The first complete English edition of Verlaine's important first book of poems Poems Under Saturn is the first complete English translation of the collection that announced Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) as a poet of promise and originality, one who would come to be regarded as one of the greatest of nineteenth-century writers. This new translation, by respected contemporary poet Karl Kirchwey, faithfully renders the collection's heady mix of classical learning and earthy sensuality in poems whose rhythm and rhyme represent one of the supreme accomplishments of French verse. Restoring frequently anthologized poems to the context in which they originally appeared, Poems Under Saturn testifies to the blazing talents for which Verlaine is celebrated. The poems display precocious virtuosity, mingling the attractions of the flesh with the longings of the spirit. Greek and Hindu myth give way to intimate erotic meditations and wickedly satirical society portraits, mythological landscapes alternate with gritty narratives of mid-nineteenth century Paris, visions of happiness yield to nightmarish glimpses of deep alienation, and real and imaginary characters—including Achilles, Valmiki, Charlemagne, and Spain's baleful King Philip II—all figure as the subject matter of a supremely ambitious young poet. Poems Under Saturn presents the extraordinary devotion and intense musicality of an artist for whom poetry remained the one true passion.

This wide selection of over seventy of Verlaine's poems has been chosen from his major collections of verse. Verlaine has been considered as a member of both the Symbolist and Decadent movements, and though he exhibits elements of both, his poetry is in truth unclassifiable. His content is always suggestive and lyrical rather than rhetorical or didactic, and the form is musical and often innovative. Much of the delicate and inimitable charm of Verlaine's art depends on setting, mood, nuance and veiled allusiveness. The nature of his poetry is to create an, often wistful and nostalgic, arena of light and shade, where the dreaming mind can invoke memory, the past, illusion and delusion, beauty and muted emotion. Nevertheless Verlaine's art is anything but febrile or simplistic. A fierce intelligence is at work behind the quiet and theatrical façade, and no poet has ever come closer to achieving the tender dreamlike state he succeeds in conveying. His melodious verse has often been set to music, notably by Debussy and Fauré.

An anthology of works by nineteenth-century French poet Paul Verlaine, presenting both the French texts and new translations and setting the poems in the context of Verlaine's troubled life and his literary development.

Songs without Words (Romances sans paroles) is the book in which, unabashedly, Paul Verlaine becomes himself and, in so doing, becomes the iconic poet of the French nineteenth century. A book of musical sequences, it seeks and finds exquisite purity of expression, best exemplified by Il pleure dans mon coeur, the most famous and most inimitable of all French lyric poems. And it is a book of intertwining narratives also, each of which entertains abasements and ecstasies, crises, crimes and expiations. These, in their separate ways, detail the shadowlands of artistic purity. Verlaine adores and defiles his child-bride, Mathilde. He takes to the road with Arthur Rimbaud, the love of his life, his muse, his captive and captor. Exhaustion is everywhere counterpoised with exaltation, squalor with splendor. And yet, in nearly every syllable, the dignity of Poetry and of human affections, proves inviolable.

`Verlaine, possessed by the madnesses of love, brimming over with desires and prayers, the rebel railing against the complacent platitudes of society, of love, of language'. Jean Rousselot Verlaine ranks alongside Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud as one of the most outstanding poets of late nineteenth-century France whose work is associated with the early Symbolists, the Decadents, and the Parnassiens. Remarkable not only for his delicacy and 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 and providing a lucid introduction which illuminates Verlaine's poetic form within the context of French Impressionism and the poetry of sensation. Parallel text ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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