Euan MacMillan, French Style and Rep Essay:

The poetry of Paul Verlaine has been widely used in nineteenth century French
Song. In your opinion which composer most fully captures the mood of the poems?

Paul Verlaine’s approach to poetry is encapsulated in the first line of his work Art poétique, “De la
musique avant toute chose” (“Music before everything else”). With a unique focus on the musical
qualities of his poems, it is of little surprise that Verlaine’s works were some of the most widely used
in nineteenth century French mélodie. Of the many composers to set their songs to Verlaine’s
poems, Claude Debussy stands out as being particularly adept at capturing Verlaine’s texts. While
composer’s (such as Fauré) aptitude for word painting allows for effective, straightforward settings,
their rather literal musical interpretations often fail to capture the more complex, rhetorical nature
of Verlaine’s poems. On the other hand, Debussy’s ability to capture an entire ‘scene’ in his music
means that he is ultimately the most successful at capturing the darker mood and more ambiguous
themes of Verlaine’s work.

Before analysing why Debussy’s music is so successful at capturing the mood of Verlaine’s poetry, it
is important to explore the poet’s tumultuous background. Born on the 30th of March 1844 in Metz,
Paul-Marie Verlaine led “an unsettled existence that was to be the distinctive hallmark of the rest of
his life”.1 The Verlaine family moved to Paris in 1851 after Paul’s father resigned from his post as a
Captain in the French army. Brought up in an indulgent atmosphere by a doting mother, Verlaine
“made little or no attempt to achieve any creditable results at school and University, spending more
time drinking in the cafés of the Latin Quarter than studying”.2 An alcoholic from an early age, he
was prone to drunken bouts of “homicidal violence”3. In 1870, he married the seventeen-year-old
Mathilde Mauté, with whom he had an incredibly toxic relationship (and a child). While married to
Mathilde, Verlaine began an affair with the young poet Arthur Rimbaud, and he soon left his wife
and son to lead a nomadic and debaucherous life. In 1873, during a drunken quarrel, he shot and
wounded Rimbaud, and was sentenced to two years in prison, with his wife divorcing him shortly
afterwards. During his time in prison he became a Catholic convert, leading to a few years (after his
release in 1875) where he led an orderly life as a teacher in England. However, by 1880, Verlaine

1 C. Chadwick, Verlaine (London: The Athlone Press, 1973), 1.

2 Chadwick, Verlaine, 2.

3 Joanna Richardson, Verlaine (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 92.

grew increasingly unstable and would return to France, where he would rely on financial aid from
admirers and friends. His health began to deteriorate in 1886, and he would spend the remainder of
his life in-between hospital and his squalid lodgings in the Latin Quarter before his death in 1896.4
Verlaine’s increasingly troubled life is mirrored in the shifting style of his work. The poems included
in his early volumes Poèmes saturniens (1866), Fêtes galantes (1869) and La Bonne Chanson (1869)
are notably simple and direct, with an absence of the rhetorical devices, ambiguity and spontaneity
that would define come to define his later, best-known works. These later works capture Verlaine’s
“state of uncertainty which seems to have been essential to the full flowering of his poetic genius” 5.
His two later, major works are an insight Verlaine’s mind as he becomes increasingly unstable.
Romance sans Paroles (1874) highlights the poet’s struggle between the relationship with his wife
Mathilde and his infatuation with Rimbaud while Sagesse (1881) captures the stress of Verlaine’s
quarrels with Rimbaud, his arrest and trial, and the destructive behaviour he struggled to contain
after converting to Catholicism. Debussy’s musical style is perfectly suited to capturing the more
rhetorical style and complex themes of Verlaine’s later work, which makes him the composer who
able to most fully capture the mood of the poems.

Debussy’s success in capturing the intricate moods of Verlaine’s poetry can be seen in his setting of
“Green” from the poet’s Romance sans Paroles.

Green (Paul Verlaine)

Voici des fruits, des fleurs, des feuilles et des branches,
Et puis voici mon coeur, qui ne bat que pour vous.
Ne le déchirez pas avec vos deux mains blanches,
Et qu’à vos yeaux si beaux l’humble présent soit doux.

J’arrive tout couvert encore de rosée

Que le vent du matin vient glacer à mon front.
Souffrez que ma fatigue, à vos pieds reposée,
Rêve des chers instants qui la délasseront.

Sur votre jeune sein laissez rouler ma tête

Toute sonore encor de vos derniers baisers;

4 Jean Richer, Paul Verlaine (Paris: Seghers, 1967), 78-79.

5 Chadwick, Verlaine, 35.

 Laissez-la s’apaiser de la bonne tempête,
Et que je dorme un peu puisque vous reposez.

Green (Translation by Barbara Meister)6

Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches,
And then here is my heart, which beats only for you.
Don’t tear it to bits with your two white hands,
And in your eyes so beautiful may the humble present be sweet.

