À la recherche d’un nouvel absolu La sacralisation de l’érotique chez Paul Verlaine

This article examines the alliance of sacred and profane in post-conversion Verlaine, notably in the collection Hombres. Transcribing erotic experience in verse presents challenges similar to those of mystical experience. These two sides of the same quest to express the lyrical subject’s confrontation with an absolute object, divine or carnal, are both reflected in a language which is inadequate to its object, where the poet tries to fight against the loss of the lyric subject when faced with the sacred.