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Rimbaud: A Biography
Unknown beyond the avant-garde at the time of his death, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) has been one of the most destructive and liberating influences on twentieth-century culture. During his lifetime he was a bourgeois-baiting visionary, and the list of his known crimes is longer than the list of his published poems. But his posthumous career is even more saint to symbolists and surrealists; poster child for anarchy and drug use; gay pioneer; a major influence on artists from Picasso to Bob Dylan.
588 pages, Paperback
Published December 17, 2001
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About the author
Graham Robb
26 books156 followersGraham Macdonald Robb FRSL (born June 2, 1958) is a British author.
Robb was born in Manchester and educated at the Royal Grammar School Worcester and Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Modern Languages. He earned a PhD in French literature at Vanderbilt University.
He won the 1997 Whitbread Book Award for best biography (Victor Hugo) and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Rimbaud in 2001. In 2007, he won the Duff Cooper Prize for The Discovery of France.
On April 28, 2008 he was awarded the £10,000 Ondaatje Prize by the Royal Society of Literature in London for The Discovery of France.
Robb was born in Manchester and educated at the Royal Grammar School Worcester and Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Modern Languages. He earned a PhD in French literature at Vanderbilt University.
He won the 1997 Whitbread Book Award for best biography (Victor Hugo) and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Rimbaud in 2001. In 2007, he won the Duff Cooper Prize for The Discovery of France.
On April 28, 2008 he was awarded the £10,000 Ondaatje Prize by the Royal Society of Literature in London for The Discovery of France.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
November 28, 2022
Insanely readable, a biography worth reading and re-reading. Rimbaud is endlessly fascinating, although of course it is more entertaining to read about the terrible manchild than to have been part of the scene of writers and artists and have him be so dismissive of your work, so brutally frank about your lack of talent.
Such perverse and uncanny snobbery!
Rimbaud the teenage poetry upstart morphs into Rimbaud the arms dealer in Africa. What is more amazing: his early talent or the fact he gave up poetry, walked away from it?
Such perverse and uncanny snobbery!
Rimbaud the teenage poetry upstart morphs into Rimbaud the arms dealer in Africa. What is more amazing: his early talent or the fact he gave up poetry, walked away from it?
October 8, 2014
There will never be a single biography that does Rimbaud total justice, and that's as it should be being the mystery man he was. Rimbaud lived his entire life on the "edge", be it the edge of meaning or the edge of civilization and "civilized" behavior; and because of this he himself didn't have the time or desire for looking back or specifying in retrospect what he was up to. He was always riding the wave of the Present Tense (or even ahead of it, in the never-attained Future) as long as he lived, full of contradictions only to those who want(ed) to figure him out.
Robb presents Rimbaud and his 19th c. in a very earthy, gritty, smelly, fecal, lice-infested way via a prose that is itself kind of coarse and craggy. He doesn't have much patience with the "angelic" Rimbaud all wrapped up in metaphysical transcendence and arcane possibly occult theories. His Rimbaud is a much bigger drinker, drug user, and buggeree than I previously thought, and a vile prankster (jerking off in his housemate's glass of milk, poisoning dogs, shitting on a table during a party and running his hands through it, etc.). But his Rimbaud is also a much better businessman with an iron core of practicality and shrewdness.
His Rimbaud, even through his later miseries, was a supremely detached individual, someone whose youthful pronouncement "I is another" was a precept he carried with him throughout his life, so that even while mired in his most pessimistic bitterness after losing his leg was still able to view himself with detachment and maintain an extremely cynical sense of humor.
This is as complete a biography as one could want, enriched by scholarship and a real feel for the times and places, and free of the "Rimbaud worship" I've read in other accounts; but Robb's Rimbaud is not my Rimbaud, which is how it should be, because in many ways Rimbaud will forever be an at least partially closed book. Some of us will be puzzling over him forever.
Robb presents Rimbaud and his 19th c. in a very earthy, gritty, smelly, fecal, lice-infested way via a prose that is itself kind of coarse and craggy. He doesn't have much patience with the "angelic" Rimbaud all wrapped up in metaphysical transcendence and arcane possibly occult theories. His Rimbaud is a much bigger drinker, drug user, and buggeree than I previously thought, and a vile prankster (jerking off in his housemate's glass of milk, poisoning dogs, shitting on a table during a party and running his hands through it, etc.). But his Rimbaud is also a much better businessman with an iron core of practicality and shrewdness.
His Rimbaud, even through his later miseries, was a supremely detached individual, someone whose youthful pronouncement "I is another" was a precept he carried with him throughout his life, so that even while mired in his most pessimistic bitterness after losing his leg was still able to view himself with detachment and maintain an extremely cynical sense of humor.
This is as complete a biography as one could want, enriched by scholarship and a real feel for the times and places, and free of the "Rimbaud worship" I've read in other accounts; but Robb's Rimbaud is not my Rimbaud, which is how it should be, because in many ways Rimbaud will forever be an at least partially closed book. Some of us will be puzzling over him forever.
May 17, 2014
I must state at the outset that my comments here do not constitute a review of Graham Robb’s biography of Rimbaud – not in any strict sense that I know, not entirely, that is. I, for one, am unable to form any conception of another life that might approach a clear and accurate approximation of past reality by grappling with only one biography. The reasons are many, and I need not recount them here. In the present case my remarks arise from a sense of the man that is a concoction of ingredients from at least three sources: Robb’s Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Nicholl’s, Somebody Else, and the elements of a biographical narrative that I formulate in response to absences and silences in these other sources. This is so, because I want most of all to end my encounter with Rimbaud, once and for all time, I hope, with a tenuous grasp of the sort of person he was and a rather definite - if speculative and erroneous - outline of the trajectory of this very interesting man’s life.
Regarding Arthur Rimbaud – my confection.
AR was, of course, a highly intelligent, imaginative and verbally gifted individual, who was born to parents of the worst possible sort – his father an absence, his mother - grasping, avaricious, narrow, mean-spirited, bigoted, cracker filth of the lowest order, a joyfully sadistic killer of souls. A woman of wealthy peasant stock, just the type that the most fervent of Joseph Stalin’s propagandists have depicted in their harshest caricatures of kulaks – except that in the case of Madame R. caricature is realistic representation.
So after papa abandons his family – small wonder – mama fixes her considerable energy and attention upon “raising” four powerless little ones, of whom AR is the second in birth order. And how does he cope? How does he manage to forefend soul-murder and save a vestige of himself for another day?
First he uses his considerable powers of observation, which extreme necessity renders even more acute, to take the measure of the very dangerous world he inhabits, which he knows is fixed and settled, a world he is utterly powerless to alter or amend. And in his early years he learns that in his very dangerous world the self is vulnerable to extermination, extinction – in every imaginable way.
And in such a world how does one survive? By hypocrisy, lies, cunning – always. But cunning is multiform. One develops the capacity to generate forms and approaches to cunning as circumstances require, given one’s own powers, which change as one – and the Other – ages, in response to threats that pervade one’s immediate environment.
As a child, AR – like Margret Fuller – went into hiding, in compartments. In one persona he becomes an outwardly compliant little boy, an altogether brilliant student, etc. He cultivates his verbal gifts, which he deployed with genius. He also develops an inviolate private sphere of the mind. “He,” the real Rimbaud retreats and hides there. What happens in that private sphere is AR’s development and preservation of self who thinks his own thoughts fearlessly – in secret. He also cultivated boundless rage, which he employed, when he could a bit later in life, in order to destroy all convention, all constraints to the self. Every threat – a target, which he engaged relentlessly, unremittingly, without concern for consequences and without remorse. Every form of extreme behavior he ever enacted is also a precise reflection (and measure) of the abuse he endured.
