Dear readers, I return to the continued series of the founders of modern poetry. To sum up: after having tackled the initiating movements (Romanticism, Parnasianism, Symbolism, etc.) and their main exponents, we come to the considered "father" of poetic modernity, Charles Baudelaire (see) and Paul Verlaine (see). We enter with this post to consider Arthur Rimbaud, his work and capital contributions to modern poetry. I must advance that Rimbaud's work radically changed poetry, so that for readers of poetry (amateur or specialized), and even more so if they are writers, I believe that the reading of his work is indispensable.
I will try to present a biographical sketch of Rimbaud, aware that his life - complex and difficult - is essential to approach his poetry.
Arthur Rimbaud was born in a French village, Charleville, in 1854 and died in Marseille in 1891. His father was an infantry captain, so he was estranged from his wife and five children. After the birth of the last daughter, Captain Rimbaud abandons his family and never returns.
It is said that the mother was a rigid person with both the education of her children and their behavior, which may have led to rejection. Rimbaud is known to have stood out at the Charleville municipal school as a brilliant student, but already with feelings of rebellion.
In 1870, thanks to his teacher, Georges Izambard, he became acquainted with important literary works, such as The Miserable, by Victor Hugo. His first poem, "Orphans' Christmas bonuses", published in the magazine Revue pour Tous, is recognized that year, when he was 15 years old. The poetic influence at that time was Parnasian; he therefore asked Théodore de Banville, one of the main representatives of Parnasianism, by letter, to publish three of his poems, which were never included in the movement's magazine.
He wanted to go to Paris and experience the revolutionary airs of the time, and thus put aside the problematic relations with his mother, which were worsened by the rebellious nature of the young Rimbaud, who, it is said, "went out into the streets of Charleville carrying posters of "Die God"". During this time Rimbaud ran away from home several times to reach Paris.
As is to be expected in a rebellious spirit, his poetic writing distanced itself from Romantic and Parnassian poetry and identified itself with that of Charles Baudelaire, whom he praised as "the king of poets".
Having no answer for the publication of his poems, Rimbaud addressed two letters to Paul Verlaine, who was a recognized figure among Parnasians and Symbolists, with poems, among which is his famous "The Drunk Ship". Verlaine was surprised by the young poet's talent, invited him to come to Paris and sent him a train ticket. Rimbaud, attending the invitation, traveled and stayed with Verlaine and his wife, who was seventeen years old and pregnant.
In Paris he was very well received by French writers, including Victor Hugo, and even lived with some of them. But his provocative behaviour, already at the age of 17, caused him problems. Rimbaud lived a dissipated life, consuming wormwood and hashish. His behavior as a "terrible child" produced scandals in the literary elite. While he continued to write his avant-garde poems.
Rimbaud began a stormy love affair with Verlaine, which led him to abandon his wife and young son. They traveled to London in September 1872, where they lived amidst much poverty. The relationship between them deteriorated. In 1873 Verlaine fled to Brussels, but was followed by Rimbaud. In the midst of heated discussions, Verlaine, in a state of drunkenness, shot Rimbaud in the wrist. Verlaine was arrested and, aggravated by moral considerations about the relationship between two men and the wife's accusations, despite Rimbaud's withdrawal of the complaint, was sentenced to two years in prison.
Rimbaud returned to Charleville and confined himself to the family farm to write A season in Hell, recognized as one of the foundational works of modern poetry. In 1874 he returned to London and finished writing his Illuminations, another key work of modernity.
After abandoning writing, Rimbaud traveled throughout Europe, mainly on foot. In 1876, he enlisted as a soldier in the Dutch colonial army to travel to Indonesia. Then he traveled to Cyprus, and in 1880 he settled in Yemen, as an employee of a major agency. There he had several native lovers. In 1884 he left that job and became a merchant in Harar, present-day Ethiopia. He made a small fortune as an arms dealer, until his right knee developed an ailment that developed into cancer. He returned to France in 1891, where his leg was amputated. He died, six months later, at the age of thirty-seven.
***
General aspects about Rimbaud
A young provincial, but with a rebelliousness and precocious lucidity, who wrote his transcendent work in just four years, and then withdrew and became completely mute, could be a very tight (and perhaps unjust) synthesis of Rimbaud. As scholars like Balakian say, Rimbaud was a "man of the street," "out in the open," who "prefers bright sunrises and luminosity. Yet concealment ended up being his destiny.
In life his work was kept in an incomplete ignorance. His impulse was due to the diffusion that meant the edition of his complete poetry in 1892, thanks to Verlaine. However, the value of Rimbaud's writing remained unknown until 1920, when it was rediscovered by the Surrealists.
We will continue the discussion on Rimbaud in my next post
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud
Balakian, Anna (1969). The symbolist movement. Spain: Edit. Guadarrama.
Todó, Lluís (1987). The Symbolism. Spain. Edit. Montesinos.
Written by @josemalavem
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Hello @josemalavem
I don't read much poetry.
