Paul Verlaine (Metz,1844-Paris,1896)

Great lyrical poet of France Paul Verlaine was born on March 30, 1844, in city Metz.

He has left bright record of what he felt and seen, on spirit and expression similar with later creativity of Blok, Chechov and other newest writers, and was also connected by strings of deep relationship with young impressionistic artists of France, Scandinavian countries and Russia.

The artists of this type were surrounded by the new urban reality, other, than Pushkin and Stendhal. Streets just have been covered by asphalt and have been illuminated by gas. Factories grew, as mushrooms, the daily newspapers spread. Extreme growing of railways, becoming a part of existence of each child, in different dependence on that, whether his childhood flew by in a train by night city or the night trains flied by his poor childhood.

On this, in a new fashion covered street, shadows were different from what they were in Balzac's times, people passed by in a new fashion, and it should be drawn in a new fashion, in the consent with it's nature. However a main novelty of a street were not lanterns and telegraphic wires, but whirlwind of egoism, which flew by with sharpness of an autumn wind and, like fallen leaves from parkways, brought to sidewalks poverty, prostitution and other "charms" of this time. This whirlwind rushed in eyes of each man and it was the center of a picture. It's breath has formed a point of view of the new artists.

They wrote in points and half-tones, not because thay wanted so and that they were symbolists. The reality itself was a symbolist, it was in transitions and meant more than made, and served more as a sign of something then satisfied. Everything was displaced and has got mixed up, old and new, church, country, city and nation.

He was the son of a colonel, and when a boy was sent from a province to Paris in a closed educational institution. He married in 1870. Here the Destiny has sent him the malicious genius, that monster of talent, which was a brawler, original and poet — teenager Artur Rimbaud.

He has dug out this "beginner" somewhere and has invited him in Paris.The further existence of Verlain is filled with tears of his wife and child. Verlaine and Rimbaud wandered along large roads of France and Belgium, lived in London. Once in Bruxelles after large quarrel Verlaine has run out, following Rimbaud, who wanted to go away from him, two times has shot him, has wounded him, was arrested and is sentenced by court to the biennial conclusion in prison. After it Rimbaud has set off to Africa.