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Arthur Rimbaud: Presence of an Enigma
The life of Arthur Rimbaud, a man who gave up literature at the age of 25, remains as legendary as his poetic work. From his first writings, his stormy relationship with the poet Paul Verlaine and his bohemian existence in Paris and London, to his life as a wandering trader in Arabia and Yemen, Jean-Luc Steinmetz delivers a biography which seeks to bring out the spiritual and logical continuity of Rimbaud's life-long pursuit of desire.
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 13, 2025
Parce que pour lire du Rimbaud, il faut comprendre Rimbaud.
C'est complet et efficace. Chaque parcours de sa vie est analysé dans une perspective biographique mais aussi littéraire, en soulignant particulièrement le génie de Rimbaud, omniprésent dans la culture et dans la poésie moderne.
C'est complet et efficace. Chaque parcours de sa vie est analysé dans une perspective biographique mais aussi littéraire, en soulignant particulièrement le génie de Rimbaud, omniprésent dans la culture et dans la poésie moderne.
November 17, 2010
For a comprehensive biography of Rimbaud, it's either this one or Graham Robb's book—which came out around the same time, incidently, in the early 2000s. Enid Starkie's early biography is also a must-read but the later works are better overall simply due to the greater wealth of source material these authors had availible. Most everything you'd wish to know about the mecurial poet's life is here—at least insofar as to what can be known. So much remains a mystery, but then that's half of Rimbaud's continued allure, is it not? Overall, this is a good book but at times is not as flowing and entertaining as Robb's biography, however, it is a stronger book than the Robb volume in its information and presentation. Really though, you can't go wrong with either Steinmetz or Robb and the hardcore Rimbaud fan or scholar needs both books.
July 3, 2014
Disclaimer: I have not posted a review of this book. I have posted a few comments, quite as if I were entering certain of my responses into a reading journal.
This is the third bio of AR that I've read in the last two or three months - quite enough for the present, I would say. I find it interesting, however, how differently I read this particular volume. It seems to me at this moment that while I read Robb and Nicholls on AR, I was acquiring information and formulating my own sense of AR and attempting to sketch a trajectory of his life from the bits of evidence and the results of rather inconclusive analyses and interpretations that these biographers presented. As I read Steinmetz, I found myself looking for information, interpretations in his narrative that enhanced, amplified, confirmed, amended, refuted, etc., my ideas of the trajectory of AR's life and the sources of the energy and drive that propelled his life along that trajectory. So it seems to me that I was better prepared to grapple with Steinmetz's account than I had been heretofore.
So what did I find? Not very much of interest, I'm sorry to say.
The great virtue of Steinmetz's narrative is the force and clarity of certain of his descriptions of events and circumstances of AR's life. For example, his pages on the months and days of AR's last illness are riveting and horrifying. I have no idea why AR consented to endure the final stages of terminal bone cancer. But he did.
Nonetheless, my impression is that Steinmetz offered me nothing that served either to enhance or correct my understanding either of the man or his life. Steinmetz indulged a habit that I find highly annoying. He drops here and there altogether vacuous phrases - for which he offers not the first word of explanation - and then abandons them for other words that refer to nothing specific. For example, he writes (p. 169): "a certain pledge to existence would later unravel on a bed in Marseilles, burned out from an overdose of the absolute." [What is the "absolute"? How much of it constitutes an overdose? And by the way, how does one imbibe that particular quantity?] Then this "theme" disappears from Steinmetz's pages. Then there's this annoyance (p. 222): "after this time ... Rimbaud no longer believes in literature. He forsakes this 'practice' for other, more effective ones that permit him to be 'absolutely modern'." [S. attaches no reference to this quote.] It escapes me altogether how any competent biographer of AR could even begin to think that this man would ever formulate and/or adopt a set of conventions (to which one could attach a label) as obligatory standards of behavior. And again, (p. 225): "Now here is Rimbaud the realist ... who wishes to go to Greece .. with the hope of finding a modern kind of job: making soap, for example!" [Is the making of soap one of mankind's recent achievements?] From that point the word "modern" does not appear again in Steinmetz's bio. Then there's "Rimbaud, hardened in his own created image," without so much as one word of rationale for his claim that AR formulated and projected a concept of self and then proceeded to make life decisions, to behave as if that image/concept were some sort of standard to which he had to conform. Non-sense. Then there's this: "It is difficult to determine his true nature. (p. 346)", "the real Rimbaud," "Rimabud's identity remains a secret. (p. 348)" Quite as if self and identify were fixed entities to which one might attach specific attributes, as if one might measure the atomic weight of one molecule of identity and the "real" self.
Most annoying of all, however, is the book's subtitle: "Presence of an Enigma." Steinmetz appears to use enigma in two senses, one of which is dubious at best. In certain passages he associates "enigma" with his assessment of the state of biographical information regarding one event or another in AR's life, referring specifically to gaps in the record. That absence characterizes our knowledge of AR's biography, the uncertainties that inhere in any conclusions we draw from the incomplete and often conflicting, unclear, conflicting information in the collection that remains to us. I can't think how gaps in the record render AR enigmatic at all. The state of our knowledge is not an attribute of AR. In other passages Steinmetz uses "enigmatic" to characterize desires, drives in AR that would remain inexplicable even if we were completely informed, if the record were entirely complete. Yet Steinmetz doesn't give reasons for his characterization. "Enigmatic" for whom? Why "enigmatic"? What exactly places a reasonably certain understanding of AR and the trajectory of his life beyond our grasp? Steinmetz doesn't say. He simply lets the word dangle. I have no patience whatever with this sort of parlor game.
So what am I left with? Much clearer images of certain places, circumstances and events in AR's life than either Robb or Nicholls enabled. Not much else - except for the laugh at myself that I laughed at being taken in by that notorious publisher's ploy - an intriguing - but ultimately vacuous - subtitle.
