How did Paul Verlaine use sound and musicality in French verse?

Paul Verlaine revolutionized French verse by prioritizing musicality over traditional sonorous rhetoric, establishing himself as a key initiator of modern word-music. His approach transformed how the French language could convey human emotion, moving away from explicit intellectual content toward a style defined by suggestion and "tremulous vagueness".1

Verlaine’s techniques for achieving this musical effect included:

• Prosodic Innovation: He famously advocated for and utilized lines with an odd number of syllables (vers impair), which helped break away from rigid, traditional metrical patterns.2
• Incantatory Sound: He treated words as instruments, using their inherent sounds, harmonies, and tones to create an "incantatory spell" that captured the reader’s senses rather than just their intellect.13
• Atmospheric Suggestion: By employing ambiguous syntax and unusual combinations of abstract and concrete concepts, he created a sense of psychological distortion and physical atmosphere.2
• "Songs Without Words": In collections like Romances sans paroles, he demonstrated that poetry could function like music, where the orchestration of tone and rhythm takes precedence over narrative or philosophical exposition.13

Through these methods, Verlaine successfully "reformed" French poetic expression, influencing generations of poets by proving that the sound of language itself could communicate the ineffable.1