Paul-Marie Verlaine

Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) was the high priest of musical lyricism in French poetry. His celebrated opening poem Chanson d'automne ('Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne...') achieved historical immortality when its first stanzas were broadcast by the BBC on 5 June 1944 to alert the French Resistance that the Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy was underway.

Abandoning his young bourgeois wife Mathilde Mauté to roam Europe with teenage prodigy Arthur Rimbaud, their passionate, tumultuous relationship imploded in Brussels in July 1873 when an intoxicated Verlaine fired two revolver shots at Rimbaud. Imprisoned for eighteen months in Mons, Verlaine converted back to Catholicism and produced his masterpiece Romances sans paroles. In 1894, elected 'Prince of Poets' by his peers, Verlaine died in bohemian poverty in the Latin Quarter of Paris.