Poèmes saturniens (review)

This is a learned and often useful édition critique of a volume which contains many of Verlaine’s most remarkable poems, of which he wrote: ‘J’ai débutéen 1867 [sic] par les Poèmes saturniens, chose jeune et forcément empreinte d’imitations à droite et à gauche’. These are pursued most interestingly when they involve authors who were read much more in Verlaine’s time than they are now: Glatigny, Léon Dierx, and Catulle Mendès, for example. The edition offers both detailed information concerning the background of complex poems such as ‘Walpurgisnacht classique’ or ‘La Mort de Philippe II’, as well as a survey of critics’ readings of individual poems. By their diversity they illustrate Verlaine’s valuable ambiguity. Murphy’s presence is felt most strongly in the three sections in which he examines central aspects of Verlaine’s work: ‘Verlaine parnassien’, ‘Verlaine apolitique?’ and ‘Verlaine formiste’. The Parnassian movement, with its ideal of ‘perfection formelle’ and its cult of impassibility, is seen not to engage him deeply. Unlike Parnassian verse, his poems displayed an ‘extrême perméabilité’, a quality which, surprisingly, seems not to have been noticed at the time. Baudelaire was a major influence, Hugo a supporter, and Banville a mentor who was significant also because he offered the warning that to be a ‘jongleur’ was not enough. Under the title ‘Verlaine formiste’ interesting technical points emerge; novel effects of versification, including the unusual use of the short line for serious poems. Verlaine claims in the letter of 1890 which is placed in the appendix, to have ‘assez briséle vers en déplaçant la césure le plus possible’. But he had, in Murphy’s view, also introduced rhythmical changes which created complex effects of simultaneity: ‘Cette discordance est toutefois nécessaire pour obtenir l’effet voulu par Verlaine puisqu’il ne s’agit pas de substituer l’effet 4–4–4 au 6–6 orthodoxe, mais de proposer à la fois un trimètre et un 6–6 hétérodoxe’ (Murphy’s emphasis). Metaphorically, what was happening is that ‘l’ouragan rythmique’ was sweeping through ‘les ruines de la métrique classique’. Politically, while he admits that Verlaine’s stance remained ‘plus ou moins clandestine’, Murphy argues that the undermining of the classical alexandrine can be read as an attack on the political order. A probably unavoidable difficulty in the volume is the publication on consecutive pages of versions of a poem with small but significant differences. Banville is mysteriously absent from the bibliography, while figuring frequently in the text. A pleasure are the two appendices—the first, of splendidly varied contemporary reactions to the volume: the second of three pieces by Verlaine; on Baudelaire, on Barbey d’Aurevilly, and, the last, the poet’s mature reflections on this volume.