Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was a French poet and prominent member of two late-19th-century literary movements: the Symbolists, which sought to express transcendent truths through suggestive diction, ...

Obsessing as so many are on the small niceties of American politics—i.e., the final confrontation between the forces of light and darkness on which all of humanity’s future depends—let us spare a ...

The discovery of a rare picture of the tragic, handsome poet, made by his lover Paul Verlaine, set off a bidding war in Paris. By Marisa Meltzer The story sounds like the plot of a novel. It all ...

The story, of course, is the stuff of legend: after a painful affair with the older, married poet Paul Verlaine, Rimbaud (1854–1891) put poetry behind him at age 21 and became a commercial traveler in ...

A petition seeks to honor them, but critics ask if it’s about poetry or sexuality, and whether such rebels would be out of place in an august shrine to national heroes. By Antonella Francini PARIS — ...

As Dorothy Parker once said, Verlaine was always chasing Rimbauds, although in Christopher Hampton’s enduringly fascinating 1968 play, the impetus is very much the other way round. The 16-year-old boy ...

Forecast: Rimbaud purists will remain with Fowlie, who offers a selection of letters and French versions of the poems (which the Bernard has but Schmidt lacks). For those in search of a "complete" ...

ARTHUR RIMBAUD (491 pp.)—Enid Sfarkie—New Directions ($10). Seventy-one years ago, a poet was dying of gangrene in a Marseille hospital: one of his legs was amputated, the other might have to go.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD—Enid Starkie—Norton ($3.75). Between 15 and 19, Arthur Rimbaud wrote poetry whose slashing irony and pure music still influence poets. At 19 he wrote Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in ...

VERLAINE: FOOL OF GOD (394 pp.)—Lawrence and Elisabefh Hanson—Random House ($5). Poet Paul Verlaine was the youngest of four children—the three others, stillborn, were kept pickled in bottles by their ...