This is the third bio of AR that I've read in the last two or three months - quite enough for the present, I would say. I find it interesting, however, how differently I read this particular volume. It seems to me at this moment that while I read Robb and Nicholls on AR, I was acquiring information and formulating my own sense of AR and attempting to sketch a trajectory of his life from the bits of evidence and the results of rather inconclusive analyses and interpretations that these biographers presented. As I read Steinmetz, I found myself looking for information, interpretations in his narrative that enhanced, amplified, confirmed, amended, refuted, etc., my ideas of the trajectory of AR's life and the sources of the energy and drive that propelled his life along that trajectory. So it seems to me that I was better prepared to grapple with Steinmetz's account than I had been heretofore.
So what did I find? Not very much of interest, I'm sorry to say.
The great virtue of Steinmetz's narrative is the force and clarity of certain of his descriptions of events and circumstances of AR's life. For example, his pages on the months and days of AR's last illness are riveting and horrifying. I have no idea why AR consented to endure the final stages of terminal bone cancer. But he did.
Nonetheless, my impression is that Steinmetz offered me nothing that served either to enhance or correct my understanding either of the man or his life. Steinmetz indulged a habit that I find highly annoying. He drops here and there altogether vacuous phrases - for which he offers not the first word of explanation - and then abandons them for other words that refer to nothing specific. For example, he writes (p. 169): "a certain pledge to existence would later unravel on a bed in Marseilles, burned out from an overdose of the absolute." [What is the "absolute"? How much of it constitutes an overdose? And by the way, how does one imbibe that particular quantity?] Then this "theme" disappears from Steinmetz's pages. Then there's this annoyance (p. 222): "after this time ... Rimbaud no longer believes in literature. He forsakes this 'practice' for other, more effective ones that permit him to be 'absolutely modern'." [S. attaches no reference to this quote.] It escapes me altogether how any competent biographer of AR could even begin to think that this man would ever formulate and/or adopt a set of conventions (to which one could attach a label) as obligatory standards of behavior. And again, (p. 225): "Now here is Rimbaud the realist ... who wishes to go to Greece .. with the hope of finding a modern kind of job: making soap, for example!" [Is the making of soap one of mankind's recent achievements?] From that point the word "modern" does not appear again in Steinmetz's bio. Then there's "Rimbaud, hardened in his own created image," without so much as one word of rationale for his claim that AR formulated and projected a concept of self and then proceeded to make life decisions, to behave as if that image/concept were some sort of standard to which he had to conform. Non-sense. Then there's this: "It is difficult to determine his true nature. (p. 346)", "the real Rimbaud," "Rimabud's identity remains a secret. (p. 348)" Quite as if self and identify were fixed entities to which one might attach specific attributes, as if one might measure the atomic weight of one molecule of identity and the "real" self.
Most annoying of all, however, is the book's subtitle: "Presence of an Enigma." Steinmetz appears to use enigma in two senses, one of which is dubious at best. In certain passages he associates "enigma" with his assessment of the state of biographical information regarding one event or another in AR's life, referring specifically to gaps in the record. That absence characterizes our knowledge of AR's biography, the uncertainties that inhere in any conclusions we draw from the incomplete and often conflicting, unclear, conflicting information in the collection that remains to us. I can't think how gaps in the record render AR enigmatic at all. The state of our knowledge is not an attribute of AR. In other passages Steinmetz uses "enigmatic" to characterize desires, drives in AR that would remain inexplicable even if we were completely informed, if the record were entirely complete. Yet Steinmetz doesn't give reasons for his characterization. "Enigmatic" for whom? Why "enigmatic"? What exactly places a reasonably certain understanding of AR and the trajectory of his life beyond our grasp? Steinmetz doesn't say. He simply lets the word dangle. I have no patience whatever with this sort of parlor game.
So what am I left with? Much clearer images of certain places, circumstances and events in AR's life than either Robb or Nicholls enabled. Not much else - except for the laugh at myself that I laughed at being taken in by that notorious publisher's ploy - an intriguing - but ultimately vacuous - subtitle.
March 22, 2008
this is probably my favorite rimbaud biography ive read... tho it seems i say that with each passing book... however, what makes this one different is the author's persistent resistance to make broad and particular strokes about rimbaud's life based on his writing. Too often, Steinmetz points out (and rightly so), biographers get rapt in their own obsession, usually due to some preoccupation with his writing, and thus bring to light yet another image of this enigmatic and brilliant individual only to obscure him into myth. i got that sense for sure with enid starkie's predilection for alchemy via rimbauds poem 'voyelles'. graham robb's more recent attempt also falls prey to this- at the least with his too-specific connection between rimbaud's childhood and the poem 'le bateau ivre'. his poems are used like some holy sign posts from which to fit his life around.
at last, in this one rimbaud's life is carefully construed, rich with detail and, of course, the aptly relayed mysteries- but in a way that you truly feel a kinship with rimbaud instead of another ride on his jock, as it were.
Each biography has its own merits and makes me excited and fascinated by rimbaud all over again. i wouldn't hesitate to recommend any one especially if you dont know anything about him. but for a thoughtful and sincere picture of his mortal life this is the standout.
at last, in this one rimbaud's life is carefully construed, rich with detail and, of course, the aptly relayed mysteries- but in a way that you truly feel a kinship with rimbaud instead of another ride on his jock, as it were.
Each biography has its own merits and makes me excited and fascinated by rimbaud all over again. i wouldn't hesitate to recommend any one especially if you dont know anything about him. but for a thoughtful and sincere picture of his mortal life this is the standout.
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April 12, 2008His words, even in translation, are astouding. He influened French poetry and it's not been the same since. Tom
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews