About
Rimbaud:
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (
/ræmˈboʊ/ or
/ˈræmboʊ/;
French
pronunciation: [aʁtyʁ
ʁɛ̃bo]; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a
French poet. Born in
Charleville,
Ardennes,
he produced his works while still in his late teens—
Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant
Shakespeare"—and gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 20. As
part of the
decadent
movement, Rimbaud influenced modern literature, music, and arts, and
prefigured
surrealism.
Rimbaud was known to have been a
libertine and restless soul, travelling extensively
on three continents before his death from
cancer just after his 37th birthday.
Life
Family
and childhood (1854–1861)
Arthur Rimbaud was born into the provincial middle class of Charleville (now
part of
Charleville-Mézières) in the
Ardennes département in
northeastern France. He was the second child of a career soldier, Frédéric
Rimbaud, and his wife Marie-Catherine-Vitalie Cuif.
[2] His father, a
Burgundian of
Provençal extraction, rose from a simple recruit to
the rank of captain, and spent the greater part of his army years in foreign
service.
[3] Captain Rimbaud
fought in the
conquest
of Algeria and was awarded the
Légion d'honneur. The Cuif family was a
solidly established Ardennais family, but they were plagued by
bohemians; two of
Arthur Rimbaud's uncles from his mother's side were
alcoholics.
[4]
Captain Rimbaud and Vitalie married in February 1853; in the following
November came the birth of their first child, Jean-Nicolas-Frederick. The next
year, on 20 October 1854, Jean-Nicolas-Arthur was born. Three more children,
Victorine-Pauline-Vitalie (who died a month after she was born),
Jeanne-Rosalie-Vitalie and Frederique-Marie-Isabelle, followed. Arthur Rimbaud's
infancy is said to have been prodigious; a common myth states that soon after
his birth he had rolled onto the floor from a cushion where his nurse had put
him only to begin crawling toward the door.
[5] In a more realistic
retelling of his childhood, Mme Rimbaud recalled when after putting her second
son in the care of a nurse in
Gespunsart, supplying clean linen and a cradle for
him, she returned to find the nurse's child sitting in the crib wearing the
clothes meant for Arthur. Meanwhile, the dirty and naked child that was her own
was happily playing in an old salt chest.
[6]
Soon after the birth of Isabelle, when Arthur was six years old, Captain
Rimbaud left to join his regiment in
Cambrai and never returned.
[7] He had become
irritated by domesticity and the presence of the children while Madame Rimbaud
was determined to rear and educate her family by herself.
[8] The young Arthur
Rimbaud was therefore under the complete governance of his mother, a strict
Catholic, who raised him and his
older brother and younger sisters in a stern and religious household. After her
husband's departure, Mme Rimbaud became known as "Widow Rimbaud".
[7]
Schooling and teen years (1862–1871)
Fearing her children were spending too much time with and being
over-influenced by the neighbouring children of the poor, Mme. Rimbaud moved her
family to the Cours d'Orléans in 1862.
[9] This was a better
neighbourhood, and whereas the boys were previously taught at home by their
mother, they were then sent, at the ages of nine and eight, to the Pension
Rossat. For the five years that they attended school, however, their formidable
mother still imposed her will upon them, pushing for scholastic success. She
would punish her sons by making them learn a hundred lines of Latin verse by
heart, and if they gave an inaccurate recitation, she would deprive them of
meals.
[10] When Rimbaud
was nine, he wrote a 700-word essay objecting to his having to learn
Latin
in school. Vigorously condemning a classical education as a mere gateway to a
salaried position, Rimbaud wrote repeatedly, "I will be a rentier (one who lives
off his assets)".
[10] Rimbaud
disliked schoolwork and his mother's continued control and constant supervision;
the children were not allowed to leave their mother's sight, and, until the boys
were sixteen and fifteen respectively, she would walk them home from the school
grounds.
[11]
As a boy, Rimbaud was small, brown-haired and pale with what a childhood
friend called "eyes of pale blue irradiated with dark blue—the loveliest eyes
I've seen".
[13] When he was
eleven, Rimbaud had his
First Communion; despite his intellectual and
individualistic nature, he was an ardent Catholic like his mother. For this
reason he was called "sale petit
Cagot"
("snotty little prig") by his fellow schoolboys.
[14] He and his brother
were sent to the Collège de Charleville for school that same year. Until this
time, his reading was confined almost entirely to the
Bible,
[15] but he also
enjoyed fairy tales and stories of adventure such as the novels of
James Fenimore
Cooper and
Gustave
Aimard.
[16] He became a highly
successful student and was head of his class in all subjects but sciences and
mathematics. Many of his schoolmasters remarked upon the young student's ability
to absorb great quantities of material. In 1869 he won eight first prizes in the
school, including the prize for Religious Education, and in 1870 he won seven
firsts.
[17]
When he had reached the third class, Mme Rimbaud, hoping for a brilliant
scholastic future for her second son, hired a tutor, Father Ariste Lhéritier,
for private lessons.
[18] Lhéritier
succeeded in sparking the young scholar's love of Greek and Latin as well as
French classical literature. He was also the first person to encourage the boy
to write original verse in both French and Latin.
[19] Rimbaud's first
poem to appear in print was "Les Étrennes des orphelins" ("The Orphans' New
Year's Gift"), which was published in the 2 January 1870 issue of
Revue pour
tous.
[20] Two weeks after
his poem was printed, a new teacher named
Georges Izambard arrived at the Collège de
Charleville. Izambard became Rimbaud's literary mentor and soon a close accord
formed between professor and student and Rimbaud for a short time saw Izambard
as a kind of older brother figure.
[21] At the age of
fifteen, Rimbaud was showing maturity as a poet; the first poem he showed
Izambard, "Ophélie", would later be included in anthologies as one of Rimbaud's
three or four best poems.
[22] When the
Franco-Prussian
War broke out, Izambard left Charleville and Rimbaud became despondent. He
ran away to Paris with no money for his ticket and was subsequently arrested and
imprisoned for a week. After returning home, Rimbaud ran away to escape his
mother's wrath.
From late October 1870, Rimbaud's behaviour became outwardly provocative; he
drank alcohol, spoke rudely, composed scatological poems, stole books from local
shops, and abandoned his characteristically neat appearance by allowing his hair
to grow long.
[23] At the same time
he wrote to Izambard about his method for attaining poetical transcendence or
visionary power through a "long, intimidating, immense and rational derangement
of all the senses. The sufferings are enormous, but one must be strong, be born
a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet."
[24] It is rumoured
that he 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").
Another poem,
Le cœur volé ("The
Stolen Heart"), is often interpreted as a description of him being raped by
drunken
Communard soldiers, but this is unlikely since
Rimbaud continued to support the Communards and wrote poems sympathetic to their
aims.
[25]
Life with
Verlaine (1871–1875)
Rimbaud was encouraged by friend and office employee Charles Auguste Bretagne
to write to
Paul
Verlaine, an eminent
Symbolist poet, after letters to other poets
failed to garner replies.
[26] Taking his advice,
Rimbaud sent Verlaine two letters containing several of his poems, including the
hypnotic, gradually shocking "Le Dormeur du Val" (The Sleeper in the Valley), in
which certain facets of Nature are depicted and called upon to comfort an
apparently sleeping soldier. Verlaine, who was intrigued by Rimbaud, sent a
reply that stated, "Come, dear great soul. We await you; we desire you," along
with a one-way ticket to Paris.
[27] Rimbaud arrived in
late September 1871 at Verlaine's invitation and resided briefly in Verlaine's
home.
[28] Verlaine, who was
married to the seventeen-year-old and pregnant Mathilde Mauté, had recently left
his job and taken up drinking. In later published recollections of his first
sight of Rimbaud, Verlaine described him at the age of seventeen as having "the
real head of a child, chubby and fresh, on a big, bony rather clumsy body of a
still-growing adolescent, and whose voice, with a very strong Ardennes accent,
that was almost a dialect, had highs and lows as if it were breaking."
[29]
Rimbaud and Verlaine began a short and torrid affair. Whereas Verlaine had
likely engaged in prior
homosexual experiences, it remains uncertain
whether the relationship with Verlaine was Rimbaud's first. During their time
together they led a wild, vagabond-like life spiced by
absinthe and
hashish.
[30] They scandalized
the Parisian literary coterie on account of the outrageous behaviour of Rimbaud,
the
archetypical enfant terrible, who throughout this period
continued to write strikingly
visionary verse. The stormy relationship between
Rimbaud and Verlaine eventually brought them to London in September 1872,
[31] a period about
which Rimbaud would later express regret. During this time, Verlaine abandoned
his wife and infant son (both of whom he had abused in his alcoholic rages).
Rimbaud and Verlaine lived in considerable poverty, in
Bloomsbury and in
Camden Town, scraping a living mostly from
teaching, in addition to an allowance from Verlaine's mother.
[32] Rimbaud
spent his days in the
Reading Room of the
British Museum where
"heating, lighting, pens and ink were free."
[32] The
relationship between the two poets grew increasingly bitter.
By late June 1873, Verlaine grew frustrated with the relationship and
returned to Paris, where he quickly began to mourn Rimbaud's absence. On 8 July,
he telegraphed Rimbaud, instructing him to come to the Hotel Liège in
Brussels; Rimbaud complied at once.
[33] The
Brussels reunion went badly: they argued continuously and Verlaine took refuge
in heavy drinking.
[33] On the
morning of 10 July, Verlaine bought a revolver and ammunition.
[33] That
afternoon, "in a drunken rage," Verlaine fired two shots at Rimbaud, one of them
wounding the 18-year-old in the left wrist.
[33]
Rimbaud dismissed the wound as superficial, and did not initially seek to
file charges against Verlaine. But shortly after the shooting, Verlaine (and his
mother) accompanied Rimbaud to a
Brussels railway station, where Verlaine "behaved as
if he were insane." His bizarre behavior induced Rimbaud to "fear that he might
give himself over to new excesses,"
[34] so he
turned and ran away. In his words, "it was then I [Rimbaud] begged a police
officer to arrest him [Verlaine]."
[34]
Verlaine was arrested for attempted murder and subjected to a humiliating
medico-legal examination.
[35] He was
also interrogated with regard to both his intimate correspondence with Rimbaud
and his wife's accusations about the nature of his relationship with
Rimbaud.
[35] Rimbaud
eventually withdrew the complaint, but the judge nonetheless sentenced Verlaine
to two years in prison.
[35]
Rimbaud returned home to Charleville and completed his prose work
Une Saison en Enfer ("A Season in
Hell")—still widely regarded as one of the pioneering examples of modern
Symbolist writing—which made various allusions to his life with Verlaine,
described as a
drôle de ménage ("domestic farce") with his
frère
pitoyable ("pitiful brother") and
vierge folle ("mad virgin") to whom
he was
l'époux infernal ("the infernal groom"). In 1874 he returned to
London with the poet
Germain Nouveau[36] and put together
his groundbreaking
Illuminations.
Travels
(1875–1880)
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.
[38] 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, or that the recklessness itself was his
font of creativity. Others suggest he sought to become rich and independent to
afford living one day as a carefree poet and man of letters.
[citation
needed] He continued to travel extensively in Europe,
mostly on foot.
In May 1876 he enlisted as a soldier in the Dutch Colonial Army
[39] to travel free of
charge to
Java in the
Dutch East Indies
(now
Indonesia) where four months
later he deserted and fled into the jungle, eventually returning incognito to
France by ship.
[40] At the official
residence of the mayor of
Salatiga,
a small city at the foot of a dormant volcano located 46 km south of
Semarang, capital of Central Java
Province, there is a marble plaque stating that Rimbaud was once settled at the
city. As a deserter, Rimbaud would have faced a Dutch firing squad if caught.
[41]
In December 1878, Rimbaud arrived in
Larnaca,
Cyprus, where he worked for a construction company as a
foreman at a stone quarry.
[42] In May of the
following year he had to leave Cyprus because of a fever, which on his return to
France was diagnosed as
typhoid.
Abyssinia
(1880–1891)
In 1880 Rimbaud finally settled in
Aden,
Yemen as a main employee in the Bardey
agency,
[43] going on to run
the firm's agency in
Harar,
Ethiopia. In 1884 his "Report on the
Ogaden" was presented and published by the
Société de Géographie in
Paris.
[44] In the same year
he left his job at Bardey's to become a merchant on his own account in Harar,
where his commercial dealings notably included coffee and weapons. In this
period, he struck up a close friendship with the Governor of Harar,
Ras
Makonnen, father of future Ethiopian Emperor
Haile Selassie.
