to leave to posterity. It is a selfdestructive relationship, brings forward by a selfish and genial boy and a whining and genial man, who apart are nothing but together are a vulcan of poetry.

And while Wayne Gunn translates for us rhymes that I truly find difficult to believe are been written more than 130 years ago (but it seems so, according to the detailed chapter where he explains how he has done the work), William Maltese tells us the life story of these two men, with a force and a writing style that make them alive again. Story and rhymes alternate themself in the book, and you can't say if it is the story which brings alive the rhymes or if they are the rhymes which give a sense to the story. During sex Arthur and Paul exchange poems as others exchange grunts and moans.

It's not a romance, all us know what the end of this real story is, and if you still believe it's a romantic story, the everyday life describes by William Maltese will remove you of any lingering dream. But even if there isn't romance, you will find a lot of love: even if Arthur says he loves only Paul's dick, and not the man, that he loves only his poetry, and not the coward man who seems not to be able to give up to his bourgeois life, even if Paul tries to set himself against the way of life Arthur wants to coax him, he only can follow this man everywhere he wants to bring him, until...

These two gifted authors combine their considerable talents for this incendiary retelling of the notorious love affair between the celebrated French poets, young Arthur Rimbaud - a "wild boy" from the Ardennes with a passion for living life at the brink and beyond - and Paul Verlaine, an older, closeted bisexual.

Gunn's translations of the often X rated poetry, many of them done in partnership with his longtime companion, the late Jacques Murat, are alone worth the price of admission, and Maltese disperses them throughout the book for maximum effectiveness in buttressing his story. The book's cover rightly warns that this is not for "the sexually faint of heart." This is the tale, after all, of a romance that scandalized 19th century France and fomented some of the bawdiest--and, yes, most beautiful - gay-themed verses ever penned.

The novel's sexual content, much of it frankly scatological, is unrelenting and ultimately so stupefying as to altogether lose its eroticism, but Maltese makes skillful, even subtle use of it to limn his characters and further the story.

The book would no doubt have benefited from the inclusion of even a single sympathetic character or, more importantly, the discovery of any redeeming qualities that might have humanized the two lead characters, without which they sometimes veer dangerously close to caricatures. One puts the book aside when finished with no feeling of satisfaction but rather with a sense of having wallowed in the excrement of which they are so fond.

This was almost certainly not intended, however, to be a pretty nor a cheerful story. Genius and insanity go hand in hand, as the old cliché has it, and what these two writers have done, and done brilliantly, is to offer compelling glimpses into the tortured psyches of two poetic geniuses who, if not quite insane, certainly dwelt on the far reaches of anything that could be considered "normalcy."

It is generally thought a wise thing to separate the art from the artist. The authors here have suggested that this is not always possible--nor even always wise.

The ultimate result is a masterpiece of its kind, an instant classic of literary erotica, and, if not for the faint of heart, certainly a must-have for every serious collector of the genre.

Maltese, William and Gunn, Wayne. "Ardennian Boy", MLR Press, 2007.

Romantic Erotica

Amos Lassen

I have always been drawn to historical fiction mainly because you not only get a good read but you learn a little something. This is essentially true in Maltese and Gunn's "Ardennian Boy" which is based on the lives and loves of French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. You not only get historical fiction but classy, raw erotica (and Maltese is well known for this).
We first meet Rimbaud as a teenager from the French provinces. He is wild and will do anything and he believes that the more excesses that he experiences, the better poet he will become. He experiences much as a young man and lives an extremely decadent life.
Verlaine is in a marriage which seems to hold him a prisoner. His wife nags him and he must suppress any homosexual feelings that he has. However, when the two men meet, sparks fly and the two men begin a torrid love affair, one that Verlaine is totally unprepared for. Before Rimbaud, Verlaine's poetry was merely passable but the passion that is awakened in him by the younger man from Ardennes, pushes him to the position of a great French poet. Verlaine ultimately ignores the societal conventions of the time and the two men live on the fringes of French culture. Ultimately the two poets join others such as Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde as "literary pioneers in the struggle for gay rights in the 19th century.
When the two men met, Rimbaud was only 16 years old and Verlaine was ten years his senior. "Ardennian Boy" tells us that Rimbaud was not physically attracted to Verlaine but admired his mind. Rimbaud manages to "drag" Verlaine out of his mundane life style and brings him into a self-destructive relationship and this self-destruction seems to be the reason that the two men rose to the heights of poetic expression. I think it is important to understand that the book does not deal with modern times but actually takes place some 130 years ago. Maltese tells the story with vivacity wile Gunn is responsible for the translation of the poetry. The two authors alternate poetry and story and it works beautifully. Both the poetry and the storyline are important to understanding the "love" that the poets shared. I particularly love the way that the poets exchange their poetry while they are involved in sexual activity. There is not a lot of romance here but there is great sex.
The two authors tell a story that is blatantly erotic. The relationship between the two Frenchmen scandalized French society and also brought us some of the most beautiful and bawdy gay poetry ever written. Maltese gives us hot sex all through the book and he does so in a sublime manner. The sex is hot but it also beautifully written. The story is not one that I would call "pretty" but it is compelling and a look at two of France's greatest poets in a new light is a rewarding experience. The characters are geniuses who need to the sex to set off the fuse of their minds.
Granted the book falls

