Farewell

A poem of rupture and lamentation, Verlaine's "Farewell" unfolds an elegiac complaint in nine quatrains of alexandrines, in which the poet confesses his inability to adapt to hatred and contempt. From the opening, the apostrophe "Hélas!" ("Alas!") sets the tone, and the admission "I was not made for this hatred" immediately inscribes a tension between a dreamed-of nature and a hostile reality. The embracing, regular rhymes envelop each stanza in a gentle musicality that contrasts with the bitterness of the subject.

Images of the self follow one another: "this lamb without wool," "A sort of man in dream," "this outraged heart"; the poet paints himself as a vulnerable creature, made to please and to love, but wounded by contempt. The rhythm of the repeated "Always" in stanzas 3 and 4 insists on a constancy: goodness, caresses, forgiveness, sacrifice. This insistence creates an effect of pathetic accumulation, as if the enumeration of virtues could ward off the harshness of reality.

Stanza 5 introduces a figure of mediation, "your mother," the only one to acknowledge the wrongs and the care. Her death, followed by the prayer on "her tomb," opens a breach: the poet doubts that she approves of "the present thing." The tone then becomes darker, and the anxiety for the child, "your son and mine," adds a tragic dimension. The rupture is no longer merely amorous; it threatens memory and filiation.

Stanza 7 marks a return upon the self: "I was not made to say these things." The one who once spoke in "epithalamium" and in "apotheoses" finds himself fallen. The opposition between the idealized past and the painful present underscores the irony of a destiny that contradicts the gifts received. The chivalric images ("Golden crest," "tunic of flames," "Knight who bleeds on azure") transfigure suffering into wounded nobility, giving the poem the air of a coat of arms.

Finally, the prospect of a "sweet and chaste death," envied by "the swan and the eagle," then the "glory also of the Illustrious Spouses," raise the heartbreak toward an aesthetic redemption. Thus, in this poem, Verlaine transforms farewell into a song of bruised dignity, in which the complaint becomes music and in which the admission of weakness becomes, by virtue of the verse, a paradoxical affirmation of nobility.