And so he lives a life devoted to preservation of a vulnerable and fragile self, whom he is always already at the point of loosing.
But this loss is also multiform. First one can loose oneself to bourgeois convention – and so one asserts the self in ways that defy, undermine bourgeois convention, with the intent of obliterating convention altogether, or if not that, then demonstrating in one’s own life that convention is simply that – the work of persons of a rather low, contemptible sort, certainly not the order that some absolute, transcendent being creates and imposes on man. But then, over time, life in extremis, at least of this particular life in extremis, becomes familiar, known – rather tedious, boring, and well, conventional in its own way. In Nicholl’s brilliant insight (p. 149), “A sense of disappointment and defeat, of the entropic dwindling of the unknown into familiarity”. Life that at first enacted a sense of the authentic self becomes conventional, scripted, a litany, and a threat. A threatening sense of self under siege, now under attack from another quadrant, builds.
It may well be that only persons who have been the targets of sadistic killers of souls can grasp the blinding terror and rage that such circumstances evoke. In any case, it is terrible and leads one to desperate responses. And so AR jettisons entirely whatever past his current way of life has accumulated – to the point of loosing memory of it. He escapes, seeks the unknown, a new life in unfamiliar extremes, yet once more, to retrieve his “actual nature” (Nicholls, p. 152) from circumstances that had become routine, engulfing and obliterative of the self. He escapes to “traffic in the unknown,” always in the harshest, physically most demanding and injuring conditions at the limits of human survival – Alpine blizzards, the most squalid ghettos of the urban underclasses that London or Brussels possess, jungles and deserts of other sorts, at the very farthest possible remove from a miserly peasant’s sordid, squalid, mucky little world – and LaMother, the Mouth of Darkness – where she will never seek him – now that he is gone. And the cycle returns – and returns.
In the end, AR becomes his mother in certain ways – a rather grasping, cunning trader and coffee merchant in Africa. But with this telling and vital difference – he is well known for his eager assimilation into the cultures and societies he inhabits; he is continually and unstintingly generous to those at the edges of survival. They did not need to solicit anything. AR sees, observes, understands and gives open-handedly.
And then he dies.
Regarding Graham Robb's Biography.
I'm not quite sure why it is the case that biographers seem reluctant to delineate the trajectory of their subject's life - how does it all cohere? how do even the discontinuities connect? What evidence allows one to present such a conclusion? To what evidentiary standard does that evidence rise? [I wrote more extensively on this question in my remarks on Nicholl's "Somebody Else.} I can't say that Robb doesn't try, in part, but then again, I'm not entirely sure that he does, at least not in any straightforward way that I can detect. He seems content with rather vague notions. I am not. But then, that's my problem, not Robb's, apparently.
In any case, I'll outline my take-aways, and I'm not entirely sure at this point, how much of this is Robb's, or Nicholl's, and how much of this is my elaborations on Robb's/Nicholl's conclusions and how much is my own filling in of blanks. [It's interesting, isn't it, how our sense of other persons is such a collation and confection of this, that and the other thing.]
It seems to me that throughout his life - Rimbaud's project was himself - to the exclusion, I think it fair to say, of almost any other consideration or value. It also seems to me that one might see him working out this project in three different phases of his life.
First there was the task of surviving his childhood - as I've outlined above. This focus on himself at this stage was inseparable from self-preservation into adolescence and adulthood. And I also think that he must have realized that, in parent-child relationships of the kind he survived, power shifts from the parent to the child over time - a little bit every day - as both the parent and the child age.
Then comes the second phase, when AR had come to realize that he had the power to smash his compartmented life. It might mean that he would have to endure every sort of privation, but when he left home for the first time, he also signaled (1) his willingness to endure whatever must be endured to live his life "from the inside out," as I say, irrespective of consequences, (2) his confidence, I suspect, that he could "succeed," which in this context meant, smashing constraints and in the process, "change life," and (3) his confidence that he could manage/manipulate his mother. And of course, his assessments were correct. He succeeds - and poetry was merely a tool, a means that he laid aside with not so much as a second thought when he didn't need it any longer or find it particularly useful to achieve his larger purposes. Just not worth the bother.
At some point in his late adolescence he enters a third phase of his life - most effectively presented in Nicholls, "Somebody Else". In this phase, he tires of all this smashing of convention and constraint. It had become rather routine, and well - tedious and boring, I'd say. I would say that he began to think that all this smashing was really rather easy for him, didn't present much of a challenge, actually. He realizes that there is much more in him than he had already discovered. Then he came to need an understanding of the circumstances under which life would become hard for him, really, really hard, as hard as any he could survive. Was there in him the stuff of survival under the harshest conditions that he could contrive to encounter? Here again we see in operation the sort of questions/motivations familiar to him since birth - survival and self-assertion. Perhaps this need was instinctual by that point in his life. Perhaps it didn't occur to him that life could be lived in any other way.
And then he devoted the years remaining to him and all his extraordinary energy, vitality and altogether towering, preternatural, strength of will, to discovering exactly what he was made of. This segment of his project is entirely clear in Nicholl's account of Rimbaud's life in Africa.
And then he died - in bed - from cancer of the bone, it appears. Disease and the unimaginable suffering he endured in his last months turned him into somebody else altogether - but that person wasn't AR.
Regarding Arthur Rimbaud – my confection.
AR was, of course, a highly intelligent, imaginative and verbally gifted individual, who was born to parents of the worst possible sort – his father an absence, his mother - grasping, avaricious, narrow, mean-spirited, bigoted, cracker filth of the lowest order, a joyfully sadistic killer of souls. A woman of wealthy peasant stock, just the type that the most fervent of Joseph Stalin’s propagandists have depicted in their harshest caricatures of kulaks – except that in the case of Madame R. caricature is realistic representation.
So after papa abandons his family – small wonder – mama fixes her considerable energy and attention upon “raising” four powerless little ones, of whom AR is the second in birth order. And how does he cope? How does he manage to forefend soul-murder and save a vestige of himself for another day?
First he uses his considerable powers of observation, which extreme necessity renders even more acute, to take the measure of the very dangerous world he inhabits, which he knows is fixed and settled, a world he is utterly powerless to alter or amend. And in his early years he learns that in his very dangerous world the self is vulnerable to extermination, extinction – in every imaginable way.
And in such a world how does one survive? By hypocrisy, lies, cunning – always. But cunning is multiform. One develops the capacity to generate forms and approaches to cunning as circumstances require, given one’s own powers, which change as one – and the Other – ages, in response to threats that pervade one’s immediate environment.
As a child, AR – like Margret Fuller – went into hiding, in compartments. In one persona he becomes an outwardly compliant little boy, an altogether brilliant student, etc. He cultivates his verbal gifts, which he deployed with genius. He also develops an inviolate private sphere of the mind. “He,” the real Rimbaud retreats and hides there. What happens in that private sphere is AR’s development and preservation of self who thinks his own thoughts fearlessly – in secret. He also cultivated boundless rage, which he employed, when he could a bit later in life, in order to destroy all convention, all constraints to the self. Every threat – a target, which he engaged relentlessly, unremittingly, without concern for consequences and without remorse. Every form of extreme behavior he ever enacted is also a precise reflection (and measure) of the abuse he endured.
And so he lives a life devoted to preservation of a vulnerable and fragile self, whom he is always already at the point of loosing.
