Verlaine, reader of Desbordes-Valmore

When Verlaine quotes Desbordes-Valmore’s “ Rêve intermittent d’une nuit triste,” a hendecasyllabe is often turned into an alexandrin: without a copy of it, Verlaine cites it from memory. While he writes in his Poètes maudits that Rimbaud forced him to “read everything” by the female poet, he was in fact very far from having been in a position to consult all of her work.