Dans les Limbes, de Verlaine

Published in 1894, it is a poetic work by Paul Verlaine.

At the beginning of August 1892, Verlaine entered the Broussais hospital, where Philomène came to visit him regularly. He leaves on October 7; from November 2 to 14, he gave several lectures in Holland; and on December 19, he was hospitalized again. In October, he begins to write a new book: Dans les limbes. He intends to paint his sick condition and show his inner evolution. He intends to write a book “this time very chaste: Dans les limbes. Limbo is the hospital with a visitor”. D sends a hundred verses to his publisher in December. On January 13, he estimates to have finished this book; in July, he wrote a preface, but the work did not appear, with Léon Vanier, until May 1894.

Verlaine is grateful to Philomène whose visits comfort him and bring him a little happiness. The kindness and gentleness of this woman, even if she sometimes quarrels with him, encourages him to hope. He feels himself oscillating between the sky and the abyss, between good and evil. Thanks to Philomène, a return to religion is taking shape. He lives in the hospital “like a Benedictine” (I), working, reading, writing. He strives to no longer deserve the nickname "Infernal" given to him by Philomène and dreams of a calm life. Poem X takes up two verses of Wisdom (III,VI): “Life is there, simple and tranquil. This is now Verlaine's profound aspiration. "It's the appeasement of the evening" he writes in the preface. The poems have a conversational tone; Poem IV even takes the form of a dialogue. The best of these poems are those which, like songs, are composed of quatrains of octosyllables (II, V, X, XI, XVI, XVII) or heptasyllables (VII, XIII). The last poem does not lack a certain beauty because of the seriousness of the theme treated: the poet implores the pity and love of the one on whom his whole life now depends.