Rimbaud: Thief of Fire

Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), the marvelous boy-poet of French literature, established in a few short years his reputation for hallucinative verbal creation, only to give up poetry at the age of 19.
The tempestuous life of Arthur Rimbaud his relations with Paul Verlaine, his idea of the poet as seer and of the derangement of the senses are all part of the legend. His literary fame depends primarily upon the poem Le Bateau ivre and the remarkable volumes called Les Illuminations and Une Saison en Enfer. His abandonment of art and "the ancient parapets of Europe" has made Rimbaud a symptomatic and fascinating figure of alienation in the modern world.
A brilliant student in his native town of Charleville, Rimbaud published his first known French verses (Les Étrennes des orphelins) in La Revue pour tous for Jan. 2, 1870. Other early poems were Sensation, Ophélie, Credo in Unam (later called Soleil et chair), and Le Dormeur du val. Les Chercheuses de poux is a memorable example of beauty created from what seems at first a most unpromising subject; and Voyelles, with its coloring of the vowels ("A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels…"), aroused considerable interest in the aspect of synesthesia known as audition colorée (colored hearing).
On May 15, 1871, Rimbaud wrote his famous Lettre du voyantto a friend, Paul Demeny: "I say that one must be a seer, make himself a seer. The Poet makes himself a seer by a long, immense and reasoned derangement of all the senses… . He exhausts in himself all the poisons, to preserve only their quintessences… . For he arrives at the unknown …."
In late September 1871 Rimbaud joined Verlaine in Paris, bringing with him the manuscript of Le Bateauivre, one of the most remarkable poems of the century. It describes the adventures of a boat left free to drift down American rivers after its crew have been murdered by screaming Native Americans. The boat's progress is traced from its first exaltation at its freedom to its awakening on the stormy "poem of the sea," through a wild tumult of snows and tides and suns and hurricanes, amid vast imagery from the beginning of the world, until it becomes at last only a waterlogged plank, nostalgic for Europe and no longer worth salvaging. The poem is a marvel of hallucinative evocation and seems in a way to foreshadow Rimbaud's own strange life.
The turbulent relationship between Verlaine and Rimbaud ended finally with Verlaine in prison for shooting his friend in the wrist and with Rimbaud disoriented and restless. Rimbaud had Une Saison en Enfer printed in Belgium in 1873 and distributed a few copies, but he did not even claim the rest of the edition. Les Illuminations did not appear until Verlaine published the volume in 1886. Meanwhile, Rimbaud had given up poetry forever.
Critics have called Rimbaud one of the creators of free verse for such poems as Marine and Mouvement in Les Illuminations. Rimbaud had written in Une Saison en Enfer: "I believed I could acquire supernatural powers. Well! I must bury my imagination and my memories!" He apparently wrote nothing more after his farewell to letters at the age of 19.
Rimbaud began writing prolifically in 1870. That same year, his school shut down during the Franco-Prussian War, and he attempted to run away from Charleville twice but failing for lack of money. He wrote to the poet Paul Verlaine, who invited him to live in Paris with him and his new wife. Though Rimbaud’s moved out soon after, as a result of his harsh manners, he and Verlaine became lovers. Shortly after the birth of his son, Verlaine left his family to live with Rimbaud.
During their affair, which lasted nearly two years, they associated with the Paris literati and traveled to Belgium and England. While in Brussels in 1873, a drunk Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the hand. Verlaine was imprisoned, and Rimbaud returned to Charleville, where he wrote a large portion of Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell). The book was published in 1873 in Brussels, but the majority of the copies sat in the printer’s basement until 1901 because Rimbaud could not pay the bill.
Rimbaud wrote all of his poetry in a span of about five years, concluding around the year 1875. His only writing after 1875 survives in documents and letters. In his correspondence with family and friends, Rimbaud indicates that he spent his adulthood in a constant struggle for financial success. He spent the final twenty years of his life working abroad, and he took jobs in African towns as a colonial tradesman.
In 1891, Rimbaud traveled to Marseilles to see a doctor about a pain in his knee. The doctors were forced to amputate his leg, but the cancer continued to spread. Rimbaud died on November 10, 1891, at the age of thirty-seven. Paul Verlaine published his complete works in 1895.

[@robertmdel]

That was extraordinary.

[@mohaail3152]

Thank you for your sharing this. Great literary works.

[@user-gn5bn3ed4k]

Can't wait!!!!!

[@josephanthony2865]

This is an awesome bit of fragments. Other than a season in hell and the drunken boat what other poems did you conglomerate here? A beautiful reading!

[@KnowledgeVariable]

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