Paul Verlaine. Illustrated

In Paul Verlaine, Stefan Zweig presents a sensitive and penetrating portrait of one of France’s most tragic and lyrical poets. With the psychological depth and moral empathy that characterize all of Zweig’s biographical studies, he explores the contradictions that shaped Verlaine’s life and art — the struggle between faith and passion, purity and decadence, tenderness and self-destruction.Zweig traces Verlaine’s journey from the promise of his early verse to the turbulence of his infamous relationship with Arthur Rimbaud, and finally to his years of decline, poverty, and remorse. Far from sensationalism, Zweig approaches these episodes with compassion, seeking to understand rather than to judge. To him, Verlaine is not merely a fallen poet, but a soul torn between the divine and the earthly — a man whose weakness was inseparable from his genius.Through elegant prose and keen psychological insight, Zweig reveals how Verlaine’s musical language transformed suffering into beauty. His poetry, suffused with melancholy and grace, becomes the expression of a restless heart longing for harmony in a discordant world. For Zweig, Verlaine embodies the eternal struggle of the artist to find redemption through creation.Paul Verlaine stands as both biography and elegy — a work in which Zweig’s admiration for the poet’s fragile humanity mirrors his own belief in the redemptive power of art. Written with the clarity of an essay and the tenderness of a eulogy, this study invites readers to rediscover Verlaine not only as a symbol of fin-de-siècle France, but as a timeless voice of longing, faith, and forgiveness.