The soul of an immortal child, that is the soul of Verlaine, with all the privileges and all the perils of so being: with the sudden despair so easily distracted, the vivid gaieties without a cause, the excessive suspicions and the excessive confidences, the whims so easily outwearied, the deaf and blind infatuations, with, especially, the unceasing renewal of impressions in the incorruptible integrity of personal vision and sensation. Years, influences, teachings, may pass over a temperament such as this, may irritate it, may fatigue it; transform it, never—never so much as to alter that particular unity which consists in a dualism, in the division of forces between the longing after what is evil and the adoration of what is good; or rather, in the antagonism of spirit and flesh....
I have not mentioned the most striking “feature” of Mr. Thorley’s ... production—the appendix. Six of Verlaine’s poems are translated by him for the benefit of those who do not understand French “intimately.” “To offer them to other readers, would, of course, be an impertinence,” he modestly admits. Impertinence is not the word for that outrage. I have experienced physical pain at the sight of the Hunnish sacrilege committed by this well-wishing moralist. The poet, for whom “De la musique avant toute chose; De la musique encore et toujours!” who had pleaded, “Car nous voulons la nuance encore, Pas la couleur, rien que la nuance!” has been mercilessly crucified in the form of quasi-Tennysonian, taffy-like verses. One recalls with gratitude the careful albeit pale translations of Gertrude Hall, who at least had the sense of æsthetic propriety in endeavoring to remain true to the master’s meter and rhythm.
... a great, a stupendous idea, to the realization of which I feel myself capable of devoting all my life. The idea is the foundation of a new religion corresponding to the development of mankind—the religion of Jesus, but purified from dogma and mysticism; a practical religion, not promising bliss in future, but giving happiness on earth.... To work consciously for the union on earth by religion....
From a letter to the poet Fet in 1898:
I am so different to things of this life that life becomes uninteresting.... I hope you will love me though I be black.
From the fragment There are no guilty people:
There was a time when I tried to change my position which was not in harmony with my conscience, but the conditions created by the past, by my family and its claims upon me, were so complicated that I did not know how to free myself. I had not the strength. Now that I am over eighty and have become feeble I have given up trying to free myself. Strange to say, as my feebleness increases I realize more and more strongly the wrongfulness of my position, and it grows more and more intolerable to me.
On his death-bed at the railroad station Astapovo, November, 1910:
I am tired of this world of men.