But I feel weakness for the biographies.
I think this poet had a short but intense life.
Intense lives that leave marks at an early age.
I will seek to read some of his poems.
So I will have a more complete optics about your post.
Thanks for a good job.
Thanks for reading, @mariita52. Indeed, Rimbaud's life is one of the most intense of the poets after Romanticism, and that marked, to a great extent, the consideration between poetry and life onwards: he who had spoken of the imperative "To change life".
My articles in @ADSactly do not usually stop so much at the biographical, I only place what I consider most relevant (in the case of Rimbaud it is difficult to choose). There are many biographies of his work. I recommend a book by the French poet and critic Yves Bonnefoy entitled Rimbaud by himself.
Greetings.
Thank you @josemalavem for your kind response and your recommendation.
I read Rimbaud pretty recently. And I did it because a brother of mine who was a military and decided to make better use of his time and read as much as possible, came across a reference to the genious poet ina book by Borges. He called me and begged me to get him a book by this man who had produced his best work by age 20.
I felt embarrassed that I not read him and rushed to find something. I ended up copying some poems from the internet and printing them for my brother. That was better than nothing.
I was certainly impressed by the precocity and the tragedy of such a genious.
I think that the poet represents the best example of the human tragedy of self-exploration and historical awareness. Putting all romantic notions aside, when we approach our societies with a critical eye we get things like this.
from Bad Blood in his Season in Hell
We can substitute Gauls for any other people and we'll get a similar evaluation.
I think Rimbaud was tormented by human nature and what society had been trying to do with it. We seem to be wired for perdition but we are expected to be angels.
Grateful for your reading and comment, @hlezama, with personal reference to that approach to Rimbaud. Rimbaud is a kind of lone star in the immense firmament, a kind of nova.
The reading of his work - complex, difficult, dense, but fundamental - is an irreplaceable experience, particularly that of A season in hell.
As I just published a first part (of a work that will be expanded soon), I was only able to deal with basic biographical aspects. The consideration of his work and his contributions will come in the following posts.
Greetings.
Of course, I am looking forward to the rest of the series. A poet like Rimbaud deserves a thorough treatment and I know very few bloggers in this platform can do that like you.
Rimbaud is one of those unique poets, who are only born every century. So enlightened so early, he was almost a spark in this world. He is the essence of modernity and rebellion. Proof of that rebellion is his work, but also his life, alongside Verlaine, both passionate, aggressive and crazy. The famous "banished angel" would write: "Love must be reinvented", he said in Una temporada en el Infierno, the famous prose poem he dedicated to his lover. Thank you for such an excellent post, @josemalavem
My gratitude for your comment, @nancybriti. Yes, Rimbaud condensed in his life and work the radical signs and omens of modernity. That's why he was one of the "gods" of Surrealism. I hope to cover the expectations about this capital writer in the next posts. Greetings.
Hi, @adsactly!
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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!
I found that in the wikipedia entry for Rimbaud.
I'm a poet, but I sure would not describe what I do as this kind of torment. I was trying to find out WHY he stopped writing. Was it the end of his relationship to Verlaine? Was it just too much torture to go on? Did he stop using heroin and lose his poetic abilities? Or did he just run out of things to say, perhaps desirous of a less tormented life?
I have never read any of his work I'm afraid, but now I'm interested.
Thanks for writing this.
Grateful for your attention, @owasco. The fragment he quotes belongs to a letter Rimbaud wrote to his friend Paul Demeny in 1871, when he was barely 20 years old. It is the well-known "Letter of the Seer". This text is a key piece in the reflection on modern poetry.
Aspects related to several of the very valid questions it presents will be the subject of future posts.
Rimbaud's work is a decisive milestone in the course of modern poetry; not said by me, but by prominent critics. One of them, Yves Bonnefoy, stated in one of his studies: "To understand Rimbaud, let us read Rimbaud".
Greetings.
@josemalavem, Some poets holds the Futuristic essence and in my opinion people who hold the Futuristic essence stay ignored at that time but over the period of time their writings make sense and spreads more influence.
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Agree with you, @chireerocks. There is usually in the great writers (and artists in general) an advance that makes them little compatible with their time; that which you call "futuristic". So what they write (in content and form) will only be recognized in the future. Rimbaud himself somehow had it in mind, and he says something in his Seer's Letter: "Poetry will no longer set the pace of action; it will be ahead of us", "The inventions of the unknown require new forms". I hope to be able to discuss these aspects in subsequent post on Rimbaud's work.
Thank you so much for sharing more insights.
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I really enjoyed this. I love the story of Verlaine and Rimbaud, first having heard it in a Dylan lyric, which I can't help hearing when I read your post.
I really liked your comment, @riverflows. Thank you for reminding me of that song by Bob Dylan and his mention of the relationship between Verlaine and Rimbaud; it is not by chance titled "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go". Of the relationship between the two perhaps you can speak only a little later, but through your own texts. Greetings.