Romances sans paroles Reading Order

What is the 'Art poétique' and where does it fit in Verlaine's work?

The 'Art poétique' (Poetic Art) is Verlaine's most famous theoretical poem and the closest thing to a manifesto in his work — written in 1874 (though published only in 1882 in Jadis et naguère), it articulates the aesthetic principles that Romances sans paroles embodies. The poem begins with the famous declaration 'De la musique avant toute chose' (Music above all else) and argues that poetry should be imprecise and suggestive rather than precise and definitive: 'Take eloquence and wring its neck'; 'Prefer the Odd and Uneven'; 'seek Nuance, not Color.' The ideal poem is one that evokes a mood or impression without stating it — that works on the reader like music rather than like argumentation. The 'Art poétique' is the theoretical complement to Romances sans paroles, and reading the two together gives the clearest picture of what Verlaine is attempting: a poetry of pure suggestion, pure music, pure evocation, from which the heavy machinery of Romantic eloquence and Parnassian formal perfection has been removed. The poem's influence on the Symbolist movement was enormous — it became the theoretical manifesto of Symbolism in France in the 1880s, which is somewhat ironic given that Verlaine himself was uncomfortable with the Symbolist label and preferred to work by intuition rather than theory.