I arrive all covered with dew

Which the morning wind has just frozen on my brow.
Allow my fatigue, placed at your feet,
To dream of the dear moments which will refresh it.

On your young breast, let my head rest

All ringing still from your last kisses.
Let it be appeased after the good storm,
And let me sleep a little while you rest.

“Green” was written by Verlaine for his wife Mathilde, shortly after he had left her for Rimbaud to
lead a life of adventure and debauchery. In this context, it is important for the reader not view the
poem as a simple love letter, but an expression of Verlaine being caught between two worlds: his
safe and conventional (yet deeply unhappy) marriage, or the passionate dangerous life he enjoyed
with Rimbaud. In The Composer As Reader, Lauren Coots explains how “the speakers fatigue and
bittersweet dreaming is part of a deep inner turmoil. Rather than a pleading for acceptance from a
woman of high status, the poem becomes a cry for acceptance and release from his inner prison”.7
Debussy’s setting is masterful in the way it captures this mood of fatigue and turmoil. In the
introduction, Debussy’s use of a “joyously animated” tempo conveys the arrival of the breathless
lover. However, despite the fast tempo, the minor chords and arched melodic line of the
introduction create an underlying sense of sadness, weariness and delirium. This sense of delirium is

6 Barbara Meister, Ninteenth Century French Song: Fauré, Chausson, Duparc, and Debussy (Bloomington,
Indiana University Press, 1980), 84-85.

7Lauren Valerie Coots, The Composer As Reader: A Comparative Analysis of Two Settings of Paul Verlaine’s
“Green” (New Mexico: The University of New Mexico Press, 2014), 9.
further captured in Debussy’s rhythmic language, with the use of duplets in the first melodic line
immediately creating a sense of metrical ambiguity. Throughout the song Debussy alternates duple
and triple subdivisions in both vocal line and accompaniment, with the continuous motion and
metric ambiguity of the piece emphasising the weary, love-struck desperation of the speaker and
heightening the sense of urgency and anxiety in the piece. 8 The low setting of vocal line at the end
of the last three phrases of the middle section highlights the word’s “fatigue” (fatigue), “repose”
(rest) and “délasseront” (relax), adding further to the lethargic mood of the work. The ability of
Debussy to capture the mood of Verlaine’s work becomes even more apparent when comparing his
song to Faure’s less successful attempt at setting the same poem. In Nineteenth Century French Song
Barbara Meister describes Fauré’s “Green”: “Compared to the Debussy setting of this poem the
Fauré song is rather bland and impersonal. In the Debussy a whole little scenario unfolds…Fauré
does convey the lover’s breathless arrival but the ensuing sense of relaxation and then erotic fatigue
[of Debussy’s setting] is not reflected as clearly in the music”.9 While there are many examples of
Debussy’s songs capturing the spirit of Verlaine’s poetry, his setting of “Green” highlights his ability
to connect to the poet’s troubled psyche and the deeper meaning of his work, a skill that allows his
music to effectively capture to the mood of the poems.

Of all the composers to set Verlaine’s poetry to music, Debussy’s ability to capture the mood of the
text was unparalleled. The French music critic Georges Jean-Aubry perfectly describes this
relationship between Debussy’s songs and Verlaine’s poetry, stating: “The admirable alliance in
Debussy’s music between the sense of reality and the sense of mystery, it’s character at once
legendary and true, material and immaterial, profoundly intellectual and yet profoundly sensual,
could not be applied more exactly than it was to this poet”.10 It is this ability to capture the
ambiguous, rhetorical, complex nature of Verlaine’s poetry that separates Debussy from his peers.
Described as ‘the Verlaine of music’ in a 1900 publication of L’Écho de Paris, the fact that Debussy’s
name has becomes almost synonymous with that of the poet, is a testament to the composer’s
ability to masterfully interpret and capture the mood of Verlaine’s poetry.

8 Coots, The Composer As Reader, 22

9 Meister, Ninteenth Century French Song, 84.

10 G. Jean-Aubry, La Musique fran çaise d’aujourd’hui (Paris: Perrin, 1916), 239-44.

Bibliography:

Chadwick, C. Verlaine. London: The Athlone Press, 1973.

Coots, Lauren Valerie. The Composer As Reader: A Comparative Analysis of Two Settings of
Paul Verlaine’s “Green". New Mexico: The University of New Mexico Press, 2014.

Huang, Fumei. A Compartive Study of Paul Verlaine's Poetry in Musical Settings. Boston:
Boston College of Fine Arts, 1995.

Jean-Aubry, Georges. La Musique fran çaise d’aujourd’hui. Paris: Perrin, 1916.

Meister, Barbara. Ninteenth Century French Song: Fauré, Chausson, Duparc, and Debussy.
Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1980.

Richardson, Joanna. Verlaine. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971.

Richer, Jean. Paul Verlaine. Paris: Seghers, 1967.