POETICS OF PAUL VERLAINE’S BOOK OF ESSAYS "LES POÈTES MAUDITS" ("ACCURSED POETS")
The article describes the basic poetics parameters of the book of essays “Les Poètes maudits” (“Accursed Poets”) (1888) of the French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). The paper introduces the concept “impressionistic literary portrait” and shows the cardinal transformations of genre poetics in “Les Poètes maudits”, such as the reduction of the biographical element, the change of the three-part structure of a literary portrait, the establishment of associative relations between the quoted works. The researcher identifies and justifies the importance of the dominating essay component of a portrait, reveals the reason for conscious incompleteness of literary portraits.