But this loss is also multiform. First one can loose oneself to bourgeois convention – and so one asserts the self in ways that defy, undermine bourgeois convention, with the intent of obliterating convention altogether, or if not that, then demonstrating in one’s own life that convention is simply that – the work of persons of a rather low, contemptible sort, certainly not the order that some absolute, transcendent being creates and imposes on man. But then, over time, life in extremis, at least of this particular life in extremis, becomes familiar, known – rather tedious, boring, and well, conventional in its own way. In Nicholl’s brilliant insight (p. 149), “A sense of disappointment and defeat, of the entropic dwindling of the unknown into familiarity”. Life that at first enacted a sense of the authentic self becomes conventional, scripted, a litany, and a threat. A threatening sense of self under siege, now under attack from another quadrant, builds.
It may well be that only persons who have been the targets of sadistic killers of souls can grasp the blinding terror and rage that such circumstances evoke. In any case, it is terrible and leads one to desperate responses. And so AR jettisons entirely whatever past his current way of life has accumulated – to the point of loosing memory of it. He escapes, seeks the unknown, a new life in unfamiliar extremes, yet once more, to retrieve his “actual nature” (Nicholls, p. 152) from circumstances that had become routine, engulfing and obliterative of the self. He escapes to “traffic in the unknown,” always in the harshest, physically most demanding and injuring conditions at the limits of human survival – Alpine blizzards, the most squalid ghettos of the urban underclasses that London or Brussels possess, jungles and deserts of other sorts, at the very farthest possible remove from a miserly peasant’s sordid, squalid, mucky little world – and LaMother, the Mouth of Darkness – where she will never seek him – now that he is gone. And the cycle returns – and returns.
In the end, AR becomes his mother in certain ways – a rather grasping, cunning trader and coffee merchant in Africa. But with this telling and vital difference – he is well known for his eager assimilation into the cultures and societies he inhabits; he is continually and unstintingly generous to those at the edges of survival. They did not need to solicit anything. AR sees, observes, understands and gives open-handedly.
And then he dies.
Regarding Graham Robb's Biography.
I'm not quite sure why it is the case that biographers seem reluctant to delineate the trajectory of their subject's life - how does it all cohere? how do even the discontinuities connect? What evidence allows one to present such a conclusion? To what evidentiary standard does that evidence rise? [I wrote more extensively on this question in my remarks on Nicholl's "Somebody Else.} I can't say that Robb doesn't try, in part, but then again, I'm not entirely sure that he does, at least not in any straightforward way that I can detect. He seems content with rather vague notions. I am not. But then, that's my problem, not Robb's, apparently.
In any case, I'll outline my take-aways, and I'm not entirely sure at this point, how much of this is Robb's, or Nicholl's, and how much of this is my elaborations on Robb's/Nicholl's conclusions and how much is my own filling in of blanks. [It's interesting, isn't it, how our sense of other persons is such a collation and confection of this, that and the other thing.]
It seems to me that throughout his life - Rimbaud's project was himself - to the exclusion, I think it fair to say, of almost any other consideration or value. It also seems to me that one might see him working out this project in three different phases of his life.
First there was the task of surviving his childhood - as I've outlined above. This focus on himself at this stage was inseparable from self-preservation into adolescence and adulthood. And I also think that he must have realized that, in parent-child relationships of the kind he survived, power shifts from the parent to the child over time - a little bit every day - as both the parent and the child age.
Then comes the second phase, when AR had come to realize that he had the power to smash his compartmented life. It might mean that he would have to endure every sort of privation, but when he left home for the first time, he also signaled (1) his willingness to endure whatever must be endured to live his life "from the inside out," as I say, irrespective of consequences, (2) his confidence, I suspect, that he could "succeed," which in this context meant, smashing constraints and in the process, "change life," and (3) his confidence that he could manage/manipulate his mother. And of course, his assessments were correct. He succeeds - and poetry was merely a tool, a means that he laid aside with not so much as a second thought when he didn't need it any longer or find it particularly useful to achieve his larger purposes. Just not worth the bother.
At some point in his late adolescence he enters a third phase of his life - most effectively presented in Nicholls, "Somebody Else". In this phase, he tires of all this smashing of convention and constraint. It had become rather routine, and well - tedious and boring, I'd say. I would say that he began to think that all this smashing was really rather easy for him, didn't present much of a challenge, actually. He realizes that there is much more in him than he had already discovered. Then he came to need an understanding of the circumstances under which life would become hard for him, really, really hard, as hard as any he could survive. Was there in him the stuff of survival under the harshest conditions that he could contrive to encounter? Here again we see in operation the sort of questions/motivations familiar to him since birth - survival and self-assertion. Perhaps this need was instinctual by that point in his life. Perhaps it didn't occur to him that life could be lived in any other way.
And then he devoted the years remaining to him and all his extraordinary energy, vitality and altogether towering, preternatural, strength of will, to discovering exactly what he was made of. This segment of his project is entirely clear in Nicholl's account of Rimbaud's life in Africa.
And then he died - in bed - from cancer of the bone, it appears. Disease and the unimaginable suffering he endured in his last months turned him into somebody else altogether - but that person wasn't AR.
October 30, 2012
I don't think there are many people in this world that have the ability to simutaneously allure and repulse, but based on Robb's biography, I would assign Rimbaud to this category.
I read biographies because in many instances it's the only way to feel as if you're meeting someone you can never meet - because of life circumstances or, of course, death. When I hear of someone that I find interesting, I make it a point to find out more about him/her and sometimes the only way to do that is to read/watch his/her work (if that's an option) or find a solid biography of that individual's life. Of course, much of the supposition of that individual's personality has to be drawn from acquaintances, correspondence, and choices. So we make a lot of inferences, but I think Robb does a bang-up job of presenting a very human idea of what Rimbaud was like. Despite the fact that he's obviously a fan of Rimbaud's work, he never parks Rimbaud on a pedestal.
We have a tendency to romanticize individuals after death, to somehow make them more saint-like or pure than they could have ever been in life. With the posthumous success of Rimbaud's poetry, I think many individuals have done just that - freezing Rimbaud at the tender age of 17. Forever trapping him in the role of boy poet and Verlaine's tempestuous lover. And it is precisely that typecasting that I think Rimbaud spent the remainder of his life trying to desert. I think he would loathe that his legacy has less to do with those actions he was actually proud to have accomplished - his explorer's spirit - than his adolescent years as a troubled poet.
Robb definitely leaves us with the distinct impression that Rimbaud was always pushing some boundary, somehow striving to achieve more, to expand upon limits of what society deemed worthwhile or normal. It was precisely because of this that he always seemed a step ahead of his peers and colleagues and was misunderstood, misrepresented, and unable to be fully appreciated for his contributions - both to literature and to exploration. And I think he struggled between his disdain for man for not being able to ascend to his level of forward thinking and chose the life of a loner, a life of mystery, a life in which it always seemed he was looking down on everyone from a lofty height.
Rimbaud's terseness and unpleasantness are conflicted with stories from acquaintances regarding his verbosity and pleasantness. However, I do think that Rimbaud had the ability to play many different roles as it suited his needs. Above all else, he was adaptable and resourceful.
There is something so tough about Rimbaud - which is evidenced by his correspondence, his demanding nature, and his forceful "requests" to family and friends when he needed help. Yet there is something very vulnerable at the heart of Rimbaud and that quality is what has drawn people to his work and life even over 100 years after his death.
I read biographies because in many instances it's the only way to feel as if you're meeting someone you can never meet - because of life circumstances or, of course, death. When I hear of someone that I find interesting, I make it a point to find out more about him/her and sometimes the only way to do that is to read/watch his/her work (if that's an option) or find a solid biography of that individual's life. Of course, much of the supposition of that individual's personality has to be drawn from acquaintances, correspondence, and choices. So we make a lot of inferences, but I think Robb does a bang-up job of presenting a very human idea of what Rimbaud was like. Despite the fact that he's obviously a fan of Rimbaud's work, he never parks Rimbaud on a pedestal.
We have a tendency to romanticize individuals after death, to somehow make them more saint-like or pure than they could have ever been in life. With the posthumous success of Rimbaud's poetry, I think many individuals have done just that - freezing Rimbaud at the tender age of 17. Forever trapping him in the role of boy poet and Verlaine's tempestuous lover. And it is precisely that typecasting that I think Rimbaud spent the remainder of his life trying to desert. I think he would loathe that his legacy has less to do with those actions he was actually proud to have accomplished - his explorer's spirit - than his adolescent years as a troubled poet.
Robb definitely leaves us with the distinct impression that Rimbaud was always pushing some boundary, somehow striving to achieve more, to expand upon limits of what society deemed worthwhile or normal. It was precisely because of this that he always seemed a step ahead of his peers and colleagues and was misunderstood, misrepresented, and unable to be fully appreciated for his contributions - both to literature and to exploration. And I think he struggled between his disdain for man for not being able to ascend to his level of forward thinking and chose the life of a loner, a life of mystery, a life in which it always seemed he was looking down on everyone from a lofty height.
Rimbaud's terseness and unpleasantness are conflicted with stories from acquaintances regarding his verbosity and pleasantness. However, I do think that Rimbaud had the ability to play many different roles as it suited his needs. Above all else, he was adaptable and resourceful.
There is something so tough about Rimbaud - which is evidenced by his correspondence, his demanding nature, and his forceful "requests" to family and friends when he needed help. Yet there is something very vulnerable at the heart of Rimbaud and that quality is what has drawn people to his work and life even over 100 years after his death.
February 26, 2014
This whizzes into my Top ten Best Ever Biography (you don't get that in High Fidelity) because Robb manages to write sublime caustic prose that corrects both the record and the myth that surrounds Rimbaud. Robb knows his stuff and writes beautiful lyrical prose whilst also being alive to the obsfuscations and mistakes made by earlier writers. We see Rimbaud as an enfant terrible writing poetry that both harked back to the remnants of romanticism but also looked forward to modernism and beyond. We see his relationship with Verlaine and the self destructive tendencies of both- his relationships with family- an absent father, a controlling mother. His endless restless wandering and a search for meaning or an abandonment of that search as meaningless. Nihilism, solipsism, dalliances with homosexuality and the search for an income as his reputation fizzed and fizzled. The duality of his life is clearer in the final sections in Africa, where Rimbaud writes home in a downbeat, constantly negative voice, whilst being recognized by those around him as a jolly fellow, ferociously efficient at his job, be it gun-running, storage hire or the like. It served Rimbaud well to present different facets to different people (as we all do) but he seems to have abandoned poetry whilst keeping an eye on a growing cult reputation in France. Robb reignites the debate about his complicity in slavery seeing his job as being impossible with out it- nothing could be done in the region he was in without using slave labour of some sort. Robb sees his way to correct other unforced or lazy research- some previous writers have had no knowledge at all of the geography of the areas Rimbaud worked in. A sad ending to his life- leg amputation and the furious last illness, counterpointed by the myth that was built around him and the growing spread of his poetry.
I sometimes read biography because of a curiosity about the biographer as well as the subject. I had heard alot about Graham Robb and this biography confirms the blurb on the front of the book from Will Self - "the best (biographer) of his generation". I suspect its hard to argue with that. This Rimbaud biography is...... something else..
I sometimes read biography because of a curiosity about the biographer as well as the subject. I had heard alot about Graham Robb and this biography confirms the blurb on the front of the book from Will Self - "the best (biographer) of his generation". I suspect its hard to argue with that. This Rimbaud biography is...... something else..
October 10, 2025
I have read, enjoyed and learnt so much from so many of Graham Robb's books on France not to award this biography five stars. I would hesitate to say that it is the best Rimbaud biography but it is certainly the best English language biography of Rimbaud. Robb is too good to allow hoary legends to pass unquestioned and is rigorous in his debunking simplistic or anachronistic stories about Rimbaud. As the reviewer in The Guardian said when this book was published nearly a quarter century ago:
"...Robb...with two hefty "lives" already behind him, on Balzac and Victor Hugo, continues, with Rimbaud, to annex great swathes of 19th-century French literature. It is an extraordinary achievement for someone just over 40. "Oh mad Ambition," wrote the 15-year-old Rimbaud in a covering letter to Théodore de Banville when sending him his first poems, and one might apply the same phrase to Graham Robb. But cast incredulity aside: Robb has written a great biography - scholarly, humane and above all marvellously entertaining. His concise, almost clipped style is the perfect antidote to the kind of gushing, impressionistic hagiography that is the scourge of Rimbaud studies. He is a master of the understatement and the witty aside. His knowledge of the period enables him to set the scene with the minimum of fuss. And although he is quite familiar with the academic disputes and squabbles that surround the work, to his great credit he does not get drawn down into those often dreary vortices."
(see: https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... for the full review which is much better than mine is)
If I say more I will simply start talking about Rimbaud as I have such poor French that I must read his "Lettre du Voyant" in translation (the "Seer's Manifesto", which he dashed off in a letter when he was 16 and which has become one of the "sacred documents" of modern literature) I depend on writers like Robb to bring the truth of the genius of the likes Rimbaud to me with clarity and honesty. I am stuck peering at them through a glass darkly but Robb allows me to understand their import and beauty.
A fabulous biography, I don't know what else to say except to repeat the superlatives others have garlanded this remarkable biography with. It would take a very brave or a very young and arrogant writer to produce a biography of Rimbaud and demand that it be given shelf space next to Robb's.
"...Robb...with two hefty "lives" already behind him, on Balzac and Victor Hugo, continues, with Rimbaud, to annex great swathes of 19th-century French literature. It is an extraordinary achievement for someone just over 40. "Oh mad Ambition," wrote the 15-year-old Rimbaud in a covering letter to Théodore de Banville when sending him his first poems, and one might apply the same phrase to Graham Robb. But cast incredulity aside: Robb has written a great biography - scholarly, humane and above all marvellously entertaining. His concise, almost clipped style is the perfect antidote to the kind of gushing, impressionistic hagiography that is the scourge of Rimbaud studies. He is a master of the understatement and the witty aside. His knowledge of the period enables him to set the scene with the minimum of fuss. And although he is quite familiar with the academic disputes and squabbles that surround the work, to his great credit he does not get drawn down into those often dreary vortices."
(see: https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... for the full review which is much better than mine is)
If I say more I will simply start talking about Rimbaud as I have such poor French that I must read his "Lettre du Voyant" in translation (the "Seer's Manifesto", which he dashed off in a letter when he was 16 and which has become one of the "sacred documents" of modern literature) I depend on writers like Robb to bring the truth of the genius of the likes Rimbaud to me with clarity and honesty. I am stuck peering at them through a glass darkly but Robb allows me to understand their import and beauty.
A fabulous biography, I don't know what else to say except to repeat the superlatives others have garlanded this remarkable biography with. It would take a very brave or a very young and arrogant writer to produce a biography of Rimbaud and demand that it be given shelf space next to Robb's.
