- Poète maudit
A poète maudit ( _fr. accursed poet) is a
poet living a life outside or against society. Abuse of drugs and alcohol, insanity, crime, violence, and in general any societal sin, often resulting in an early death are typical elements of the biography of a "poète maudit".The first "poète maudit", and its prototype, was
François Villon (1431 - c. 1474) but the phrase wasn't coined until the beginning of the 19th century byAlfred de Vigny in his 1832 drama "Stello", in which he calls the poet "la race toujours maudite par les puissants de la terre."Charles Baudelaire ,Paul Verlaine andArthur Rimbaud are considered typical examples.Lautréamont is also considered as a "poète maudit".The term came into wider usage since Verlaine's anthology. Originally it was used just for the writers in his book (see below), but then it became a name for writers (or even artists in general) whose lives and art are outside or against their society. For example, the poet and
publisher Pierre Seghers published an anthology "" ("The accursed poets of today") inParis in 1972, collecting autors such asAntonin Artaud ,Jean-Pierre Duprey and 10 others, some of which (like Artaud) became very famous posthumously.The term is also used outside France. An example is the Czech poet
Karel Hynek Mácha .Les poètes maudits
Les poètes maudits is a work by
Paul Verlaine that was published in 1884.The work is a homage to
Tristan Corbière ,Arthur Rimbaud ,Stéphane Mallarmé ,Marceline Desbordes-Valmore , Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Pauvre Lelian (Paul Verlaine himself).External links
* [http://www.poetes.com/textes/ver_poemau.pdf Verlaine's work in French (pdf)]
* [http://www.potomitan.info/kauss/maudits.php Poètes maudits des littératures]
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