I enjoyed this book as much for the rich poetry as for the authentic glimpse it gives of the poets who believed in art for art's sake. This bilingual (French and English) book will deeply interest readers who love the work of the early Symbolists, the Decadents and the Parnassiens. If French Impressionism with its sensuous tapestry of images does not tempt you, there are other reasons to dip into this book. There is historical background to the words introducing Verlaine's friends (the so called `cursed poets' whom he promoted via this book). The book made me look up more on each poet (some of them like Rimbaud and Mallarme are famous; the others did not achieve much fame). Reading the book one gets hints of the inter-relationships (sometimes scandalous liaisons) between them. I suggest read the book first and then follow its clues further for the full human interest.
What do poets pick up from their own verse to showcase their best talent to other poets? This is a book truly for, by and of poets. For non-poets like me, this book reveals the need of the poets to defend their work and their reputation. We read of Verlaine's dissatisfaction of being labeled `decadent'. We see the skilful use of words when he wants to highlight a poet's virtues. He does so subtly for greater effect. We enjoy the elaborate eulogies, which are rich in adjectives, too.
If you love French Impressionism- you will enjoy each page. If you do not know French- this is the chance to get as close as possible in English to the real thing. If you do know French- you will enjoy the chance to compare the words and images in the two languages.
The book is ideally sized (it fits the palm). I recommend the book as a romantic gift as well as one for serious literary pursuits.

Without seeing the actual film, I was stunned by the screenplay. Not only are the words captivating and true to poets Rimbaud and Verlaine but the actual film directions are provocative and insightful. The entire piece is beautifully complex. "The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable" I'll be honest, I find it a damn shame to have DiCaprio playing the role only because I feel that the movie will be taken less seriously and Rimbaud will forever be a teen dream in the minds of many.

Anyone who idolizes Dicaprio should not be allowed to read Rimbaud. In all actuallity, this book(like the movie) was uninformitive and dull. It focuses more on Verlaines psychology than Rimbauds--and as we all know, Verlaine was an ugly man. Im sick of hearing about this piece, it was lame. I only pray that all the teenie boppers of the world don't start reading Rimbaud since they love Dicaprio so much---it might actually give them a glimpse of what real life is like, and we wouldn't want to upset there little minds...now would we?

As a matter of fact I did not read this book, but I watch the movie and loved it. The only thing that drove me to watch the movie is only because Leo is my idol, BUT!--after the movie I was very curious about Arthur Rimbaud and I found some information about him and tried to read "A season in Hell", and I was totally FASCINATED by his works! He truly IS the defination of a genius!!!!!!! I love his writing style, his thoughts, and his intelligence.......At 18 he wrote his last piece of work, "A Season in Hell", and I think it's the BEST one of all...It's perhaps the most rebelious, thought-provoking work I've ever read.

