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Rimbaud in Java: The Lost Voyage
In A Season in Hell, at the age of eighteen, the French poet Arthur Rimbaud predicted the rest of his 'My day is done; I'm leaving Europe. The sea air will burn my lungs; lost climes will tan my skin.' Three years later, in 1876, he joined the Royal Army of the Dutch Indies as an infantryman and sailed for Java, where he promptly deserted and fled into the jungle. It was the most enigmatic passage in his life crowded with puzzles and contrarieties.
In the first book devoted to Rimbaud's lost voyage to Asia, the novelist and critic Jamie James reviews everything that is known about the episode; from there, he imaginatively spirals into a reconstruction of what the poet must have seen and informed speculation about what he might have done, vividly recreating life in nineteenth-century Java along the way. Rimbaud in Java concludes with an inquiry into what the Orient represented in the poet's imagination, with a scandalous, amusing history of French orientalism. James' surprising book is a richly concentrated blend of biography, criticism and thought-travel, which brings into sharp focus this brief encounter between a great writer and a vanished world.
In the first book devoted to Rimbaud's lost voyage to Asia, the novelist and critic Jamie James reviews everything that is known about the episode; from there, he imaginatively spirals into a reconstruction of what the poet must have seen and informed speculation about what he might have done, vividly recreating life in nineteenth-century Java along the way. Rimbaud in Java concludes with an inquiry into what the Orient represented in the poet's imagination, with a scandalous, amusing history of French orientalism. James' surprising book is a richly concentrated blend of biography, criticism and thought-travel, which brings into sharp focus this brief encounter between a great writer and a vanished world.
- GenresNonfictionTravelHistory
136 pages, Paperback
First published October 16, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 4, 2012
A great read that weaves together Rimbaud's life and work, the state of colonialism, and the conditions in Dutch East Indies. It is a fascinating look at Rimbaud's journey for which there is hardly any documentary evidence. James is a compelling author who shares his obsession with Rimbaud page by page, until I was completely hooked. I read it in one sitting ... ok, I was on a 17 hour flight across the Pacific.
September 18, 2011
Zadie Smith gave a wonderful review of this in the October Harpers. Excerpt:
He is obsessively enthusiastic about Rimbaud, and so, like his fellow devotees, is profoundly, perhaps irrationally interested in whether or not Rimbaud smoked opium out there in the jungle, or had a lover, or took the Prins van Oranje steamer or a local phinisi schooner on his return journey — all of which it’s impossible to know. Such speculations fascinate James, and he weaves the possibilities into his understanding of the poetry, and of the man. If it all sounds too whimsical at first (it did to me, reading the blurb), you soon realize that the best reason to stick with Rimbaud in Java is not for the facts or the fantasy but for the spectacle of reading someone write beautifully about something he finds, well, beautiful.
July 27, 2016
Muy buen libro. Jamie James es un experto, un erudito especializado en Arthur Rimbaud que escribe directo, sencillo, por momentos poético. Se trata de un libro escrito con libertad formal y claridad temática. Se nota que la forma conserva un estilo periodístico, rápido, informativo. Deja luego de ser periodista cuando fundamenta como un historiador o un biógrafo. Los registros pasan por varios formatos, la música va cambiando, el efecto es agradable. El contenido se centra en el viaje perdido de Rimbaud a Java. El resto de su corta pero intensa vida está bastante bien documentado, pero ese viaje es puro silencio literario, epistolar, social. La ausencia de registros se le atribuye a que simplemente lo buscaba la policía. Por esa razón tuvo que ocultarse, perderse por un tiempo lejos de Europa. Era un francés desertor de un ejército de mercenarios al servicio de Holanda. Sin embargo, lo que realmente pasó en ese viaje perdido de Rimbaud se mueve solo mediante hipótesis sin evidencia. Ese espacio queda entonces librado a la imaginación. Es un espacio lúdico. James propone con solvencia epistemológica y coherencia estética una hipótesis que desarrolla con elegancia a lo largo del libro. Sin embargo, este recurso me generó entusiasmo pero no fervor. En algunos momentos me pareció que la narración se volvía demasiado queer -no tengo problemas con la identidad queer, mi posición es anarquista al respecto- pero su estética me resulta de un barroco excesivo. Es decir, se trata de un estilo que no me resultó agradable en todo momento. Creo que se puede entender esta objeción explorando una distinción. No es lo mismo el empleo del detalle para dar fuerza a una toma de posición como lo hacen los biógrafos anglosajones que se toman muy en serio el género biográfico (por ejemplo, Peter Ackroyd) que el abuso del detalle sólo por el fetichismo del detalle, por el sabor de las palabras exóticas en la boca. En la página 100 el autor dice “poner palabras en esa boquita”. Es cierto que Rimbaud llegó a su máximo desarrollo poético siendo muy joven, pero igual suena mal es frase queer. Otro punto que me contrarió es la desacreditación que ensaya James del libro Orientalism de Edward Said. James dice que Said dice que Occidente le dio forma a Oriente. Según James, ese otro mundo con sus colores, costumbres, religiones, no es producto de Occidente. No acepta que el colonialismo expansionista de Europa haya dado forma a buena parte de la idiosincrasia oriental. Pienso en el ferrocarril, el comercio, la alfabetización, la política. Por eso me parece al menos cuestionable la posición de James. En cualquier caso, creo que es un buen tema de discusión. El ensayo imaginado, deseado, fantaseado de Jamie James se lee como un homenaje, un elogio, una celebración del gran poeta maldito, adelantado, moderno-posmoderno antes de tiempo, contradictorio, humano. Rimbaud en Java me parece un muy buen libro, sobre todo una siempre saludable convocatoria a la discusión. Opino que se trata de una lectura muy recomendable.
