[Read some selected poems.]

Paul Verlaine was born ten years earlier than Rimbaud, in 1844. The spoiled, only child of an army officer, Verlaine displayed early talent as well as audacity -- he sent his first poem, at age 14, to the master, Victor Hugo. Upon graduation from the Lycee Bonaparte in Paris, he worked by day as a clerk, and spent his nights writing, drinking and carousing in the literary cafes with his contemporaries, Stephane Mallarme, Villiers de Isle-Adam, and Anatole France. This group later became known as the Symbolists, a revolutionary group of artists who sought to convey meaning by suggestion rather than direct statement. The movement later included the playwright Maurice Maeterlinck and the composer Claude Debussy.

In 1869, at the age of 23, Verlaine fell in love with the 16-year-old Mathilde Maute, and they married the following year. In the beautiful and innocent Mathilde, Verlaine fervently hoped that he had found his muse, one that would save him from his increasing dissolution. Everything changed the next year, in 1871, when the wild young poet Rimbaud came to stay with them.

Born in 1854, in the northeastern town of Charleville, Rimbaud was the son of an army captain and a local farmer's daughter. When Rimbaud was six, his father left and he and his siblings were raised by their mother. Like Verlaine, Rimbaud was a remarkable student and showed a precocious talent, writing poetry as early as age eight. His first poem was published when he was just sixteen.

The outbreak of the Franco-German War in July 1870 ended his formal education. He ran away to Paris, where he was arrested for traveling without a ticket, and returned to Douai, where he joined the national guard. Two months later, he disappeared again, wandering throughout France and Belgium in the wake of the invading armies. During these weeks of freedom, hunger and danger, he wrote several poems that displayed his unique vision, one that celebrated the intense joys of life and liberty. He was soon brought back home by the police, escaped again to Paris, and finally returned on foot, in March of 1871, a completely changed character.

He repudiated much of his early work as false, refused to work and spent his days drinking in cafes, in determined revolt against every convention. He delved into the occult, magic and alchemy and formulated his new aesthetic doctrine, expressed in two letters which came to be known as "Lettres du voyant." In these letters, Rimbaud expressed his belief that a poet must "make himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses." By shedding the restraints of the "personal," the poet would become the instrument for the voice of the eternal.

In late August of 1871, at the advice of a friend, Rimbaud sent copies of some new poetry to Verlaine in Paris, who was taken aback by the brilliance of the work. Verlaine summoned him to Paris and thus began the tumultuous relationship depicted in TOTAL ECLIPSE.

From their first encounter, Verlaine was powerfully drawn to Rimbaud, whose arrogance and provocative behavior shocked Mathilde and her parents, with whom they lived, as well as the established literary circles of Paris. Pregnant with their first child, Mathilde was frightened by Rimbaud's growing power over her husband. The two men formed a passionate relationship that was often fueled by absinthe and hashish and characterized by love and cruelty, inspiration and antagonism, separations and reconciliations.

Rimbaud, who was not above flirting with Mathilde as well as Verlaine, encouraged him to leave her and the two travelled together throughout Europe. Although he was powerless against his growing obsession with Rimbaud, Verlaine also loved his wife as well and he was torn by his desperate need for both loves. After repeated rejections, Mathilde finally left Verlaine for good, with their baby son. The two men continued their relationship and in July 1873, after Rimbaud once again threatened to leave, Verlaine shot Rimbaud and was imprisoned for two years.

While Verlaine was in prison, Rimbaud returned to Roche, near his childhood home, and finished A Season in Hell, an account of his spiritual descent and his failure in art and love. Although it is now thought of as one of his greatest works, Rimbaud was discouraged by its reception and is said to have burned the manuscript.

While in prison, and forced into abstinence of both alcohol and sex, Verlaine rediscovered his Roman Catholicism. Upon his release, he sought out Rimbaud, and the two met for the last time. When Rimbaud repulsed Verlaine's attentions, their relationship ended forever.

Alone, rejected by both Mathilde and Rimbaud, Verlaine went to England where he taught French and drawing for several years before returning to France. He continued to write and publish and his literary star began to rise. But by 1886, Verlaine once again relapsed into drink and debauchery. He died ten years later at the home of a prostitute.

After breaking with Verlaine, Rimbaud rejected poetry and embarked on a life of travel and adventure. After learning German, Arabic, Hindustani and Russian, he set off on a series of escapades that included crossing the Alps on foot, enlisting in and then deserting the Dutch army, joining a German circus bound for Scandinavia, traveling to Egypt and working as a laborer in Cyprus. At each step, he suffered setbacks of illness and hardship.

During a battle with typhoid fever in 1879, Rimbaud decided to abandon his wanderings and settle down. In the employ of a coffee trader from Aden, he became the first white man to journey into the Ogaden region of Ethiopia and eventually became involved in arms-trading. While in Ethiopia, Rimbaud lived with a native woman and the home they shared became a mecca for traveling Europeans.

During this period of expatriation, Rimbaud's reputation as a poet grew in France. Verlaine had written about him and published a selection of his poems. These were enthusiastically received and in 1866, unable to determine Rimbaud's whereabouts, Verlaine published Rimbaud's prose poems, under the title Illuminations.

Soon after, Rimbaud developed a tumor on his knee and returned to Roche, where he was nursed by his devoted sister Isabelle. The tumor was diagnosed as cancer and he died in 1891, at the age of 37.

Selected Bibliography

Rimbaud, Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, Knopf Books/Random House, 1994

Arthur Rimbaud -- Collected Poems, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, 1986

Paul Verlaine: Selected Poems, University of California Press, 1948

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