Biografía 'Chanson d'automne'

Romances sans paroles

Paul Verlaine 		 
Verlaine, Paul
1844-96, French poet. He gained some notice with the Parnassian poetry of Poèmes saturniens (1866) and Fêtes galantes (1869) and became a figure in the bohemian literary world of Paris. Verlaine's turbulent marriage broke up as a result of his liaison with his young protégé, Arthur Rimbaud. The two poets traveled in Belgium and England; their relationship ended in tragedy when Verlaine shot and wounded Rimbaud and was imprisoned in Belgium for two years. In prison he was brought back to the Catholic faith of his childhood and wrote some noble religious poetry that appeared in Sagesse (1881). From that time also dates his Romances sans paroles (1874), which shows Verlaine as one of the first of the symbolists. The sensitive appreciation of the common incidents and sights of life and the haunting and simple music of his verse, combined with the melancholy and unreal disillusion of the decadents, distinguish his poetry. More striking, however, is the candor of Verlaine himself. Through the degrading incidents of his later life, which was marked by drunkenness, poverty, and debauchery, he preserved his honesty and inverted naïveté. Jadis et Naguère (1884) and Parallèlement (1889) were perhaps the best of his later volumes of poetry. Of his prose works the only one of importance is Les Poètes maudits (1884), sketches of his fellow symbolists, particularly Mallarmé and Rimbaud.		 Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.
 

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure.
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens,
Et je pleure...
 

Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
De çà, de là,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte...

The long sobs
of autumn's
violins
wound my heart
with a monotonous
languor.
 

Suffocating
and pallid, when
the clock strikes,
I remember
the days long past
and I weep.

And I set off
in the rough wind
that carries me
hither and thither
like a dead
leaf.

Poema que se utilizó por parte de la Resistencia Francesa en el "día D" ( 6-6-1944). Durante varias semanas, la BBC de Londres repetía, con destino a la resistencia francesa, el comienzo del poema del Paul Verlaine, 'Chanson d'automne'. Pero cuando la radio británica difundió una comunicación el día 5 de junio de 1.944, agregaba otros tres versos, los alemanes no reaccionaron a tiempo y la mañana del día 6 de junio se realizó el desembarco