Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

The first world problems of Paul Verlaine (1844-96)

Like many misunderstood teenagers, I demonstrated my rejection of conformity by drawing in my high school agendas. They were mostly filled with song lyrics composed by the poets of our time.

For example:

Opposite the profound stylings of Kelis is the first stanza of a poem from a different type of provocative artist:

We studied lots of poetry in french class, and Clair de lune by poète maudit Paul Verlaine was always my favorite. It goes like this:

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune
Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,
Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Which loosely translates to:

She’s so lucky, she’s a star but she cry cry cries in her lonely heart thinking, if there’s nothing missing in my life then why do these tears come at night? 

Ok fine the real translation is here. But the poem is very much about privileged, fancy, well-dressed people at a lavish party who cry in the moonlight because they’re super sad despite their unlimited wealth and popularity.

It’s tragedy, when you lose control when you got no soul. -The Bee Gees, predicting Britney’s downfall

AKA First world problems, and nobody knows first world problems like Britney.

Except Paul Verlaine. Delving into his life is like reading a 19th century tabloid with the credibility of a Vanity Fair exposé. Poets and artists in general in Montmartre at the time were known for getting super fucked up on the daily, but Verlaine is largely considered emblematic of this way of life for every possible reason from alcoholism to bisexuality.

I present to you the highly abridged version of the tragic life of Paul Verlaine, Prince des Poètes:

• Spoiled mama’s boy upper-middle class only child
• Family adopts his orphaned cousin, they bone (in his defence, it seems to be a thing with smart people).
• Shipped off to boarding school for being an incestuous brat
• There he reads and is thoroughly inspired by Charles Baudelaire and copies the words of his poems into his agenda amidst doodles, no wait… what? Moving on.
• Death of his cousin provokes his first episode of boozy violence and first attempted matricide (to be continued).
• Drops out of Law school because he prefers hanging out in coffee shops with the other members of his notorious literary gang the Vilains Bonshommes

Bad boys for life

• Still living with his parents, worried daddy gets him a cushy public service job. He ends up ditching it to get more drunk and write more poetry.
• After dad dies he lives with mom, who thoroughly supported him emotionally and financially until his death. He, in return, tried to kill her at least three times.
• He also tried to kill his wife, she divorced his ass.
• And his 16 year old lover, poetic prodigy Arthur Rimbaud (who then moved to Africa and never wrote poetry again).
• Spends 2 years in jail for pederasty. Renews with catholicism. Claims to have turned over a new leaf.
• Doesn’t last, hooks up with one of his students, Lucien Létinois, they run away together.
• Lucien dies of typhoid fever.
• A broken man, he returns to Paris to live with his mom.
• Although recognized and generally acclaimed as a living master of poetry (he was literally crowned the Prince of Poets), he can only manage to spend the last dozen years of his life getting hammered and trying and kill his mom. He eventually dies of syphilis, diabetes and severe ulcers at the age of 51.

In sum, Verlaine had everything he could possibly need to lead a comfortable existence: loving well-providing parents, good education, easy well paying job, beautiful supportive wife, a son. And he pissed on it all because he wasn’t happy, he didn’t feel alive, he didn’t believe in his happiness. That right there is pretty much the definition of first world problems. And he made his entourage suffer for it. Everyone he ever loved either died tragically, had to deal with his periodical murder attempts or moved far far away. He had the equivalent of the Midas touch for ruining peoples lives.

It can be argued that it was THIS, above all, that made him such a revolutionary poet. Despite having all the necessary elements to have a well-to-do life he created his own tragedies only to draw inspiration from them. Which is not all that surprising, there may be nothing more inspiring to an artist but the tortured decadence of their own existence (the 27 club is probably example enough of this). I guess what I’m trying to point out is that first world problems have been the source of lots of groundbreaking, game-changing art. Or that none of the supposedly “shocking” things artists do today come anywhere close to the lack of fucks given by the artists of Montmartre, in particular Paul Verlaine.