SOURCE: “Lyric Itineraries in Verlaine's ‘Almanach pour l'annee passee,’” in Romance Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 2, May, 1991, pp. 139–55.

In the following essay, Schultz explores the significance of “Almanach pour l'année passée”compared to the rest of Verlaine's poetic output.

Paul Verlaine's collection of poems, entitled Cellulairement, contains some of his most compelling, indeed some of his most enigmatic, poetry. It marks the culmination of the poetic practice, which he identified as the contradictory cohabitation of dreaminess and precision, set forth in his poem “Art poétique”: “Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise / Où l'Indécis au Précis se joint.”¹ It marks as well a pivotal event in the poet's life, for as its title suggests, Cellulairement was conceived and written in a prison cell in Belgium, between 1873 and 1875, where Verlaine was incarcerated after a dispute with his lover and literary colleague, Arthur Rimbaud. The work...