Paul Verlaine

Excerpt from Paul Verlaine
It is not an easy tiling to write a life of Paul Verlaine. It is not easy; and it is not quite necessary. The material is there, of course; vivid and, if you like it, sensational. The collected works are there; seven volumes of heterogeneous prose and poetry. There are the official biographies, friendly, discreet, and on the whole accurate; there are memoirs galore, kind or unkind references scattered throughout the writings of the period, and behind it all a great fund of floating memories both in France and England. But the subject has been worn threadbare. For those who care for French literature the facts of Verlaine's life are abundantly familiar. For those who do not care, the story may appear merely unpleasant or even deleterious. Although there exists no Anglo-Saxon monograph on the life and works of Paul Verlaine, it is questionable therefore whether to put down in English what has been done so adequately by Lepelletier and Delahaye may not, after all, be a gratuitous undertaking.
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