Dear Subscribers,
There's been a glitch with Feedburner, the company that delivers my subscriptions, so my apologies for receiving this post again which was delivered on Saturday and also for the reposting of the my Valentines Day story. Maybe it's because Mercury is in retrograde.
I’ve done quite a few sorts of presentations based on my book Writers in Paris, Literary Lives in the City of Light, but the most fun I’ve had – the audiences too – is with the series I developed called “Bad Boys and Bad Girls of Literature in Paris.” It’s about extraordinary writers who also happened to lead scandalous lives. Colette, George Sand, Oscar Wilde, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, Jean Genet, François Villon, and the Marquis de Sade are among them. Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud are great favorites of mine, both for their magnificent poetry and their sensationally wild lives. I will be talking about Verlaine and Rimbaud, along with a couple of others (Colette and George Sand, most likely), at Adrian Leeds’s monthly Parler Paris Après-Midi get-together in the Marais on Tuesday afternoon March 12 (see details of the time and place below).
To give you a brief taste, here’s how Verlaine and Rimbaud came to meet and an overview of how their relationship evolved.
Verlaine and Rimbaud in Montmartre
In the summer of 1871, after the fall of the Commune, Paul Verlaine, then twenty-seven, was fired from his job as a civil servant at the Hôtel de Ville. So he and his pregnant young wife Mathilde had to move into the home of her parents, the Mauté de Fleurvilles, in Montmartre. The house is still there, at No. 14 Rue Nicolet, where a Ville de Paris plaque tells what happened -- but without giving us the dark side of the story!
Ironically, it was Mme Mauté, Verlaine’s mother-in-law, who urged him to invite Rimbaud to come stay with the family. This cultivated lady, a former piano student of Chopin and Debussy’s teacher at the time, was thrilled by the verses mailed to Verlaine by the unknown poet. “Come, dear great soul,” Verlaine wrote, believing he was addressing a mature man. But Arthur Rimbaud was less than seventeen when he knocked on their door on September 10, 1871, and a rude, coarse, unkempt boy at that.
Rimbaud, who despised all bourgeois attitudes, responded to Mme Mauté’s and Mathilde’s well-meaning but patronizing reception with grunts. But as for Verlaine, after reading Le Bateau Ivre and hearing the “devilishly seductive” boy expand on his vision of the poet as a seer, he was ready to follow him anywhere. So “Rimbe” and “Verlomphe” embarked on what Rimbaud called “a long, immense, and reasoned disordering of all the senses” in quest of a new, visionary poetic language, with absinthe as their holy sacrament. Their outrageous behavior alienated them not only from the family, but from Verlaine’s circle of poet friends, the “Vilains Bonshommes,” considered the most avant-garde poets of their time. But Rimbaud found them hopelessly conventional and made no secret about that. They were irked by his insolence and shocked by the unabashed sexual rapport between the two.
A month after Rimbaud moved in with the family, M Mauté returned from a long hunting trip and ordered the disruptive boy out of the house. But the family’s season in hell was just beginning. One night Verlaine returned home drunk, beat the pregnant Mathilde, and tried to set her hair on fire. Later he flung his three-month-old son Georges against the bedroom wall. Miraculously, the baby was unhurt. Outraged, M. Mauté threw his son-in-law out of the house. Verlaine moved into the room he had rented for Rimbaud in Montparnasse, but when Mathilde threatened divorce returned to her at Rue Nicolet. Rimbaud went home to his mother in Charleville, near the Belgian frontier.
After a few months of impeccable behavior, Verlaine came home one night with stab wounds in his thighs. The boy was back. In July 1872 the two poets left Paris, first travelling to Belgium, then England, then back to Brussels where, on July 19, 1873, Verlaine shot Rimbaud with a revolver, luckily only grazing his wrist. The court sentenced Verlaine to two years in prison. Rimbaud took off for the Middle East and North Africa, never to write poetry again.
His work, barely known to begin with, was forgotten. But in 1884, after Verlaine published some of Rimbaud’s poems, which he knew by heart, in his book Les Poètes Maudits, France began awakening to the genius of the wild boy from Charleville.
For the time and place of Adrian Leeds’s Parler Paris Après-Midi get-together on Tuesday, March 12, click on www.adrianleeds.com/apresmidi.
For information about David Burke and Writers in Paris and his literary walks click on www.writersinparis.com.
I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.
Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com
New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte's professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.
Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday,Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.
Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.
New Eye Prefer Paris Photos for Sale
I am happy to announce the sale of a new set of prints of my Eye Prefer Paris Photos. I am offering 20 of my most popular and iconic images for sale including my doors, architectural details, statues, and monuments. They will make great gifts for all your Francophile friends, relatives, and colleagues but don't forget to buy some for yourself.
Click here to see photos and for full details including sizes, prices, and shipping. Here is a sample of some of the photos.
