Not to be confused with either vers libre (q.v.), 19th-c. Fr. free verse proper, or with the vers libres classiques (q.v.) of the 17th and 18th cs., that is, regular lines irregularly disposed, v. 1. is Fr. verse “liberated” from many of the traditional rules concerning meter, caesura, and endstopping, but still observing the principles of isosyllabism and regularly patterned rhyme. The beginnings of liberation are to be found among the romantic poets, who resorted to enjambment and use of the trimètre (qq.v.) with less inhibition than their forbears. These two devices were pushed to extremes in the latter half of the 19th c., the line-terminal word often being no more than a particle, the trimètre assuming ever more asymmetrical configurations (5+3+4, 3+6+3, 4+3+5, etc.) often involving the erasure not merely of the caesura, but of its very position, e.g. Verlaine: “Du bout fin de la quenotte de ton souris” (3+4+5). The poets of v. 1. also cultivated the vers impair (q.v.) and the expressive, but rhythmically disruptive, effects of the coupe lyrique. All these developments contributed to the rhythmic destabilization of the line and undermined its cl. integrity; rhythms lost their firm contours and consequently their aptitude for eloquent and oratorical utterance; instead, they acquired a certain looseness, fluidity, and indeterminacy which favored the intimate, the prosaic, the impromptu, the fantaisiste . Ver-laine’s fondness for poems in exclusively feminine rhymes seems to serve the same purpose, allowing the line to fade or dissolve rather than come to an unequivocal end. But this device was simply part of a wider tendency to disregard the rule of the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes, a tendency whose origins lie in Baudelaire’s “Ciel brouillé” and “À une mendiante rousse” (1857) and Banville’s “Erinna” and “L’Enamourée” (1866). Other rules of rhyming were also infringed: masculine words rhyme with feminine ones (Banville’s “èlégie”, 1846; Verlaine’s “Ariettes oubliées VI”, 1874), singulars with plurals (Laforgue). Thus, even though rhyme was still felt to be indispensable to Fr. verse, poets sought to reduce its privileged status, both by treating it “carelessly” and by scumbling the line-ending. Some poets, however—Mallarmé in particular—worked with inordinately rich rhymes, not only to subvert rhyme by excess, but also to activate larger acoustic fields. The step from v. 1. to vers libre (q.v.) was a short one; it was a step taken by Rimbaud (“Marine” and “Mouve-ment”, 1873) and by Laforgue ( Derniers Vers , 1890); but Rimbaud also developed in a more radical prosodic direction (the prose poem), as did Mallarmé, whose Un Coup de dés in 1897 already exploits most of the resources of visual poetry (q.v.).—L. Guichard, Jules Laforgue et ses poésies (1950); M. Grammont, Le Vers français , rev. ed. (1961); C. Cuénot, Le Style de Paul Verlaine (1962); Elwert; Mazaleyrat; B. de Cornulier, Théorie du vers (1982); C. Scott, Vers libre (1990), ch. 2.
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