February 2, 2014
A thrill, excellent. New insight of the poet.
November 22, 2020
This review is taken from my Instagram: @descanto
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud is a famous French poet and a globe-trotter whose love story particularly with Paul Verlaine is controversial. Rimbaud and Verlaine created a modern gay identity. Their public demonstration of their same-sex love was dangerous because in 1972, the crime of sodomy was punishable by life imprisonment which had suspended the death penalty.
Yet how many of us know that our Rimbaud has ever made it to Java?
The young Rimbaud enrolled himself in the Dutch Colonial Army and embarked with his battalion on the sailer steamer Prins van Oranje at the Dutch port of Den Helder, bound for Java. After a brief stay in Batavia, they sailed to Semarang, Central Java. They continued their journey with a train to the village of Tuntang; where they marched to their garrison: a small town named Salatiga.
Life was full of daily drills and all orders were delivered in Dutch. It happened until 15 August when a Jesuit priest named de Bruyn celebrated the feasts of the Assumption with a mass at the chapel of Dionysos of Salatiga. Rimbaud was not attending the mass: two weeks after arriving in Salatiga, he had deserted.
None knows until now how he could manage to escape. The only souvenirs of his desertion is an inventory of his possessions: a pair of gold-braid fourragères, a cape, three cravats, two shirts, two pairs of undershorts, a pair of long johns, two pairs of trousers, two tunics, a pair of European shoes, a toiletry kit and a wooden box.
Nobody knows his whereabouts from 15 August 1876 when he went missing in Salatiga, until NYE when his sister affirmed he had return to his mother's house in Charleville. Many theories about his movements in Java have been proposed but a part of Rimbaud's life in Java will remain as a mystery.
Jamie James through his book Rimbaud in Java: the Lost Voyage tried to unveil the desertion of our French poet. Nothing much to tell because Rimbaud only stayed here for a very short time. They even built a monument to memorise it and was sign by the French ambassador for Indonesia in 1997.
It's a great book and it will be greater if the narration style is not jumping around. Ah it is informative - give it a go!
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud is a famous French poet and a globe-trotter whose love story particularly with Paul Verlaine is controversial. Rimbaud and Verlaine created a modern gay identity. Their public demonstration of their same-sex love was dangerous because in 1972, the crime of sodomy was punishable by life imprisonment which had suspended the death penalty.
Yet how many of us know that our Rimbaud has ever made it to Java?
The young Rimbaud enrolled himself in the Dutch Colonial Army and embarked with his battalion on the sailer steamer Prins van Oranje at the Dutch port of Den Helder, bound for Java. After a brief stay in Batavia, they sailed to Semarang, Central Java. They continued their journey with a train to the village of Tuntang; where they marched to their garrison: a small town named Salatiga.
Life was full of daily drills and all orders were delivered in Dutch. It happened until 15 August when a Jesuit priest named de Bruyn celebrated the feasts of the Assumption with a mass at the chapel of Dionysos of Salatiga. Rimbaud was not attending the mass: two weeks after arriving in Salatiga, he had deserted.
None knows until now how he could manage to escape. The only souvenirs of his desertion is an inventory of his possessions: a pair of gold-braid fourragères, a cape, three cravats, two shirts, two pairs of undershorts, a pair of long johns, two pairs of trousers, two tunics, a pair of European shoes, a toiletry kit and a wooden box.
Nobody knows his whereabouts from 15 August 1876 when he went missing in Salatiga, until NYE when his sister affirmed he had return to his mother's house in Charleville. Many theories about his movements in Java have been proposed but a part of Rimbaud's life in Java will remain as a mystery.
