Arthur Rimbaud

"Rimbaud" redirects here. For other uses see Rimbaud (disambiguation)

Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (October 20, 1854 – November 10, 1891) was a French poet, born in Charleville.

Life and work

He was born into the rural middle class of Charleville (now part of Charleville-Mézières) in the Ardennes département in northeastern France. As a boy Rimbaud was a restless but brilliant student. By the age of fifteen, he had won many prizes and composed original verses and dialogues in Latin.

In 1870 his teacher Georges Izambard became Rimbaud's first literary mentor, and his original verses in French began to improve rapidly. He frequently ran away from home and may have briefly joined the Paris Commune of 1871, which he portrayed in his poem L'Orgie parisienne ou Paris se repeuple (The Parisian Orgy or Paris Repopulates). At 19, he ran away from the literary world for a stint abroad as a coffee merchant and part-time gun-runner. He may have been raped by drunken Communard soldiers (his poem "Le Cœur supplicié" Tortured Heart" suggests so). By then he had become an anarchist, started drinking and amused himself by shocking the local bourgeois with his shabby dressing and long hair. At the same time he wrote to Izambard and Paul Démeny about his method for attaining poetical transcendence or visionary power through a "long, immense and rational derangement of all the senses" ("Les lettres du Voyant" Letters of the Seer"). He returned to Paris in late September 1871 at the invitation of the eminent Parnassian poet Paul Verlaine (after Rimbaud had sent him a letter containing several samples of his work) and resided briefly in Verlaine's home. Verlaine, who was bisexual, promptly fell in love with the sullen, blue-eyed, overgrown (5 ft 10 in), light-brown-haired adolescent. They became lovers and led a dissolute, vagabond-like life rocked by absinthe and hashish. They scandalized the Parisian literary elite on account of the outrageous behaviour of Rimbaud, the archetypical enfant terrible, and their pederasty. Throughout this period he continued to write strikingly visionary, modern verses.

Rimbaud's and Verlaine's stormy homosexual relationship took them to London in 1872, after Verlaine left his wife and infant son (both of whom he treated badly in his alcoholic rages).

In July 1873, Rimbaud committed himself to journey to Paris with or without Verlaine. In a drunken rage, Verlaine shot Rimbaud, one of the two shots striking him in the left wrist. Rimbaud considered the wound superficial and at first did not have Verlaine charged. After this violent attack Verlaine and his mother accompanied Rimbaud to a Brussels train station, where "Verlaine behaved as if he were mad". This made Rimbaud "fear that he might give himself over to new excesses", so he turned and ran away. In his words, "it was then I (Rimbaud) asked a police officer to arrest him (Verlaine)." Verlaine was arrested and subjected to a humiliating medico-legal examination, consisting of the perusal of their compromising correspondence and the accusations of Verlaine's wife about the "nature" of their friendship. Rimbaud eventually withdrew the complaint, but the judge sentenced Verlaine to two years in prison. Rimbaud returned home to Charleville and completed his Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) in prose, widely regarded as one of the pioneering instances of modern Symbolist writing and a description of that "drôle de ménage" (odd partnership) life with Verlaine, his "pitoyable frère" ("pitiful brother"), the "vierge folle" ("mad virgin") of whom he was "l'époux infernal" ("the hellish husband"). In 1874 he returned to London with the poet Germain Nouveau and assembled his controversial Illuminations, which includes the first two French poems in free verse.

Later life (1875-1891)

Rimbaud and Verlaine met for the last time in March 1875, in Stuttgart, Germany, after Verlaine's release from prison and his conversion to Catholicism. By then Rimbaud had given up writing and decided on a steady, working life; some speculate he was fed up with his former wild living, while others suggest he sought to become rich and independent to afford living one day as a carefree poet and man of letters. He continued to travel extensively in Europe, mostly on foot. In the summer of 1876 he enlisted as a soldier in the Dutch Army to travel free of charge to Java (Indonesia) where he promptly deserted, returning to France by ship. He traveled to Cyprus and in 1880 finally settled in Aden as a main employee in the Bardey agency. He had several native women as lovers and for a while he lived with an Ethiopian mistress. In 1884 he quit the job at Bardey's and became a merchant on his own in Harar, Ethiopia. He made a small fortune as a gun-runner. Rimbaud developed right knee synovitis which degenerated into a carcinoma, and the state of his health forced him to return to France on May 9, 1891, where his leg was amputated on May 27. Rimbaud died in Marseille on November 10, 1891, at age 37.

