Paul Verlaine at the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris

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Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet born on March 30, 1844, who played a key role in the Symbolist movement. He is regarded as one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle era in both international and French poetry. The majority of French poetry produced during this period was characterized by its decadent content or moral vision. In 1884, Verlaine coined the term "poète maudit" to describe poets like Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Aloysius Bertrand, Comte de Lautréamont, and Alice de Chambrier who defied poetic conventions and faced social disapproval or criticism. However, with Jean Moréas' publication of the Symbolist Manifesto in 1886, the term symbolism became synonymous with the new literary landscape. Alongside Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Paul Valéry, Albert Samain, and many others began to be referred to as "Symbolists." These poets often explored themes that mirrored Schopenhauer's aesthetics and concepts of will, fatality, and unconscious forces, incorporating topics like sex (such as prostitutes), the city, irrational phenomena (delirium, dreams, narcotics, alcohol), and occasionally a vaguely medieval setting. In their poetry, Symbolist procedure, exemplified by Verlaine, involved using subtle suggestion instead of precise statements (rhetoric was banned) to evoke moods and feelings through the magic of words and repeated sounds and the cadence of verse (musicality) and metrical innovation.