June 23, 2011
A few weeks ago I picked up John Ashbery's celebrated translation of Rimbaud's Illuminations and as I was browsing through it I realized I had only the sketchiest notion of Rimbaud's life – essentially a few mangled fragments from Enid Starkie's 1968 doorstop and some noxious images from Total Eclipse. All I knew was that he'd written a handful of iconoclastic poems, had filthy sex with Verlaine, then pitched it all aside and wandered off to Africa to die.
Graham Robb's biography, as I expected after reading Strangers last summer, is superb. Robb embraces the full context of Rimbaud's short life, reaching beyond the mythic Satanic adolescent to include the equally intrepid imperialist/explorer. "I have tried at least to allow Rimbaud to grow up," Robb begins. Whatever your aesthetic or political investment, Rimbaud's brilliant brutal life (and death) is astonishing, disgusting and grimly funny. Robb is also quite funny, especially when he's dissing all the Rimbaud biographies which preceded his own.
My only complaint with this mostly well-designed book is the abysmal quality of the photographs, which look like copies made from copies on a cheap office machine. Someone at Norton should be slapped.
Anyway, our life is misery, endless misery! So why do we exist? Send me your news. Best wishes.
– Rimbaud writing from the Marseilles hospital where he died.
Graham Robb's biography, as I expected after reading Strangers last summer, is superb. Robb embraces the full context of Rimbaud's short life, reaching beyond the mythic Satanic adolescent to include the equally intrepid imperialist/explorer. "I have tried at least to allow Rimbaud to grow up," Robb begins. Whatever your aesthetic or political investment, Rimbaud's brilliant brutal life (and death) is astonishing, disgusting and grimly funny. Robb is also quite funny, especially when he's dissing all the Rimbaud biographies which preceded his own.
My only complaint with this mostly well-designed book is the abysmal quality of the photographs, which look like copies made from copies on a cheap office machine. Someone at Norton should be slapped.
Anyway, our life is misery, endless misery! So why do we exist? Send me your news. Best wishes.
– Rimbaud writing from the Marseilles hospital where he died.
September 3, 2016
Ένας άγιος διάβολος!!
Αιχμηρός, ρομαντικός, συμβολιστής και πραγματιστής ως το τέρμα , που χάθηκε στο βόρβορο των ημερών του/μας.
Αιχμηρός, ρομαντικός, συμβολιστής και πραγματιστής ως το τέρμα , που χάθηκε στο βόρβορο των ημερών του/μας.
December 13, 2018
Another brilliant biography from Robb.
April 6, 2023
What a fascinating life Arthur Rimbaud led. This book is an exhaustive account of his life—very well done.
August 26, 2025
A really well written, balanced biography, both scholarly and readable. I've not read any other bios of AR but this feels like it's the wisest treatment of a complicated man who has an even more complicated legacy.
May 2, 2015
I look at others' responses to this book and I keep to wondering if they've read a different book than I did. I think that the problem here is that what Robb actually wanted to write was a book of literary criticism. Huge swaths of this book consist of Robb critiquing Rimbaud's works and/or responding to others' critique. There wouldn't be a problem with this, except that this book is not marketed as literary criticism. It is only barely a biography, and then almost begrudgingly. In both the lit. crit. sections as well as the sections that cover Rimbaud's life, Robb assumes the reader already has some knowledge of the rumors and stories surrounding Rimbaud. Again, this would be okay, except that most of the history section is spent "correcting" what Robb feels are falsehoods rather than just telling the story of Rimbaud's life.
August 9, 2015
I came to Rimbaud the opposite way to most people I suspect. I I had heard his life story before knowing any of his poetry.
Robb had written a fascinating, well researched and well written biography of a life that is full of controversy and unknowns. When you read a biography you always have to realise you are only getting part of the picture - but as far as is possible Robb's book at least seems balanced.
The Rimbaud of this book is a smart, energetic genius and a fascinating, if not always appealing, character. Given the passion Rimbaud generates I suspect some people will hate any biography as it will not align with their image of the man. Which image is correct I certainly don't know - but this is an excellent biography - whether you are an existing Rimbaud fan or not.
Robb had written a fascinating, well researched and well written biography of a life that is full of controversy and unknowns. When you read a biography you always have to realise you are only getting part of the picture - but as far as is possible Robb's book at least seems balanced.
The Rimbaud of this book is a smart, energetic genius and a fascinating, if not always appealing, character. Given the passion Rimbaud generates I suspect some people will hate any biography as it will not align with their image of the man. Which image is correct I certainly don't know - but this is an excellent biography - whether you are an existing Rimbaud fan or not.
December 17, 2017
3star more for the subject matter than the writing. Robb is an excellent writer. Rimbaud is a terrible subject. Raised by a horrible mother, as a teenager he seemed dedicated to ruining as many lives as possible for the sake of some bizarre artistic principle. "Morality is the weakness of the brain." I feel dirty having spent time in his company. Then he stopped writing poetry, went to Africa, far from mommy dearest and French weather, and because a respected trader and explorer. Then he died from bone cancer.
May 22, 2012
re-reading for a fourth time. this is one of my favorite biographies from one of my favorite biographers. robb's portrait cuts through the lice, filth, and mythos surrounding the late 19th century vagabond demigogue and symbolist poet. highly recommended.
June 9, 2022
thought of giving this four stars but given robb's legwork and unfantasising he's earned the full five. he wields occam's razor like a sword and slices away crusted up stereotypes over our image of rimbaud. verlaine comes out of this equal parts pathetic and monstrous but rimbaud is pure monster, grasping, ungrateful, cruel, abandoning poetry to take up the french colonial project, run guns, get engaged in the slave trade, aid empires. his success is a far more chilling condemnation of personal failure than being a bad businessman would have been.
he reminds me of nothing so much as the bullingdon club, causing chaos in youth, having the classics crammed into his head, and then going on to psychopathically doing business at the cost of all else. i've always thought verlaine the better poet anyway
he reminds me of nothing so much as the bullingdon club, causing chaos in youth, having the classics crammed into his head, and then going on to psychopathically doing business at the cost of all else. i've always thought verlaine the better poet anyway
July 30, 2017
Pare che quest'anno io stia alzando la media dei miei ratings XD ma come non dare pieni voti a questa biografia che è completa, curiosa, poetica e sfrontata? Dieci e lode!
E Rimbaud si conferma il mio poeta preferito *__*
E Rimbaud si conferma il mio poeta preferito *__*
May 19, 2020
maybe five stars, I don't know...
March 8, 2025
Ünlü birinin yaşam öyküsünü anlatan filmlerin izleyici üzerinde yaşanmış gerçeklerden farklı olarak yaşananları dramatize edici bir etkisi olduğunu daha önceden Chaplin (1992) filmini izlerken deneyimlemiştim. Arthur Rimbaud'nun yaşam öyküsünü okurken de benzer bir etkiye maruz kaldığımı düşünüyorum. Kitabı tamamladığımda Rimbaud'nun şiirlerini anlamak için şiir yazmayı bıraktıktan sonraki yaşamını bilmenin önemli olduğunu, çünkü şiirlerinde bulunduğu kehanetleri yaşadığını gördüm. Bu durum anlatıcının kurgusu, kitabı bu etkiyi yaratacak şekilde mi tasarlayıp yazdı yoksa Arthur Rimbaud üzerine gerçek bir olgu mu, bunu Rimbaud üzerine okuduğum tek kitapla anlamam mümkün değil.
