"Paul Verlaine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fineness of effect—the phrase is a happy one. Coarse is sometimes the needle-work of Zorn, but the end justifies the means. He is often cruel, more cruel than Sargent. His portraits prove it. He has etched all his friends, some of whom must have felt honoured and amused—or else offended. The late Paul Verlaine, for example, would not have been pleased with the story of his life as etched by the Swede. It is as biting a commentary—one is tempted to say as acid—as a page from Strindberg. Yes, without a touch of Strindberg's mad ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... things! If Gerard de Nerval's failure of a great genius had failed in the comic instead of the romantic-tragical direction, he would have had some too—in fact he had it in the embryonic and unachieved fashion in which the author of Gaspard de la Nuit, and Baudelaire, and Paul Verlaine have had it since in verse and prose. But Gautier has it plump and plain, and without any help from the strange counterfeiting fantasy of verse which sometimes confers it. He has it always; at all times of his life; in the hackwork which made abortion of so much greater literature, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury |
