Songs without Words

Paul Verlaine author Donald Revell translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Omnidawn Publishing

Published:31st Oct '13

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Songs without Words cover

Songs without Words (Romances sans paroles) is the book in which, unabashedly, Paul Verlaine becomes himself and, in so doing, becomes the iconic poet of the French nineteenth century. A book of musical sequences, it seeks and finds exquisite purity of expression, best exemplified by "Il pleure dans mon coeur," the most famous and most inimitable of all French lyric poems. And it is a book of intertwining narratives also, each of which entertains abasements and ecstasies, crises, crimes and expiations. These, in their separate ways, detail the shadowlands of artistic purity. Verlaine adores and defiles his child-bride, Mathilde. He takes to the road with Arthur Rimbaud, the love of his life, his muse, his captive and captor. Exhaustion is everywhere counterpoised with exaltation, squalor with splendor. And yet, in nearly every syllable, the dignity of Poetry and of human affections, proves inviolable.

ISBN: 9781890650872

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

96 pages