Grotesques

A poem from Poèmes saturniens, “Grotesques” depicts a troupe of fallen vagabonds. From the outset, their “legs for every mount” and “the gold of their gazes” convey both misery and inner riches. The quatrains of octosyllables, with alternating rhymes, mark out a march without halt.

The second stanza contrasts the reactions of the wise man, the fool, the children, and the girls: mockery and indignation. These figures, “hateful and ridiculous,” then “indeed malevolent,” haunt the twilights like a “bad dream.” Social satire is doubled by metaphysical unease.

With their “shrill guitars,” they “whine strange songs,” “Nostalgic and rebellious.” In their pupils, the love of “eternal things” “Laughs and weeps.” The grotesque is no longer merely laughable: it carries a nostalgia for “the old dead and the ancient gods.”

The sixth stanza, introduced by “So,” becomes a curse: “go, vagabonds without truce.” Nature allies itself with man to chastise “The proud melancholy.” The blasphemy of “vast vehement hopes” is avenged by the elements.

The extreme seasons, “The Junes burn and the Decembers / Freeze,” invade the bodies. Fever, the reeds, death “Thin and cold”: everything contributes to an ignoble fate, to the point that the “corpse / Will be disdained by the wolves.” The tension between grandeur and downfall reaches its climax.

Thus, Verlaine transforms the grotesque into a tragic mirror: these cursed vagabonds, bearers of a broken ideal, are the poet’s inverted doubles. In this poem, derision turns into compassion and dread before a humanity that seeks the eternal in the abysses.