Regarding the self: memory deployment in Confessions, by Paul Verlaine

Abstract

In spite of being proliferous, Paul Verlaine’s prose works are little discussed about or studied. His prose writings are vast, including fiction, literary reviews, travel journals, and a considerable amount of autobiographical works, among which Confessions is the most notable one. Being relevant both for its historical curiosity and its literary quality, Confessions relates a great deal of the author’s life, inscribing itself in a literary gender that, having particular features, follows the tradition begun by Saint Augustine (354-430 d. C.) and later Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Verlaine’s Confessions dialogues with both authors in order to reflect upon life, death, love, art, and loss. From this brief considerations, we propose a key to reading this interesting work, highlighting the wonderings of Self and the processes of memory constitution, in light of Henri Bergson’s (1859-1941)  and Gaston Bachelard’s (1884-1962) studies, while attempting to analyze its imagery, a vital mnemonic resource.