Paul Verlaine was born in Metz, France, in 1844. The son of an army captain, he studied law, but gave it up and entered the civil service. In 1870 he married Mathilde Mauté, a beautiful and wealthy young woman he did not find intellectually compatible. By 1871 Verlaine had become a poet of some renown within Parisian literary circles.

Arthur Rimbaud, 10 years Verlaine’s junior, was born in Charleville, France, in 1854. He was raised by his stern mother after his father deserted the family when he was a boy. Rimbaud excelled in school and was regarded as a prodigy; his poetry was first published when he was 15. Bored with small-town life and driven by a thirst for adventure, Rimbaud ran away from home in 1870 and lived as a vagabond.0

In 1871, 16-year-old Rimbaud sent a selection of his poems (including his most famous work, "The Drunken Boat") to Verlaine, who was so impressed he paid the young man’s way to Paris. There the two embarked on a stormy relationship that scandalized the bourgeois literati. Rimbaud was crude and arrogant. Verlaine frequently abandoned his wife to spend time with Rimbaud. He was fond of absinthe and was often drunk. When inebriated he was abusive toward Mathilde, but when sober he regretted his behavior and insisted he loved her.

Verlaine and Rimbaud traveled around France, Belgium, and England, settling for a time in London. In 1873, tired of Rimbaud’s insults and bouts of meanness, Verlaine abandoned him in London and fled to Brussels. Penniless, Rimbaud begged Verlaine to take him back in a series of letters. "Do you think that your life will be happier with other people than it was with me?" he wrote. "It is only with me that you can be free."

Together again in Brussels in the summer of that year, Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist following a drunken argument. During his trial for the shooting, Verlaine was examined by court physicians who pronounced that he "bears on his person the signs of active and passive pederastic habits." Verlaine spent two years in prison, where he reclaimed the Catholic faith of his youth. In prison he wrote Songs without Words about his relationship with Rimbaud. "Here are fruits, flowers, leave, and branches," he wrote. "And here is my heart, which beats only for you." The two men met again in Germany after Verlaine’s release in 1875, but never rekindled their relationship.

Verlaine, by now divorced, embarked on a life marked by periods of drunkenness and debauchery alternating with remorse and repentance. He taught French and English for a time and made unsuccessful attempts at farming. He became involved with a student, Lucien Létinois, with whom he lived and traveled. Suffering from many ailments, Verlaine spent an increasing amount of time in the hospital in his later years, dying in Paris in January 1896.

After parting ways with Verlaine, Rimbaud returned to his family’s farm and finished writing A Season in Hell, based on his time in Paris. But by the time he was 20, Rimbaud had stopped writing. Still seeking new experiences, he joined the Dutch army in 1876, but deserted in Indonesia. For 10 years, until 1890, Rimbaud lived in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and Aden (now part of Yemen), working as a trader and gunrunner. He developed cancer of the knee that required amputation of his right leg and died in Marseille in November 1891.

As originators of the Symbolist school of poetry, which focused on the imagery rather than the concrete meaning of words, Verlaine and Rimbaud greatly influenced modern literature. Although commonly thought to be the less talented of the two, Verlaine had become a celebrated poet by the time of his death, and thousands joined his funeral procession. Rimbaud—who André Breton called the "God of Adolescence" —was not famous during his lifetime, but later came to be regarded as a godfather of Beat poets and punk rockers, inspiring artists such as Henry Miller, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and Patti Smith.