In my opinion and after reading reviews everybody misunderstood the film and what it really wanted to say.It was not about DiCaprio and his beautiful face,nor about pure art but 2 poets who were nothing but "true messangers".If you remember Rimbaud did not care about sharing his poetry,took it seriously though but just as long as his heart felt it was necessery.This film that I have seen was magnificent.A total love story between 2 people who lived in an era that did not accept same sex relationships,nor desertion and again 2 people who did not care about the rest of the world.Rimbaud was born a genius knowing what he wanted.I loved the way DiCaprio inpersonated him.It took me back right in the 18th.century.Also I consider it an excellent piece of work.Never thought that anyone would complain about it.Especially because we can't ask them how it all happned.:-))))

What a pretentious piece of garbage, both the screenplay and the movie itself. One is better served by reading Rimbaud's poems themselves. If you've never read Rimbaud, please do yourself a favor and stay away from the movie and screenplay. Stick with the poems.

I was very pleased to find in this book not just a reliable short introduction to Rimbaud's life and work but also some unknown (to me) details about the lives and works of Rimbaud's circle, as well as the writer's effect on later generations -- for a short, inexpensive book on the subject this is peerless.

I wanted to like this book, dealing as it does with a poet who more than anyone else discovered the boundaries of language, and then redefined it in a way which has since been much imitated, but never equaled. This book is beautifully produced and written in a chatty and engaging, if a little defensive, style - Benjamin Ivry does seem too intent at times at forcing Rimbaud into the role of militant gay icon when this was only one aspect of his life - and the photos and bibliography are excellent.

However, there are several unforgivable errors, ranging from the glaring (Rimbaud had his right leg amputated, not the left) to the merely annoying (quotes from a couple of poems are misattributed). Also, Ivry seems at times so carried away with his subject that he relies too much on supposition to prove a point: for example, there is absolutely no evidence that Verlaine commissioned Rosman's famous painting of a bed-ridden, gunshot-wounded Rimbaud.

What I did like about this book was the final chapter, a fascinating collection of quotes from gay artists, poets, writers and film-makers through the years, proving that, as Eugene Borza once said about Alexander the Great, there are as many Rimbauds as there are those who profess a serious interest in him.

I wanted to like this book, dealing as it does with a poet who more than anyone else discovered the boundaries of language, and then redefined it in a way which has since been much imitated, but never equaled. This book is beautifully produced and written in a chatty and engaging, if a little defensive, style - Benjamin Ivry does seem too intent at times at forcing Rimbaud into the role of militant gay icon when this was only one aspect of his life - and the photos and bibliography are excellent.

However, there are several unforgivable errors, ranging from the glaring (Rimbaud had his right leg amputated, not the left) to the merely annoying (quotes from a couple of poems are misattributed). Also, Ivry seems at times so carried away with his subject that he relies too much on supposition to prove a point: for example, there is absolutely no evidence that Verlaine commissioned Rosman's famous painting of a bed-ridden, gunshot-wounded Rimbaud.

What I did like about this book was the final chapter, a fascinating collection of quotes from gay artists, poets, writers and film-makers through the years, proving that, as Eugene Borza once said about Alexander the Great, there are as many Rimbauds as there are those who profess a serious interest in him.

Benjamin Ivry's short, but informative tome is a refreshing outline on one of France's most controversial poets. Rimbaud (1854-1891) was a L'enfant terrible, writing all his major works before the age of 20! In Ivry's illuminating biography, the reader gets to understand the motivating factors behind his wrenching verse. Unlike many Rimbaud books, Ivry's book delves into the torrid, temultuous affair the young poet had with the older poet, Paul Verlaine. Their stormy affair is one of the most renowned in gay literary history. Ivry pulls no punches in his description of their near fatal relationship and through this understanding, we see where the pain and the power of his verse emanated from. He offers a fount of information on this rarely understood young artist and the demimonde of French literary society at the turn of the century. He also deconstructs many of Rimbaud's most infamous poems, so that even the novice can understand the power of his words. Stocked with rare photos and art, this wonderful little book also has an extensive bibliography!

In the early 1950s, Rene Etiemble published a doctoral dissertation of monumental proportions, "Le Mythe de Rimbaud", which enumerated the numerous, variegated and, ultimately, misleading and false mythologies which had been propogated about Rimbaud in the decades following his death in 1891. Etiemble devoted more than twenty years to researching and refuting these myths, including the myths of Rimbaud the seer, the Catholic, the Communard, the homosexual, the scoundrel, and the martyr. As Enid Starkie suggested in her definitive biography, Etiemble's work had a salutary effect on modern approaches to Rimbaud by showing that "no single one of these descriptions accurately fits him." The result, among other things, was to shift the focus of Rimbaud studies from hagiography, on the one hand, and demonization, on the other, to an exploration of Rimbaud's revolutionary poetic language and expression.

