Literary history has not known what to make of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, nee Marie Felicite Josephe Desbordes. Born in 1786 at Douai in Flanders, she has been forgotten, rediscovered, and forgotten again. Shortly after her death Jules Janin remarked that she had already been forgotten. "Forgotten by whom, I ask you?" said Baudelaire. "By those who, feeling nothing, remember nothing." He said, "No poet was ever more natural; none was ever less artificial. No one has been able to imitate that charm, for it is entirely original and naive."

If scholars have not known what to make of her works, they have been understood by poets. Her poetry is visionary, as Rimbauds would be. It is Mallarmes language that does not refer but is. Her poetry has the living immediacy of a lyric by Verlaine. Desbordes-Valmores "Dans la Rue," a realistic description of the aftermath of a massacre in Lyon, must surely have been read by Rimbaud before he wrote the poem he ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase