Abstract: In the illustrated edition of the collection Parallèlement, a parallel emerges between the representations of the physical experience in Verlaine’s poems and Bonnard’s lithographs based on nude photographs. In the same way that the artist tests the delicate balance that photography maintains between the real and the ideal, between immediate specificity and universality, a tension emerges in Verlaine’s work between the personal experience of a body providing inspiration and the universalizing aspect of poetry that strips it of its specificity.
