VERLAINE PAUL (1844-1896)

Autograph poem signed "Paul Verlaine," Élégies VII, [1893]; 2 pages in-8 on administrative paper of the General Administration of Public Assistance in Paris (window mount). Manuscript with erasures, additions and corrections, bearing at the end the count of "70 verses", of this poem intended for Élégies (Léon Vanier, 1893), collection of twelve pieces testifying of the tumultuous affair of Verlaine with Philomène BOUDIN. The present elegy is a confession: "Finally, it's you! Let me remain in your arms; Then you will objurgate me as much as you want it, But let me cry in your lap, where am I? On your feet, towards your eyes where my remorse is lightened, My true remorse, or rather my shame, My true shame not to lose a word, And here is not my excuse... superfluous, Here are the facts, and judge "... Then he evokes "twenty nights with different women", "Without even suspecting that it was odious, So much my senses had become to me like gods, Of your healthy presence exiled voluntary, And I intoxicated them of these twenty adulteries, As a vile pagan lavishing his incense, To idols, and his heart with or without, The heart, what a whore then that it disturbs itself! "... And to conclude by recognizing her the right to make herself " a consoled widow ", but " O all the same, if one forgave oneself? "... This manuscript, with its variants, is not listed in the edition of the complete poetic works of the Bibl. de la Pléiade.