[45]
Death (1891)
In February 1891, Rimbaud developed what he initially thought was arthritis
in his right knee.
[46] It failed
to respond to treatment and became agonisingly painful, and by March, the state
of his health forced him to prepare to return to France for treatment.
[46] In Aden,
Rimbaud consulted a British doctor who mistakenly diagnosed tubercular
synovitis and recommended immediate
amputation.
[47] Rimbaud
delayed until 9 May to set his financial affairs in order before catching the
boat back to France.
[47] On
arrival, he was admitted to hospital — the Hôpital de la Conception, in
Marseille — where his right leg was
amputated on 27 May.
[48] The post-operative
diagnosis was cancer.
[47]
After a short stay at his family home in
Roche, from 23 July to 23 August,
[49] he attempted to
travel back to Africa, but on the way, his health deteriorated, and he was
readmitted to the same hospital in Marseille where the amputation had been
performed and spent some time there in great pain, attended by his sister
Isabelle. Rimbaud died in Marseille on 10 November 1891 at the age of 37 and was
interred in Charleville.
[50]
Poetry
In May 1871, aged 16, Rimbaud wrote two letters explaining his poetic
philosophy. The first was written May 13 to Izambard, in which Rimbaud
explained:
I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm
working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm
almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by
the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must
be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.[51][52]
Rimbaud said much the same in his second letter, commonly called the
Lettre du voyant ("Letter of the Seer"). Written May 15—before his first
trip to Paris—to his friend Paul Demeny, the letter expounded his revolutionary
theories about poetry and life, while also denouncing most poets that preceded
him. Wishing for new poetic forms and ideas, he wrote:
I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a
seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every
form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the
poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable
torture during which he needs all his faith and superhuman strength, and during
which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed – and
the great learned one! – among men. – For he arrives at the unknown! Because he
has cultivated his own soul – which was rich to begin with – more than any other
man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the
understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die charging
through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come;
they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed![53][54]
Rimbaud expounded the same ideas in his poem, "Le bateau ivre" ("
The
Drunken Boat"). This hundred-line poem tells the tale of a boat that breaks
free of human society when its handlers are killed by "Redskins"
(
Peaux-Rouges). At first thinking that it drifts where it pleases, it
soon realizes that it is being guided by and to the "poem of the sea". It sees
visions both magnificent ("the awakening blue and yellow of singing
phosphorescence",
"l'éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs",) and
disgusting ("nets where in the reeds whole Leviathan was rotting"
"nasses /
Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan). It ends floating and washed
clean, wishing only to sink and become one with the sea.
Archibald
MacLeish has commented on this poem: "Anyone who doubts that poetry can say
what prose cannot has only to read the so-called
Lettres du Voyant and
'Bateau Ivre' together. What is pretentious and adolescent in the
Lettres
is true in the poem—
unanswerably true."
[55]
Rimbaud's poetry influenced the
Symbolists,
Dadaists and
Surrealists, and later writers adopted not only some
of his themes, but also his inventive use of form and language. French poet
Paul Valéry stated that
"all known literature is written in the language of
common sense—except
Rimbaud's."
[56]
Cultural legacy
Rimbaud's poetry, as well as his life, made an indelible impression on 20th
century writers, musicians and artists.
Pablo Picasso,
Dylan Thomas,
Allen Ginsberg,
Vladimir Nabokov,
Bob Dylan,
Patti Smith,
Giannina Braschi,
Léo Ferré,
Henry Miller,
Van Morrison and
Jim Morrison have been influenced by his poetry
and life.
[56] Rimbaud's
life has been portrayed in several films. Italian filmmaker
Nelo Risi's 1970 film
Una
stagione all'inferno ("A Season in Hell") starred
Terence Stamp as Rimbaud
and Jean Claude Brialy as Paul Verlaine. In 1995 Polish filmmaker
Agnieszka Holland
directed
Total Eclipse, which was based on a
play by Christopher Hampton who also wrote the screenplay. The film starred
Leonardo DiCaprio
as Rimbaud and
David
Thewlis as Paul Verlaine. He is also the protagonist of the opera
Rimbaud, ou le fils
du soleil (1978) by Italian composer
Lorenzo Ferrero.
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