These are the paintings of Watteau that have inspired Verlaine's Fetes Galantes . A strange little book in which Verlaine recreates the world of the painter, the party of course but also the strange languor that weighs on the characters: they apprehend the size of any artificial party? Did they know how the party is just human life does not last long? The poem that concludes the collection is undoubtedly the strangest and probably also the most disenchanted, the end of an illusion ...
In the deserted park, silent and icy
Two forms have happened earlier.
Their eyes are dead, their lips are soft,
And we hardly hear their words.
In the deserted park, silent and icy
Two spectra discussed before.
- Do you remember our old ecstasy?
- Why do you want me to remember?
- Your heart beats it always at my name?
you still see my soul in a dream? - No.
- Ah! the heyday of indescribable happiness
Where our lips! - Possibly.
- it was blue, the sky, and great hope!
- Hope has fled, defeated, to the black sky.
they walked in the wild oats,
And the night alone heard their words.
Two forms have happened earlier.
Their eyes are dead, their lips are soft,
And we hardly hear their words.
In the deserted park, silent and icy
Two spectra discussed before.
- Do you remember our old ecstasy?
- Why do you want me to remember?
- Your heart beats it always at my name?
you still see my soul in a dream? - No.
- Ah! the heyday of indescribable happiness
Where our lips! - Possibly.
- it was blue, the sky, and great hope!
- Hope has fled, defeated, to the black sky.
they walked in the wild oats,
And the night alone heard their words.
Verlaine gallant Christmas, 1869.
Ill. Watteau, "The two cousins," Louvre (1718)
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