November 26, 2007
This is prolix and dense and frankly, not worthy of an ordinary reader's time. The author is pretentious and long-winded and manages to mummify the energetic life of a true visionary.
September 19, 2011
Includes a thoroughly unromantic depiction of Rimbaud's creepy dealings in East Africa.
April 26, 2015
This book is beautifully written and completely intoxicating. I am pulled into Rimbaud's life each time I opened the book. Reading this biography along side the poetry was especially gratifying.
August 6, 2018
Arthur Rimbaud is one of those writers whose life of mythic proportion influences more people than his writing. The demonic youth who mastered poetic styles like a virtuoso and then invented his own before the age of 21, only to disappear into the searing heat of Africa to seek his fortune as a merchant, seems to have led two disjointed lifetimes. A challenge to any prospective biographer; there have been many. Was there a need for one more when this appeared in 2000?
As Graham Robb writes: “Many biographers of Rimbaud obviously preferred the sentimental, schoolboy adventure stories of Rimbaud’s early memorialists to the poet’s own savage cynicism. . . . I have tried at least to allow Rimbaud to grow up” (xvi). To me, he succeeded.
Robb is an excellent writer. Among his strengths are the amount of research he conducts and his skill at creating the overall arc of his account. This is the second of his books that I’ve read. In the first, The Discovery of France, his strength was mitigated by a curious feature of his writing: the logic of the structure of some of his paragraphs is difficult to scan; I had to re-read them to get the sense. While this bothers me less than its opposite, verbosity, this trait slows me down.
There were fewer instances of this quirk in this book than in Discovery, but here’s an example: When Robb writes in the middle of a paragraph “This may not be entirely misleading . . . ” (6), I had to read the paragraph twice to see that “this” was not an explication of what came before, but was the introduction of what was to follow. I grow impatient when my grammar software busts me for what it calls an “unclear antecedent,” now I see what that means.
Here’s a slightly different example, from the introduction (xiv): “Unlike so many privately respectable anti-heroes, Rimbaud led an exemplary life.” When I read it the second time, I realized Robb had subverted the ordinary usage of “exemplary life.” To me, it indicates that Robb is not a sloppy writer; he has a lot to say, and he’s meticulous about what he writes. It sometimes feels, though, as if too many contrasting thoughts are packed into one paragraph.
Robb’s love of antithesis often pays off, however. Here’s an example, describing the school Arthur and his brother began to attend: “If the environment had reflected its pedagogical aims, the Institute Rossat would have been preparing its pupils for a life in prison. It was Arthur’s first taste of freedom . . .” (17). This thought returns hauntingly during Rimbaud’s final years in Abyssinia, where the slave-trade was still rampant in the late nineteenth century, but it is Rimbaud who complains incessantly of being enslaved.
The twin poles of freedom and captivity formed the core of Rimbaud’s personality, so Robb, with his love of paradox and antithesis, in addition to his profound knowledge of French literature, is his ideal biographer. He traces the conflict and compulsion in Rimbaud's nature to his family constellation: the absent father, the demanding mother who withheld love. Some readers may feel this makes the book an exercise in psycho-biography, yet Robb cites contemporaries who observed that, if one knew the mother, it was understandable that Arthur took to the road. Harder to comprehend, perhaps, is how regularly he returned, including in his final illness, after more than a decade in East Africa.
Robb researches his books thoroughly. In this one, he has digested a wealth of primary and secondary literature about an author whose output, in comparison, was minuscule. Robb interacts particularly with Enid Starkie, who wrote eight decades ago what was long the standard biography in English. In some cases, based on evidence, he differs from Starkie; in at least one other case, again based on assiduous research, he defends Starkie on a point on which others have sharply disagreed with her.
The broad outlines of Rimbaud’s bi-polar life—path-breaking poet in his youth, African gun-runner in his maturity—are familiar to any of the millions, such as I, for whom the poet was an intensely private adolescent discovery. Robb convincingly revises the tale of the second half. The conventional view, rooted in Rimbaud’s letters home, written in his chronically discontented and self-condemning manner, is that his time in Abyssinia brought paltry returns. Robb investigates and finds that Rimbaud reaped enormous profits.
Enormous profit of a different kind is what I reaped in reading this masterpiece of biography.
As Graham Robb writes: “Many biographers of Rimbaud obviously preferred the sentimental, schoolboy adventure stories of Rimbaud’s early memorialists to the poet’s own savage cynicism. . . . I have tried at least to allow Rimbaud to grow up” (xvi). To me, he succeeded.
Robb is an excellent writer. Among his strengths are the amount of research he conducts and his skill at creating the overall arc of his account. This is the second of his books that I’ve read. In the first, The Discovery of France, his strength was mitigated by a curious feature of his writing: the logic of the structure of some of his paragraphs is difficult to scan; I had to re-read them to get the sense. While this bothers me less than its opposite, verbosity, this trait slows me down.
There were fewer instances of this quirk in this book than in Discovery, but here’s an example: When Robb writes in the middle of a paragraph “This may not be entirely misleading . . . ” (6), I had to read the paragraph twice to see that “this” was not an explication of what came before, but was the introduction of what was to follow. I grow impatient when my grammar software busts me for what it calls an “unclear antecedent,” now I see what that means.
Here’s a slightly different example, from the introduction (xiv): “Unlike so many privately respectable anti-heroes, Rimbaud led an exemplary life.” When I read it the second time, I realized Robb had subverted the ordinary usage of “exemplary life.” To me, it indicates that Robb is not a sloppy writer; he has a lot to say, and he’s meticulous about what he writes. It sometimes feels, though, as if too many contrasting thoughts are packed into one paragraph.
Robb’s love of antithesis often pays off, however. Here’s an example, describing the school Arthur and his brother began to attend: “If the environment had reflected its pedagogical aims, the Institute Rossat would have been preparing its pupils for a life in prison. It was Arthur’s first taste of freedom . . .” (17). This thought returns hauntingly during Rimbaud’s final years in Abyssinia, where the slave-trade was still rampant in the late nineteenth century, but it is Rimbaud who complains incessantly of being enslaved.
The twin poles of freedom and captivity formed the core of Rimbaud’s personality, so Robb, with his love of paradox and antithesis, in addition to his profound knowledge of French literature, is his ideal biographer. He traces the conflict and compulsion in Rimbaud's nature to his family constellation: the absent father, the demanding mother who withheld love. Some readers may feel this makes the book an exercise in psycho-biography, yet Robb cites contemporaries who observed that, if one knew the mother, it was understandable that Arthur took to the road. Harder to comprehend, perhaps, is how regularly he returned, including in his final illness, after more than a decade in East Africa.
Robb researches his books thoroughly. In this one, he has digested a wealth of primary and secondary literature about an author whose output, in comparison, was minuscule. Robb interacts particularly with Enid Starkie, who wrote eight decades ago what was long the standard biography in English. In some cases, based on evidence, he differs from Starkie; in at least one other case, again based on assiduous research, he defends Starkie on a point on which others have sharply disagreed with her.
The broad outlines of Rimbaud’s bi-polar life—path-breaking poet in his youth, African gun-runner in his maturity—are familiar to any of the millions, such as I, for whom the poet was an intensely private adolescent discovery. Robb convincingly revises the tale of the second half. The conventional view, rooted in Rimbaud’s letters home, written in his chronically discontented and self-condemning manner, is that his time in Abyssinia brought paltry returns. Robb investigates and finds that Rimbaud reaped enormous profits.
Enormous profit of a different kind is what I reaped in reading this masterpiece of biography.
