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Verlaine ranks alongside Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud as one of the most influential poets of late nineteenth-century France. Remarkable not only for his exquisitely crafted verse, Verlaine is also the poet of strong emotions and appetites, with an unrivalled gift for the sheer music of poetry, and an inventive approach to its technique.This bilingual edition provides the most comprehensive selection of his poetry yet, offering some 170 poems in lively and fresh translations. It also offers a lucid introduction which illuminates Verlaine's poetic form within the context of French Impressionism and the poetry of sensation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Selected Poems (Verlaine), Oxford
This book is a treasure for for me, in itself and as aid in understanding French.Reading slowly, with dictionary in hand, I sometimes am about overcome with pleasure of actually reading French poetry.And Verlaine's poems are often quite special.I love the book and take it with me.

Verlaine -- an excellent poet
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.

Of course, time and reflection will also cast doubt on the very idea of Verlaine as "conventional," running off to London with a gorgeous young man as he did. And Rimbaud certainly did not stick around his country of birth to fight for his ideas, his poetry, or anything.

Les sanglots longs
des violons
de l'automne
blessent mon coeur
d'une langueur
monotone.

Tout suffocant
et blême, quand
sonne l'heure.
je me souviens
des jours anciens,
et je pleure...

Et je m'en vais
au vent mauvais
qui m'emporte
de çà, de là,
pareil à la
feuille morte...

(That's not Rimbaud!)

Brilliant, but not always
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.

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

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Customer Reviews (5)

Very good
Very good book. I encourage reading it becuase it is an excursion from today's busy life.

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

Too Much Poetic License
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. ...

Shapiro is the best!
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!!!

Great Poet, Less Than Great Translator.
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. ... Read more

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:ICOLLOQUE SENTIMENTALN the deserted park, silent and vast,Erewhile two shadowy glimmering figures passed.Their lips were colorless, and dead their eyes; Their words were scarce more audible than sighs. In the deserted park, silent and vast, Two spectres conjured up the buried past. " Our ancient ecstasy, do you recall ? "" Why, pray, should I remember it at all ?"" Does still your heart at mention of me glow ? Do still you see my jsoul in slumber ? " " No! "" Ah, blessed, blissful days when our lips met! You loved me so ! " " Quite likely, — I forget."" How sweet was hope, the sky how blue and fair! " " The sky grew black, the hope became despair."Thus walked they 'mid the frozen weeds, these dead, And Night alone o'erheard the things they said. La Bonne ChansonSINCE shade relents, since 't is indeed the day, Since hope I long had deemed forever flown, Wings back to me that call on her and pray, Since so much joy consents to be my own, — The dark designs all I relinquish here, And all the evil dreams. Ah, done am I Above all with the narrowed lips, the sneer,The heartless wit that laughed where one should sigh.Away, clenched fist and bosom's angry swell, That knave and fool at every turn abound. Away, hard unforgivingness ! Farewell, Oblivion in a hated brewage found! For I mean, now a Being of the Morn Has shed across my night excelling .rays Of love at once immortal and newborn,—By favor of her smile, her glance, her grace, —Since Shade RelentsI mean by you upheld, O gentle hand,Wherein mine trembles,—led, sweet eyes,by you, To walk straight, lie the path o'er mossy landOr barren waste that rocks and pebbles strew.Yes, calm I mean to walk through life, and straight,Padent ... ... Read more

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Here, for the first time, the work of three of Frances greatest poets has been published in a single volume: the sensual and passionate glow of Charles Baudelaire, the desperate intensity and challenge of Arthur Rimbaud, and the absinthe-tinted symbolist songs of Paul Verlaine.

To bring the essence of these three giants of modern poetry to the American public, Joseph M. Bernstein, a noted interpreter and translator of French literature, has selected the most representative of their writings and presented them along with a biographical and critical introduction.

"Not to know these three poets", he points out, "is to deprive oneself of a pleasure as rare as it is indispensable to any real understanding of the aims and direction of modern literature.

The volume includes Arthur Symons' unabridged translation of Flowers of Evil and the Prose Poems of Baudelaire; Louise Varese's translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell and Prose Poems from "Illuminations"; J. Norman Cameron's translation of the verse from the Illuminations; and a representative selection from Verlaine's verse translated by Gertrude Hall and Arthur Symons. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Rather spotty
I am disappointed to find that the selections in this book are rather spotty.A number of major poems are left out, while some less good ones are included.Also,I dislike the concept of trying to duplicate the French meter in English.The translator has to twist and torture the author's text to the point that the English "equivalent" is often far removed from the original French.In my view it is best to avoid trying to convey rhyme and rhythm and sounds in English and stick to the the words, the concepts and connotations of the French text. I am very familiar with a number of the poems listed, but on first reading these English versions I just couldn't recognize the original at all.

Symbolist Poets Highlighted in Tight Volume
"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

poets of evil
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. thatfollowed--those who actually blend the periods, smudge and blur the twoworldviews, like Poe and Blake and, here, Baudelaire do. I likeBaudelaire's phantasmagoria, his exoticism put in service of delivering aconcrete 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 marvellouswar-against-poetry volley "The Courteous Marksman." Other fineones (reminding me also of Lovecraft)--"The Evil Glazier,""At One O'Clock in the Morning," "Solitude." There'smisanthropy, insight and occult broodishness here of the most useful sort.

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

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tr Alistair Elliot, bilingual French/English ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1921.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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This Book Is In French. ... Read more