The Cursed Poets IV – Tristan Corbiére

Tristan Corbiére was born Édouard-Joachim Corbière on the 18 of July 1845, in Coat-Congar, Ploujean, near Morlaix in Brittany.

He came from a well to do family and was sent to study to the famous Imperial Lycée of Saint-Brieuc where he studied from 1858 until 1860 and where he contracted the severe rheumatism that left him disfigured for life.

It was there, where he  gradually developed those characteristics of anarchic disdain and sarcasm which were to give much of his verse its distinctive voice, due to the difficulties in adapting to the harsh discipline of the college’s teachers.

He was little known until Paul Verlaine included him in his cursed poets, and that was enough to get his work noticed and established him as one of the masters acknowledged by the Symbolists.

Corbiére died of tuberculosis on the 1st of March 1875.  He was 29 years old.

By Hidalgo Socorro

The Cursed Poets II – Paul Verlaine

 

Paul Verlaine drinking Absinthe in 1896, shortly before his death

Paul Verlaine was born in the city of Metz on the 30 of March 1844.  He was educated in the Lycée Impérial Bonaparte and started to work in the civil service.

In 1866, Verlaine, who started writing since he was young, published his first book of poems, Poèmes saturniens (Saturnine Poems), which established him as a poet.

In 1870, he married Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville, and in the same year, after the proclamation of the Third Republic, he joined the Garde Nationale (National Guard) and escaped the deadly street fighting known as the Bloody Week, or Semaine Sanglante. He then took refuge in Pas de Calais.

After his return to Paris in 1871, Verlaine started receiving letters from Arthur Rimbaud.  Their relationship flourished, and Verlaine, who had left his wife and son, went to London with Rimbaud, where their relationship flourished, only to crumble two years later in violent circumstances.  Verlain shot and slightlty wounded Rimbaud and he spent some time in jail.

Verlaine remained in England teaching and at the end of the 1880’s decided to return to France, where he spent his last years in poverty, alcoholic and addicted to drugs, drinking Absinthe in french cafés.  Then, with the support of the French people and with the discovery of his early poems, helped to rise his popularity again.

Paul Verlain died on the 8 of January 1896 at the age of 51 and was buried at the Cimitiére de Batignolles.

It was Verlaine who coined the phrase “Poetes Maudits” or Cursed Poets to refer to those poets who had fought against poetic conventions and suffered social rebuke or were ignored by the critics.

By Hidalgo Socorro