The leading poet of the Symbolist Movement, Paul Marie Verlaine was born in Metz, north-eastern France on 30 March, 1844. His father was an authoritarian army officer, conventional in his way, and of strong conservative opinions. His son could not have been more different. When he was aged just 5, Verlaine’s family moved to Paris. It was to be city far more to his liking. Always somewhat of a dreamer, if not a fantasist, the young Verlaine took to writing poetry at an early age. He was educated at the Lycee Imperial Bonaparte, a rigidly bourgeois establishment, but despite the orthodoxy of his education, and the promptings of his father to follow in his footsteps, he was determined to go his own way. Even so, he took the conventional route into employment taking a role in the Civil Service.

He published his first poem in 1863, and was soon mixing in more bohemian circles with other writers and artists. In 1866, he published his first book of verse, Poemes Saturniens. It was not universally well-received but few now doubted that he was a poet of originality and no little talent. He was by now a regular frequenter of the bars and cafes of Paris, and drink was beginning to take an early hold. Encouraged to do so by his friends he now resigned his post in the Civil Service to devote himself full-time to his poetry. But there was no money in poetry and he was soon living a hand-to-mouth existence. Despite frequent pleas to his father for money he received none. The old man was not willing to fund his sons drinking and indolent lifestyle.

Verlaine’s choice of liquor was absinthe, an aniseed flavoured spirit known in France as le fee verte (the green fairy). It was popular amongst the artists of bohemian Paris and was frowned upon by the majority as conservative France as the epitome of decadence. It was widely believed to be a psychotic, to induce brain-rot, and was by 1915 banned throughout most of Europe. But then, Verlaine believed that genius was a curse and that the only way to redemption was through self-destruction.

Despite his drinking and increasingly irrational behaviour, Verlaine’s reputation as one of the most original and influential poets of his day continued to grow. He was strongly associated with the Symbolist Movement. The Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths but that these could only be described indirectly; snow for purity, black for death, angels for hope. Constant leitmotifs of existence.