Jamie James through his book Rimbaud in Java: the Lost Voyage tried to unveil the desertion of our French poet. Nothing much to tell because Rimbaud only stayed here for a very short time. They even built a monument to memorise it and was sign by the French ambassador for Indonesia in 1997.
It's a great book and it will be greater if the narration style is not jumping around. Ah it is informative - give it a go!
July 1, 2022
An adventure fitting for a bizarre character
In the year 1876, a 21 year old French poet Arthur Rimbaud completely abandoned writing and joined the Royal Army of the Dutch Indies as an infantryman and sailed for Java. After he landed there, however, he deserted the army, fled into the jungle, and then just disappeared.
Part biography, part historical investigation, “Rimbaud in Java” by Jamie James is the reconstruction of everything that is known about Rimbaud’s rogue voyage, the informed speculation about what he might have seen and done, which in turn paints a vivid picture of what life was like in 19th century Java, that include colonial rule, pre-Islamic culture, and magic.
It is also quite possibly the first history of Indonesia from the vantage point of the Dutch East India Company (or VOC).
According to James, Rimbaud’s life “changed in so many fundamental ways around the time of the Java voyage that it almost seems at times as though a doomed doppelgänger was magically substituted for the shining youth that captivated Paris in 1872, as in a weird tale by Edgar Allan Poe.”
Because, after few months missing Rimbaud did eventually resurfaces back in France, in his mother’s house tanned and bearded. He then went on to work in Scandinavia where he interpreted for a touring Danish circus, lived in a monastery for a while, became a stone quarry foreman in Cyprus, worked in the coffee trade business in Yemen, and briefly sold firearms in Ethiopia, before he died relatively young at the age of 37 not long after he got one of his legs amputated.
But if you think all of these are crazy, wait until you read chapter 1 on what he’s done before the age of 21, which includes being shot at, wrecking a marriage, experimenting with homosexuality, learning multiple languages, crossing the Alps on foot, being arrested and jailed, and at one time got so drunk and passed out in Austria he ended up being robbed and stripped of everything but his street map of Vienna.
Indeed, Arthur Rimbaud was a bizarre character, whose poetries went on to exert enormous influence on French literature, but whose incredibly random and daredevil life raises more questions than we can ever find answers.
And his few months adventure in Java could be key to figure out this man.
In the year 1876, a 21 year old French poet Arthur Rimbaud completely abandoned writing and joined the Royal Army of the Dutch Indies as an infantryman and sailed for Java. After he landed there, however, he deserted the army, fled into the jungle, and then just disappeared.
Part biography, part historical investigation, “Rimbaud in Java” by Jamie James is the reconstruction of everything that is known about Rimbaud’s rogue voyage, the informed speculation about what he might have seen and done, which in turn paints a vivid picture of what life was like in 19th century Java, that include colonial rule, pre-Islamic culture, and magic.
It is also quite possibly the first history of Indonesia from the vantage point of the Dutch East India Company (or VOC).
According to James, Rimbaud’s life “changed in so many fundamental ways around the time of the Java voyage that it almost seems at times as though a doomed doppelgänger was magically substituted for the shining youth that captivated Paris in 1872, as in a weird tale by Edgar Allan Poe.”
Because, after few months missing Rimbaud did eventually resurfaces back in France, in his mother’s house tanned and bearded. He then went on to work in Scandinavia where he interpreted for a touring Danish circus, lived in a monastery for a while, became a stone quarry foreman in Cyprus, worked in the coffee trade business in Yemen, and briefly sold firearms in Ethiopia, before he died relatively young at the age of 37 not long after he got one of his legs amputated.
But if you think all of these are crazy, wait until you read chapter 1 on what he’s done before the age of 21, which includes being shot at, wrecking a marriage, experimenting with homosexuality, learning multiple languages, crossing the Alps on foot, being arrested and jailed, and at one time got so drunk and passed out in Austria he ended up being robbed and stripped of everything but his street map of Vienna.
Indeed, Arthur Rimbaud was a bizarre character, whose poetries went on to exert enormous influence on French literature, but whose incredibly random and daredevil life raises more questions than we can ever find answers.
And his few months adventure in Java could be key to figure out this man.
January 28, 2019
I’m just a few hundred miles East of Java right now; a couple of days sailing away in 1876. After several seasons in Hell, Rimbaud makes his decision to join the Army of the Dutch Indies, sails for Java, deserts and runs to the jungle..escaping on the run like every good poet should always be.
There’s beautiful speculation here, with a true poetic license at work. No one really knows what happened in this period, and Rimbaud never really left us much at all in terms of memory. But there’s heat, dark tropical sex, strange flora and fauna, dreams and snatched lines of tumbling verse - a century on Rimbaud would haul on the bowline, raise the moonraker, and still recognise the place.