More than fifty years after Etiemble's watershed dissertation, Benjamin Ivry has written "Arthur Rimbaud", a brief, fascinating, but ultimately somewhat disingenuous biographical gloss on Rimbaud's life. Ivry's book is the first in a series of books to be published by Absolute Press, books intended "to explore and portray the various and often unexpected ways in which homosexuality has informed the life and creative work of the influential gay and lesbian artists, writers, singers, dancers, composers, and actors of our time." It is, in other words, a book which has an agenda--an agenda which once again seeks to fit the enigmatic nature of Rimbaud's biography into a mythology, this time a mythology of Rimbaud as a founding saint of modern gay culture. Thus, Rimbaud's brilliant, complex and poetically difficult masterpieces, "Une Saison en Enfer" and "Illuminations", works which are laden with symbol and mystery, with a radically innovative poetic vitality, are reduced by Ivry to the product of Rimbaud's erstwhile homoerotic relationship with Paul Verlaine. Every aspect of Rimbaud's brief life as a poet, in Ivry's depiction, is driven by Rimbaud's "gayness", by his love for Verlaine, by his presumed disinterest in women. Never mind other aspects of Rimbaud's biography--his severe mother, his absent father, his religious upbringing, his revolutionary poetic work itself! Moreover, while the book contains a useful bibliography, it is devoid of footnotes, so it is impossible to ascertain the veracity of the speculations which permeate Ivry's text.

Having said all of this, I also must say that Ivry is an outstanding writer--his prose sparkles--and this little book is definitely worth reading if you have an interest in Rimbaud because it provides fascinating details on Rimbaud's relationship with Verlaine and others. In particular, the book extensively discusses the gay aspects of Rimbaud's life and poetry and Rimbaud's influence on subsequent writers from Cocteau to Kerouac to Jim Morrison. These are aspects of Rimbaud's life which are not explored very closely by Starkie's definitive biography and, if you read Ivry's book with some degree of skepticism, it provides a fascinating and provocative complement to the standard treatment of Rimbaud's life

I was named after Paul Verlaine so I of course love the book! I recommend it to anyone!

The reader below from Puero Rico could simply not be more wrong--no less a poet than Seamus Heaney has praised quite highly the work of Norman Shapiro, who is universally recognized as one of our premiere translators of French literature, easily on a level with Richard Howard and Richard Wilbur and W.S. Merwin. Mr. Shapiro has won a National Book Award for his work, and his four volumes (thus far) of La Fontaine are superb, dazzling!

So, ignore the ill-informed reviewer below and proceed with confidence! And check out "Fifty Fables," "Fifty More Fables," "Once Again, La Fontaine," and "La Fontaine's Bawdy"--all translated by Shapiro--a heroic endeavor, and as good as French literature gets in English!!!

The downside to translation is that we always loose, in some amount, something of what the author(poet)is expressing. The translator did not try to maintain Velaine's essence...he tried to create a whole new poem from what he understood Verlaine is expressing.

When translating poetry it is important to convey the exact feeling that one recieves from reading the document in its native language. That's why this book is so great, it tackles the task of translation and pulls it off beautifully. If you are a fan of french poetry then this is just the book for you!

A literal translation of Verlaine from the French would be leaden. (But if you want one that approaches just that, see the Oxford Classics version .) All the same, Shapiro strays too far for me from what Verlaine wrote. These translations are often gorgeous, and sometimes a tad florid. I would have liked to see Shapiro translate more closely to the orginal while maintaining the grace he attempts, and even frequently reaches, here. (Is this possible in translations?) However beautiful, this is not Verlaine.

The notes at book's end , expaining some of the translator's decitions and choices, are quite interesting and worth reading, even though I don't always agree with his approach. ...

"Baudelaire Rimbaud Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems" carries with it a strong selection of each poet's better known poems. Collecting these three, specifically, is in tune with their own sense of language and image.

