Arthur Rimbaud

by Benjamin Ivry, Nick Drake (Editor)

Consortium welcomes Outlines from Absolute Press, an impressive and mature series chronicling the lives of some of the most exceptional and influential gay and lesbian artists of our time.

Genres: Biography

136 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1998

About the author

Benjamin Ivry has written biographies of Arthur Rimbaud, Maurice Ravel, and Francis Poulenc. He has translated such authors as André Gide, Jules Verne, Balthus, and Witold Gombrowicz.

Reviews

[Carson Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

the prose is a bit uneven and i would have liked it to have been like… 50 pages longer? with that being said, this is a great, accessible entry point to the life of my hero. a lurid, delirious, and salacious account of france’s second patron saint.

[david-baptiste · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book doesn't add to previously known facts or thinking about Rimbaud's poetry, but sets out to emphasize Rimbaud as a gay writer, with especial emphasis on his relationship with Verlaine. Since the book is meant to be more of an introductory text than one going into the depths with M. Arthur, it presents more of the "laying of the tracks" for future studies than pretending to be such a study in itself.
Actually I found many aspects of its treatment of Verlaine more interesting than that of Rimbaud. This is in part because Verlaine continued writing poetry and being part of literary circles long after Rimbaud had left it in disgust. There is therefore more of a "record' to go on with V than Rimbaud. This opened the part of the book which is most interesting--the historical development of the perceptions of Rimbaud as a homosexual and homosexual writer. Even today, this side of Rimbaud is treated with great ambivalence--after all, writers point out, later on he lived with a woman in Abysinnia. (Who, according to one description, when indoors with R dressed much like a European man and smoked cigarettes.)

[George Ilsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slim volume that would serve as an overview or an introduction. Some of the sentence constructions are awkward: Ivry is fond of colons, which imparts an old-school flavour to the text. The result is a kind of selective biography, where Ivry discusses those topics which interest him, and skims over the rest.

[Joanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel absolutely neutral on this biography. Is Rimbaud going to become more interesting? It seems I should love him but he never makes me go more than "eh."