Note 94 — LOEFFLER
Reading edition
La Bonne Chanson was published in 1870, the year of Verlaine's marriage to Mathilde Mauté. In his Confessions he praises it as "so sincere, so amiably, sweetly, purely thought, so simply written." On another occasion he spoke of it as follows (the English is Mr. Arthur Symons's): "The author values it as perhaps the most natural of his works. Indeed, it was Art, violent or delicate, which had affected to reign, almost exclusively, in his former works, and it was only from then that it was possible to trace in him true and simple views concerning nature, physical and moral.... Life had its way, and distress soon came, not without his own fault, to the household of the poet, who suddenly threw up everything and went wandering in search of unsatisfying distractions." Verlaine and his wife were divorced a few years after their marriage.