The translations work splendidly for all three poets, as executed by several different translators. As such, the pieces chosen are encumbered or glorified by their own merit, and not of the hurdles and interpretative biases of language.

I first learned of Arthur Rimbaud, ironically, from my religion teacher at a Catholic high school. As the first French poet I was introduced I felt, then, obligated to like his work. However, now, in seeing him compared to the much greater Baudelaire, Rimbaud comes across self-indulgent and meaningless. I gain no pleasure from reading his work, and consider, of these three, him to be far overrated.

Paul Verlaine, for me, is somewhere in-between. His romance with Rimbaud (scandalous then, as he dumped his infant daughter and young wife for Rimbaud) luckily did not reduce his poetry to wandering colors and images. Occasionally, he is even cliche:

Oh, heavy, heavy my despair
Because, because of One so fair.
(from Verlaine's "Oh, Heavy, Heavy")

And occasionally brilliant:

Hills and fences hurry by
Blent in greenish-rosy flight,
And the yellow carriage-light
Blurs all to the half-shut eye
(from Verlaine's "Brussels")

Baudelaire's prose poem selections are too many here. They do not meet up in quality with his more tightly articulated poetry. The section, "Flowers of Evil," though, is a masterful, though bitter, book within a book.

Throughout "Flowers," Baudelaire defies God, but never denies his existence or power, as seen here in "St Peter's Denial,"

What has God done with all this flood of sacrifices?
Which rises to his Seraphim divine?
As a tyrant intoxicated with his wine
His fearful sleep is haunted by his vices.

I fully recommend "Baudelaire Rimbaud Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems." While I cannot so I am an exuberant fan of any of them, their influence on poets I completely embrace I acknowledge, and am pleased to have become better aware of them.

Anthony Trendl
HungarianBookstore.com

I think I have a better instinctual understand of these "decadents" who were the clear marking of the break between the old aesthetic rationality and the surrealism, symbolism, etc. that followed--those who actually blend the periods, smudge and blur the two worldviews, like Poe and Blake and, here, Baudelaire do. I like Baudelaire's phantasmagoria, his exoticism put in service of delivering a concrete insight. And I especially like it when the poetic histrionics of "Flowers of Evil" give way to the fascinating prose poems--like "The Confiteor of the Artist" or the marvellous war-against-poetry volley "The Courteous Marksman." Other fine ones (reminding me also of Lovecraft)--"The Evil Glazier," "At One O'Clock in the Morning," "Solitude." There's misanthropy, insight and occult broodishness here of the most useful sort.

Rimbaud and Verlaine didn't grip me as strongly--I appreciate that they stretched artistic boundaries, but what they have done intrinsically I don't find as rich. Rimbaud's religious ravings and visions I find intelligent but obscurant (like Wallace Stevens)--he's doing some constructive deconstruction, but it's hardly readable (though I do like the more coherent symbolism of the famed "Drunken Boat"). And Verlaine, while he has the occasional dead-on whimsical insight, is a bit too florid in verbiage, classical in form, and even conventional for me. With these latter two poets, I think my concern with translated poetry also must come in at full force--this sort of wordplay and deliberate suggestiveness must be highly dependent on the nuance of the original words, and must therefore lose something considerable in English.--J.Ruch

Verlaine must be a big bad dog to translate. I'm going on faith here and assuming that the occassionally dippy rhyme scheme that pops up in some of the poems is a tragic result of the aforementioned difficulty. For the most part the work is lovely. (I mean what would you expect from possibly the greatest French poet ever?) Dark and troubled, you get a vauge sense of ominous hulking black shapes around you, with the occassional glorious bright spotof hope, the sensation of reading the work mirrors the nocturnal landscape in which many of the poems are set. It's sort of an interesting collection. It skips over several of Verlaine's better known works choosing, rather, to give sort of a life overview in 61 pages. The translator, along with going on and on about indeed how hard it is to translate Verlaine also talks a bit about his intentions in the selection. And, really, if you have some small knowledge of Verlaine's life, it does make the book more interesting. You can see the philosophical progression of Verlaine's life and follow the subtle sine waves of his unique despair. Claire de Lune, Grotesques, and Parables are some of my personal favs.