Early life , today a museum dedicated to his life and œuvreVerlaine was born in 2 rue de la Haute-Pierre in
Metz,
Grand Est, to devout Catholics Nicolas-Auguste Verlaine (born in
Bertrix, Belgium) and Élisa-Stéphanie Dehée. The couple were married for thirteen years, and Dehée miscarried thrice beforehand. They baptised their son Paul Marie, with his middle name given out of gratitude to the Virgin
Mary for his survival. He was their only biological child; however, he had an elder stepsister (his orphaned cousin) who was adopted in 1836, Élisa. He was educated at the
Lycée Impérial Bonaparte (now the
Lycée Condorcet) in Paris and then took up a post in the
civil service. He spent part of his childhood in the Batignolles district of Paris, particularly at 10 rue Nollet, where he lived with his family. He began writing poetry at an early age, and was initially influenced by the
Parnassien movement and its leader,
Leconte de Lisle. Verlaine's first published poem was published in 1863 in
La Revue du progrès, a publication founded by poet
Louis-Xavier de Ricard. Verlaine was a frequenter of the salon of the Marquise de Ricard (Louis-Xavier de Ricard's mother) at 10 Boulevard des Batignolles and other social venues, where he rubbed shoulders with prominent artistic figures of the day:
Anatole France,
Emmanuel Chabrier, inventor-poet and humorist
Charles Cros, the cynical anti-bourgeois idealist
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam,
Théodore de Banville,
François Coppée,
Jose-Maria de Heredia, Leconte de Lisle,
Catulle Mendes and others. Verlaine's first published collection,
Poèmes saturniens (1866), though adversely commented upon by
Sainte-Beuve, established him as a poet of promise and originality.
Marriage and military service Mathilde Sophie Marie Mauté de Fleurville (17 April 1853 – 13 November 1914), who was born in
Nogent-le-Rotrou and died in
Nice, married Verlaine on 11 August 1870 at
Notre-Dame de Clignancourt. Mauté was a writer herself. At the proclamation of the
Third Republic in the same year, Verlaine joined the 160th battalion of the
Garde nationale, turning
Communard on 18 March 1871. Verlaine became head of the press bureau of the Central Committee of the
Paris Commune. Verlaine escaped the deadly street fighting known as the Bloody Week, or
Semaine sanglante, and went into hiding in the
Pas-de-Calais.
Relationships with Rimbaud and Létinois marking the building where Verlaine shot Rimbaud . Verlaine is on the far left and Rimbaud is at the second to the left. Verlaine returned to Paris in August 1871, and, in September, received the first letter from fellow poet
Arthur Rimbaud, who admired his poetry. Verlaine urged Rimbaud to come to Paris, and by 1872, he had lost interest in Mathilde, and effectively abandoned her and their son, preferring the company of Rimbaud, who was by now his lover. where he underwent a re-conversion to
Roman Catholicism, which again influenced his work and provoked Rimbaud's sharp criticism. The poems collected in
Romances sans paroles (1874) were written between 1872 and 1873, inspired by Verlaine's nostalgically coloured recollections of his life with Mathilde on the one hand and impressionistic sketches of his on-again off-again year-long escapade with Rimbaud on the other.
Romances sans paroles was published while Verlaine was imprisoned. Following his release from prison, Verlaine again travelled to England, where he worked for some years as a teacher, teaching French, Latin, Greek and drawing at
William Lovell's school in
Stickney in Lincolnshire. From there he went to teach in nearby
Boston, before moving to
Bournemouth. While in England, he produced another successful collection,
Sagesse. Verlaine returned to France in 1877 and, while teaching English at a school in
Rethel, fell in love with one of his pupils, Lucien Létinois, who inspired Verlaine to write further poems. Verlaine was devastated when Létinois died of
typhus in 1883.
Final years Verlaine's last years saw his descent into
drug addiction,
alcoholism, and poverty. He lived in slums and public hospitals, and spent his days drinking
absinthe in Paris cafés. However, the people's love for his art resurrected support and brought in an income for Verlaine: his early poetry was rediscovered, his lifestyle and strange behaviour in front of crowds attracted admiration, and in 1894 he was elected France's "Prince of Poets" by his peers. Verlaine's poetry was admired and recognized as ground-breaking, and served as a source of inspiration to composers.
Gabriel Fauré composed many
mélodies, such as the
song cycles
Cinq mélodies "de Venise" and
La bonne chanson, which were settings of Verlaine's poems.
Claude Debussy set to music
Clair de lune and six of the
Fêtes galantes poems, forming part of the
mélodie collection known as the
Recueil Vasnier; he also made another setting of
Clair de lune, and the poem inspired the third movement of his
Suite bergamasque.
Reynaldo Hahn set several of Verlaine's poems as did the Belgian-British composer
Poldowski (daughter of
Henryk Wieniawski), German composer
Anna Teichmüller, and French composer
Jeanne Rivet. Verlaine's drug dependence and alcoholism took a toll on his life. He died in Paris at the age of 51 on 8 January 1896; he was buried in the
Cimetière des Batignolles (he was first buried in the 20th division, but his grave was moved to the 11th division—on the roundabout, a much better location—when the
Boulevard Périphérique was built). A bust monument to Verlaine sculpted by
Rodo was erected in 1911. It sits in the
Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. ==Style==