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  • A poète maudit (French: accursed poet) is a poet living a life outside or against society. Abuse of drugs and alcohol, insanity, crime, violence, and in general any societal sin, often resulting in an early death are typical elements of the biography of a poète maudit.

    The first poète maudit, and its prototype, was François Villon (1431 - c. 1474) but the phrase wasn't coined until the beginning of the 19th century by Alfred de Vigny in his 1832 drama Stello, in which he calls the poet "la race toujours maudite par les puissants de la terre" (The race which will always be cursed by the powerful ones of the earth). Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud are considered typical examples. Lautréamont is also considered as a poète maudit.

    -Wikipedia

    July 23, 2010