September 2, 2020
Arthur Rimbaud - to many the iconic (probably not the first) teen rebel, but described by others as ‘a spoilt, overgrown schoolboy’ (p.279).
I was fascinated by Rimbaud, but also shocked and often repulsed (as was his intention). He was just so deeply different, in such mesmerising ways, to any human being I’d ever known or read about. I certainly did not always like him, still less understand him (as was his intention). How could you always like an anarchist, someone who believes in the necessity to turn all accepted ideas, notions and beliefs in all areas of life - social, personal and literary - on their heads? Leading him to ‘experiments’ such as the deliberate stabbing of a friend, to note the reaction? (p.124). Or to deliberately trashing rooms provided gratis by friends? ‘With an unerring lack of tact, he presented himself as a combination of the two most repulsive characters known to 1870s France: a homosexual and an anarchist’ (p.141). As an anarchist, ‘The idea was to study every detail of modern society “in order to hasten its destruction” – a great unmasking that would also tear away the face’ (p.55). As always, the explanation for these extremities appears to lie in his weird family, especially in his mother, ‘the mouth of darkness’. Though, like all such explanations, this one is simplistic.
But Rimbaud’s interest is not so much in such destructive behaviour, as in his contribution to French literature where he also turned old norms on their heads (see, e.g., the prose poem ‘Democratie’ on p. 280). Robb suggests that he ‘left behind a body of work that would one day open up new regions of the mind to poetic explorers’ (p.293). The fact is that Rimbaud’s anarchism wasn’t mere destructiveness. It was a successful attempt to tear away from existing artistic forms (he advocated extreme measures, such as blowing up the Louvre!). Picasso, for example, admired him for this.
I do not pretend to understand Rimbaud’s anarchic poetry – much of the stuff in Ch.8 (‘The Seer’) is lost on me. He would have been disappointed had I understood! And I’m not at all sure that I agree with one reviewer that the book is written with ‘exhilarating lucidity’. Maybe I’m dumb, but there are evidently a lot like me (as suggested by, for example, the variety of extant interpretations of the poem ‘Le bateau ivre’ [p.104]). The truth is that the only one with the key to all of Rimbaud’s poetry was Rimbaud.
The second half of Rimbaud’s story, set in Abyssinia, is also mesmerising (and much easier to follow!). I respect him for these exploits, but still do not like him. He ended his life as a gun-runner (this is NOT excused by the context of the times), peripherally (though not directly) associated with slave trading. He also destroyed an important manuscript on the history of Abyssinia (p.376).
I’m delighted that I read this well-written book. Like Ford Madox Ford, whose biography I recently read, Rimbaud was hitherto a shadowy figure for me, though often popping up in my reading. Now I know more (I think). Fascinating.
August 2020
I was fascinated by Rimbaud, but also shocked and often repulsed (as was his intention). He was just so deeply different, in such mesmerising ways, to any human being I’d ever known or read about. I certainly did not always like him, still less understand him (as was his intention). How could you always like an anarchist, someone who believes in the necessity to turn all accepted ideas, notions and beliefs in all areas of life - social, personal and literary - on their heads? Leading him to ‘experiments’ such as the deliberate stabbing of a friend, to note the reaction? (p.124). Or to deliberately trashing rooms provided gratis by friends? ‘With an unerring lack of tact, he presented himself as a combination of the two most repulsive characters known to 1870s France: a homosexual and an anarchist’ (p.141). As an anarchist, ‘The idea was to study every detail of modern society “in order to hasten its destruction” – a great unmasking that would also tear away the face’ (p.55). As always, the explanation for these extremities appears to lie in his weird family, especially in his mother, ‘the mouth of darkness’. Though, like all such explanations, this one is simplistic.
But Rimbaud’s interest is not so much in such destructive behaviour, as in his contribution to French literature where he also turned old norms on their heads (see, e.g., the prose poem ‘Democratie’ on p. 280). Robb suggests that he ‘left behind a body of work that would one day open up new regions of the mind to poetic explorers’ (p.293). The fact is that Rimbaud’s anarchism wasn’t mere destructiveness. It was a successful attempt to tear away from existing artistic forms (he advocated extreme measures, such as blowing up the Louvre!). Picasso, for example, admired him for this.
I do not pretend to understand Rimbaud’s anarchic poetry – much of the stuff in Ch.8 (‘The Seer’) is lost on me. He would have been disappointed had I understood! And I’m not at all sure that I agree with one reviewer that the book is written with ‘exhilarating lucidity’. Maybe I’m dumb, but there are evidently a lot like me (as suggested by, for example, the variety of extant interpretations of the poem ‘Le bateau ivre’ [p.104]). The truth is that the only one with the key to all of Rimbaud’s poetry was Rimbaud.
The second half of Rimbaud’s story, set in Abyssinia, is also mesmerising (and much easier to follow!). I respect him for these exploits, but still do not like him. He ended his life as a gun-runner (this is NOT excused by the context of the times), peripherally (though not directly) associated with slave trading. He also destroyed an important manuscript on the history of Abyssinia (p.376).
I’m delighted that I read this well-written book. Like Ford Madox Ford, whose biography I recently read, Rimbaud was hitherto a shadowy figure for me, though often popping up in my reading. Now I know more (I think). Fascinating.
August 2020
January 11, 2022
I never tire of a well-researched biography about le poète maudit, Rimbaud. A true enfant terrible, Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg were not wrong when they described him as the original punk poet. Not just punk in his prose, but in his aesthetic and way of life, he was unapologetic in his resolve and unimpressed with the politics, gossip, and self-importance of the Parisian literati. Living in Paris where sadly not much has changed, this part was particularly reassuring but also reminded me just why I adore this poet so much.
Like so many biographies about my favorite authors, I anticipate the long dragged-out part of the story when the author is desperate to find a publisher to believe in their work, which usually results in years or sometimes decades of unnecessary setbacks (not to mention many chapters), but not with Rimbaud. His belief in his work triumphed over a desire for invitations to dinner parties and he published his acclaimed A Season in Hell himself, and basically invented the art of calling bullsh*t a century before it was cool to do so.
This biography unpacks all of this without getting too precious about the subject. Graham Robb took on the thankless task of keeping a respectful distance between him and his subject and avoiding the temptation to idealize Rimbaud by remaining factual, skeptical when lack of evidence is presented, but also offering insight based on research. Having read Enid Starkie's biography, who is a true Rimbaud scholar and who provides an exhaustive analysis of his work, I felt that this one fills in some holes with his personal life (particularly about his time in Africa) and offers a modern perspective, plus the translations of the work (as well as providing the original French texts in the back) were helpful. The biographer also allows the reader to draw their own opinion about his relationship with Verlaine, providing the facts and the storyline. Of course, I would have loved a juicier analysis and find myself writing mental fan fiction about the two, but Robb kept his responsibility to not over-speculate if there was no evidence in a form of a letter or eye-witness account to allow him to do so.
Side note: There were debates in Paris a few years ago about reuniting the remains of the former lovers to the Pantheon but anyone who has read this book and saw how they left off will understand why that wouldn't have made any sense.
It's hard to say which biography would be the best place to start for those just getting into Rimbaud, so I'd say grab a copy of A Season in Hell or The Drunken Boat and if you are more intrigued with the work (and don't mind reading it in French), go, Enid Starke, if you want to know more about the man, the punk, the poet, the Philomath, go with this one.