Influence

His influence in modern literature, music and art has been pervasive. His life in Paris was dramatized in a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio called Total Eclipse (1995).

Rimbaud influenced the following artists, among others: French poets in general, the Surrealists, the Beat Poets, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, William S. Burroughs, Bob Kaufman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Hugo Pratt, Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos, Sérgio Godinho, Klaus Kinski, Jack Kerouac, Patti Smith, Bruce Chatwin, Penny Rimbaud, Jim Morrison, John Hall, Bob Dylan, Richard Hell, Joe Strummer, John Lennon, Rozz Williams, David Wojnarowicz, and many more. Van Morrison wrote "Tore Down a la Rimbaud." Horror writer Thomas Ligotti has shown a fondness for Rimbaud's work.

Bob Dylan refers to Rimbaud in his song "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" from Blood on the Tracks: "Situations have ended sad, / Relationships have all been bad. / Mine've been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud. / But there's no way I can compare / All them scenes to this affair, / You're gonna make me lonesome when you go."

London-based Rock and Roll band, The Medicine Show not only make reference to the poet in their name, but chief songwriter, John Hall, openly states Rimbaud as an inspiration in his own lyrics.

French musician Hector Zazou's 1992 album Sahara Blue uses Rimbaud's poems as lyrics for 11 of the 12 tracks on the album, and features guest appearances by artists like David Sylvian, Anneli Drecker, John Cale, and Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance.

British electronica duo Frou Frou take their name from a Rimbaud poem.

In the song "Ghetto Defendant" on the album Combat Rock by The Clash, poet Allen Ginsberg refers to Rimbaud and the Paris Commune.

Works

Bibliography

Œuvres complètes, correspondance, d'Arthur Rimbaud de Louis Forestier - Éd. Robert Laffont, collection Bouquins - 1998, 607 pages ;
Un ardennais nommé Rimbaud de Yann Hureaux - Éd. La Nuée Bleu / L'Ardennais - 217 pages ;
Arthur Rimbaud, de Jean-Luc Steinmetz - Éd Tallandier - 486 pages ;
Rimbaud Ailleurs, photographies contemporaines et entretiens de Jean-Hugues Berrou, textes et documents anciens de Jean-Jacques Lefrère et Pierre Leroy, avec la collaboration de Maurice Culot - Éd. Fayard - 303 pages.
Arthur Rimbaud 'Déposition de Rimbaud devant le juge d'instruction (12 July 1873)'.

External links

Arthur Rimbaud's Life and Poetry - French and English
Arthur Rimbaud Free Freedom, a documentary film 90 min. by Jean-Philippe Perrot
ATHAR, on the tracks of Rimbaud in Ethiopia-Djibouti-Yemen, documentaire 52 min. by Jean-Philippe Perrot " A reference!"
The Drunken Boat Website
The Crux of Rimbaud's Poetics: Essay on The Drunken Boat
Rimbaud's Biography and Photos from the underground
Language Is A Virus Rimbaud's Systematic Derangement of the Senses
Voyelles / Vowels a poem by Arthur Rimbaud
Rimbaud In Harar, Ethiopia
Rimbaud, le poète (1870-1875) : a Rimbaud's French website
The Arthur Rimbaud Forum A virtual stage for artists, as well as a symposium for scholars, to express and advance innovative and unconventional ideas freely, — that they may inspire, and energize the eons that are incubating within one another.
Jeune ménage an extract from "Les Illuminations", with a musical composition listenable on-line.]
New translations of Rimbaud's poetry at failbetter.com