There’s beautiful speculation here, with a true poetic license at work. No one really knows what happened in this period, and Rimbaud never really left us much at all in terms of memory. But there’s heat, dark tropical sex, strange flora and fauna, dreams and snatched lines of tumbling verse - a century on Rimbaud would haul on the bowline, raise the moonraker, and still recognise the place.
February 20, 2019
Pada Mei 1876, Rimbaud terdaftar sebagai tentara bayaran Belanda dan berlayar ke Indonesia, untuk kemudian setelah sampai di Jawa ia malah didesertir dan kabur ke dalam hutan. Buku ini adalah bahasa tentang petualangan Rimbaud di Jawa, dengan subjudul "The Lost Voyage", karena memang satu momen hidup sang penyair ini hanya bisa kita ketahui sedikit. Banyak isi dari buku ini merupakan spekulasi, karena memang Rimbaud sendiri tak menuliskan catatan harian atau banyak tinggalan puisi soal perjalanannya di Jawa. Yang menarik bagi saya adalah di bab pengantar, karena saya sendiri masih belum banyak tahu soal Rimbaud.
April 22, 2024
“Rimbaud in Java” is a delightful book of speculative biography. The French poet Rimbaud signed up with the Dutch military and was shipped off to Java, but as soon as he got there, he deserted. Maybe he was just looking for free passage to an exotic destination, but it’s the one part of his life about which virtually nothing is known. As a result, the book is quite short, full of speculation about what Rimbaud MIGHT have done or seen while he was there. You learn a lot about Java in the 1870’s, and you learn a lot about Rimbaud, but you do not learn about Rimbaud in Java. Still, I loved this book.
May 14, 2022
This is my first encounter with the stories of Arthur Rimbaud. What an impressive poet and how my life somehow alligns with his. This book inspires me and would love to get to know about Rimbaud and his art! One thing that this book contains not just Rimbaud in Java but more here and there, be prepared with other stories that might not in context but gave a glance of context regarding his era, influences and influencings!
January 1, 2025
First book of 2025 and manifesting I am consistent on reading and updating! I enjoyed the author’s detailed depiction of Java in the 1870s and it was what kept me engaged. I thought the speculative history of Rimbaud was such a perfect choice to contextualize the period. Very much up my alley overall I really liked.
January 22, 2024
Where the details are sparse about the KNIL days of Rimbaud on Java, it is contrasted with the rich orientalist tradition of the day that Rimbaud may or may not have come in contact with. Surprisingly, relatively few parallels with Harar have been drawn, which may have lifted the narrative.
February 20, 2021
muy buena narrativa, histórico o ficción, para quienes nos encanta viajar es un buen libro que exalta la vida de ese Rimbaud aventurero y contestario.
January 22, 2022
Todos en Java y otros lugares, menos Rimbaud.
Un relato que hubiera deseado menos periodístico que poético. Buena gente igual, qué sé yo.
Un relato que hubiera deseado menos periodístico que poético. Buena gente igual, qué sé yo.
September 1, 2016
Since I saw the movie Total Eclips starring Leonardo Dicaprio as Rimbaud I would like to know a bit more about this 19th century French poet. Exciting to learn Rimbaud wrote his best (and actually all his poetry and master pieces) before the age of 21. Interesting to learn he travelled to Java during the period he broke totally with poetry.
The period he spend in Java has been very short. He joined the Dutch Colonial Army but deserted shortly after his arrival. About the travel back and forth, all in record time, is nearly nothing known. Information only comes from cold archives confirming his boarding the ship, arrival and desertion. All other very rare 'facts' come from later letters he wrote or some contemporary friends and family members who spoke to him after his return.
So actually, Rimbaus fans did virtually know nothing about his whereabouts and adventures and this book confirms that. So not a lot wiser and still no fan of poetry.
The period he spend in Java has been very short. He joined the Dutch Colonial Army but deserted shortly after his arrival. About the travel back and forth, all in record time, is nearly nothing known. Information only comes from cold archives confirming his boarding the ship, arrival and desertion. All other very rare 'facts' come from later letters he wrote or some contemporary friends and family members who spoke to him after his return.
So actually, Rimbaus fans did virtually know nothing about his whereabouts and adventures and this book confirms that. So not a lot wiser and still no fan of poetry.
April 14, 2013
Biografía de Rimbaud para nerds de Rimbaud. Qué hizo, qué vio, a dónde fue, qué drogas probó, a quién se cogió, etc. El autor propone que en "Una temporada en el infierno" Rimbaud predijo algunas características de su vida luego de abandonar Europa y la poesia.
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