Like so many biographies about my favorite authors, I anticipate the long dragged-out part of the story when the author is desperate to find a publisher to believe in their work, which usually results in years or sometimes decades of unnecessary setbacks (not to mention many chapters), but not with Rimbaud. His belief in his work triumphed over a desire for invitations to dinner parties and he published his acclaimed A Season in Hell himself, and basically invented the art of calling bullsh*t a century before it was cool to do so.
This biography unpacks all of this without getting too precious about the subject. Graham Robb took on the thankless task of keeping a respectful distance between him and his subject and avoiding the temptation to idealize Rimbaud by remaining factual, skeptical when lack of evidence is presented, but also offering insight based on research. Having read Enid Starkie's biography, who is a true Rimbaud scholar and who provides an exhaustive analysis of his work, I felt that this one fills in some holes with his personal life (particularly about his time in Africa) and offers a modern perspective, plus the translations of the work (as well as providing the original French texts in the back) were helpful. The biographer also allows the reader to draw their own opinion about his relationship with Verlaine, providing the facts and the storyline. Of course, I would have loved a juicier analysis and find myself writing mental fan fiction about the two, but Robb kept his responsibility to not over-speculate if there was no evidence in a form of a letter or eye-witness account to allow him to do so.
Side note: There were debates in Paris a few years ago about reuniting the remains of the former lovers to the Pantheon but anyone who has read this book and saw how they left off will understand why that wouldn't have made any sense.
It's hard to say which biography would be the best place to start for those just getting into Rimbaud, so I'd say grab a copy of A Season in Hell or The Drunken Boat and if you are more intrigued with the work (and don't mind reading it in French), go, Enid Starke, if you want to know more about the man, the punk, the poet, the Philomath, go with this one.
September 12, 2020
Graham Robb’s biography of Rimbaud presents the life of one of the most problematic and troubling of literary artists. There are many extracts in translation of the enigmatic poems and these astonished me by their invention and almost casual brilliance. In many cases they are the work of a teenager. A teenager brought up by a terrifying disciplinarian of a mother with an absent father and a feckless and cold brother and two rather more sympathetic sisters – albeit subservient to the awful mama. This early life it seems marked him permanently – he remains an emotionally detached figure – who seems to seek some kind of revenge on the despised human race. Early lionisation by his literary peers does not lead to any kind of stability and his rejection of the narrow confines of bourgeois existence is mirrored in the poems’ flight from rational coherence and his own early disenchantment with the pursuit of literature. Robb documents the initially fruitful shared life with the poet Paul Verlaine which brought them to London in 1872 and the eventual collapse of their partnership. The book shows Rimbaud’s subsequent anti-literary career turning against this former life and embarking on a remarkable series of odysseys first to Java as a mercenary and ultimately to Egypt and Abyssinia as a trader in coffee, arms and much else besides. Always in the background lurks that arid relationship with the steely matriarch – Mme Rimbaud. His African career is astounding as it shows Rimbaud’s determination to forge a new existence as an explorer and businessman – demonstrating the brilliance of the man in taking on tasks involving immense danger and difficulty – and winning the admiration and confidence of his business associates. His complicity in slavery and arms dealing makes him disturbing but he is you must remember one small part of the general late 19th century colonial enterprise which cashes in on the willingness of African despotic chiefs to participate in power politics and exploitation of fellow humans. This is the heart of darkness in the “Dark Continent”. Rimbaud is a desperate figure – finding a way to survive in a world that suffocates and shuns him at every turn. His is a quest for meaning that leads to death and a posthumous canonisation that he never sought and would have left him unimpressed. This is a life that challenges our assumptions about art and artists and leaves us staring uncompromisingly and bitterly into the void.
January 14, 2022
This is much better than anything Rimbaud wrote. He stopped writing poetry and prose professionally at age 20, possibly realizing it wasn't worthy of his intentions, for all his erudition, intelligence, and talent. He became fully disillusioned at a tender age.
His was an unusually unhappy life for a French man of the time, with an absent father and tyrannical mother. He was primarily an energetic and searching genius in revolt once he escaped home. He had a rebellious exploratory homosexual fling with the pathetic older poet Paul Verlaine and then found work sailing the oceans and afterwards as a highly respected trader in east Africa, where he did rather well financially against all odds, learning a fair number of languages along the way. His life was boring and unsatisfactory there, but he apparently preferred it to home in France. No one who knew him in Africa gained any sense of his private life there. He had decided to attempt to raise a sufficient fortune to retire somewhere and be left alone.
He got a serious knee infection in Africa, had his leg amputated, but died anyway at age 37, a painful and miserable end, not knowing how great would be his effect, sadly enough (I believe), on Literature. He had some hints before he died but appeared indifferent. His published works had sold poorly if at all.
Apparently a collection of lies and legends from family and literary worshippers arose about him, and the author has apparently done much research for this biography, to pare that away and approach the real Rimbaud.
His was an unusually unhappy life for a French man of the time, with an absent father and tyrannical mother. He was primarily an energetic and searching genius in revolt once he escaped home. He had a rebellious exploratory homosexual fling with the pathetic older poet Paul Verlaine and then found work sailing the oceans and afterwards as a highly respected trader in east Africa, where he did rather well financially against all odds, learning a fair number of languages along the way. His life was boring and unsatisfactory there, but he apparently preferred it to home in France. No one who knew him in Africa gained any sense of his private life there. He had decided to attempt to raise a sufficient fortune to retire somewhere and be left alone.
He got a serious knee infection in Africa, had his leg amputated, but died anyway at age 37, a painful and miserable end, not knowing how great would be his effect, sadly enough (I believe), on Literature. He had some hints before he died but appeared indifferent. His published works had sold poorly if at all.
Apparently a collection of lies and legends from family and literary worshippers arose about him, and the author has apparently done much research for this biography, to pare that away and approach the real Rimbaud.
May 21, 2019
One star off for the atrocious picture of the author in the book jacket. I was constantly wondering what back alley photographer he hired for his community theatre publicity photo.
Does that seem unfair, or perhaps random? Welcome to Rimbaud! A child wunderkind who is best known for lifting poetry from the parlour rooms of aristocrats to the bohemian underbellies of city ghettos, for his public displays of homosexuality in the modern era, for quitting all writing after age 21, and for . It can be hard to make sense of such a twisted and unique character, but Robb does a good job adding a narrative to Rimbaud's story, some much needed context, and some perspective into the crazy life of this much beloved poet. By the end of the book you'll feel a sort of connection with the kid who somehow reached the top of Maslow's Pyramid without ever really stepping foot on the bottom.
You'll have to do some of your own research while reading this book. Don't expect the author to hold your hand and explain to you who Baudelaire or Hugo or Napoleon III are. Don't expect a history of French literary history leading up to 1850 either. Come into this book with enough background and a few hours to kill and you'll have more fun than
Does that seem unfair, or perhaps random? Welcome to Rimbaud! A child wunderkind who is best known for lifting poetry from the parlour rooms of aristocrats to the bohemian underbellies of city ghettos, for his public displays of homosexuality in the modern era, for quitting all writing after age 21, and for . It can be hard to make sense of such a twisted and unique character, but Robb does a good job adding a narrative to Rimbaud's story, some much needed context, and some perspective into the crazy life of this much beloved poet. By the end of the book you'll feel a sort of connection with the kid who somehow reached the top of Maslow's Pyramid without ever really stepping foot on the bottom.
You'll have to do some of your own research while reading this book. Don't expect the author to hold your hand and explain to you who Baudelaire or Hugo or Napoleon III are. Don't expect a history of French literary history leading up to 1850 either. Come into this book with enough background and a few hours to kill and you'll have more fun than
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