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Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
The distinguished biographer, novelist, and memoirist Edmund White brings his literary mastery to a new biography of Arthur Rimbaud.
Poet and prodigy Arthur Rimbaud led a life that was startlingly short, but just as dramatically eventful and accomplished. Even today, over a century after his death in 1891, his visionary poetry has continued to influence everyone from Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan to Patti Smith. His long poem A Season in Hell (1873) and his collection Illuminations (1886) are essential to the modern canon, marked by a hallucinatory and hypnotic style that defined the Symbolist movement in poetry. Having sworn off writing at the age of twenty-one, Rimbaud drifted around the world from scheme to scheme, ultimately dying from an infection contracted while running guns in Africa. He was thirty-seven.
Edmund White writes with a historian's eye for detail, driven by a genuine personal investment in his subject. White delves deep into the young poet's relationships with his family, his teachers, and his notorious affair with the more established poet Paul Verlaine. He follows the often elusive (sometimes blatant) threads of sexual taboo that haunt Rimbaud's poems (in those days, sodomy was a crime) and offers incisive interpretations of the poems, using his own artful translations to bring us closer to the mercurial poet.
Poet and prodigy Arthur Rimbaud led a life that was startlingly short, but just as dramatically eventful and accomplished. Even today, over a century after his death in 1891, his visionary poetry has continued to influence everyone from Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan to Patti Smith. His long poem A Season in Hell (1873) and his collection Illuminations (1886) are essential to the modern canon, marked by a hallucinatory and hypnotic style that defined the Symbolist movement in poetry. Having sworn off writing at the age of twenty-one, Rimbaud drifted around the world from scheme to scheme, ultimately dying from an infection contracted while running guns in Africa. He was thirty-seven.
Edmund White writes with a historian's eye for detail, driven by a genuine personal investment in his subject. White delves deep into the young poet's relationships with his family, his teachers, and his notorious affair with the more established poet Paul Verlaine. He follows the often elusive (sometimes blatant) threads of sexual taboo that haunt Rimbaud's poems (in those days, sodomy was a crime) and offers incisive interpretations of the poems, using his own artful translations to bring us closer to the mercurial poet.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published October 9, 2008
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916 people want to read
About the author
Edmund White
139 books908 followersEdmund Valentine White III was an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer, and essayist. He was the recipient of Lambda Literary's Visionary Award, the National Book Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993.
White was known as a groundbreaking writer of gay literature and a major influence on gay American literature and has been called "the first major queer novelist to champion a new generation of writers."
White was known as a groundbreaking writer of gay literature and a major influence on gay American literature and has been called "the first major queer novelist to champion a new generation of writers."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews
October 16, 2008
Edmund White comes through again. A very informative and entertaining short biography on Arthur Rimbaud. Through a confession of sort in the first part of the book, White has a personal interest in the relationship between Rimbaud and the poet Paul Verlaine. In other words, what a couple! But a relationship that really had an affect on contemporary literature.
Rimbaud is really the first punk rock figure. A total asshole who wrote like an angel. His beauty and his sometimes ugliness really added up to someone who became an iconic figure of everything that's punky and dangerous.
His years in Africa is fascinating as well - and the fact that he sort of kissed off his youth and his early genius is something that is both sad and yet ok in a funny way. Edmund White is a great essayist and biographer (he wrote the Genet bio) and yet, I haven't read his fiction. Nevertheless pick up on this book and just enjoy these horrible creatures (Verlaine and Rimbaud) and don't confuse them with Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine.
Rimbaud is really the first punk rock figure. A total asshole who wrote like an angel. His beauty and his sometimes ugliness really added up to someone who became an iconic figure of everything that's punky and dangerous.
His years in Africa is fascinating as well - and the fact that he sort of kissed off his youth and his early genius is something that is both sad and yet ok in a funny way. Edmund White is a great essayist and biographer (he wrote the Genet bio) and yet, I haven't read his fiction. Nevertheless pick up on this book and just enjoy these horrible creatures (Verlaine and Rimbaud) and don't confuse them with Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine.
June 8, 2024
Admired the tone here. White makes writing such a book look easy. This short biography would be a quick introduction to Rimbaud for those looking for a place to start an obsessive quest.
As an aside White himself seems a little obsessed with antibiotics, mentioning the risks of every scratch in those perilous times. And yet Rimbaud survives being shot in the wrist by Paul Verlaine. But what was up all the bone cancer and tubercular tumours? How many fatal knee tumours can one family manage to acquire?
As an aside White himself seems a little obsessed with antibiotics, mentioning the risks of every scratch in those perilous times. And yet Rimbaud survives being shot in the wrist by Paul Verlaine. But what was up all the bone cancer and tubercular tumours? How many fatal knee tumours can one family manage to acquire?
October 11, 2025
This is a short and only a 'relatively' good biography of Rimbaud this disappointing because Edmund White wrote a splendid biography of Genet was (see my footnote *1 below) an exceptionally fine writer and came to the subject after living for many years in Paris and was at home in the French as he was in English. I had hoped White would bring something insightful and unique to Rimbaud's life but he doesn't. Compared to Graham Robb's biography of Rimbaud White's provides absolutely no challenge. When I reviewed Robb's life of Rimbaud I wrote:
"It would take a very brave or a very arrogant writer to produce a biography of Rimbaud and demand that it be given shelf space next to Robb's."
White's biography not only doesn't deserve shelf space next to Robb's it doesn't deserve to be in the same room. On top of that this very short biography concentrates on Rimbaud's life rather than his poetry and for me, a writer's 'life' is only important insofar as it relates to his work. To concentrate almost exclusively on Rimbaud's life, rather than on his work, is to miss the point (and means that White never brings any insight drawn from his own life as a writer). It is astonishing, to me, that White doesn't realise that what is important is Rimbaud's work, not his affair with Verlaine. It is the same with any writer, Byron isn't worth remembering for his incestuous relations with his half sister and Hemingway isn't a genius because of his love of bull fights and prize fighters. It is the writing that matters. A biography of a writer that doesn't leave you desperate to read their works is a failure.
White's only original contribution is his insistence that Rimbaud was the top in the bedroom. I have reservations on this for two reasons:
1. In Robb's biography there is a quote from one of Rimbaud's Parisian contemporaries describing Rimbaud sitting in a café and banging his head on the table and complaining over and over again 'he fucked me, he fucked me, he fucked me' because Rimbaud was annoyed that Verlaine's sperm was at that moment dribbling out of his butt (Rimbaud's was wonderfully scatological). So he wasn't always on top.
2. Even if Rimbaud spent more time penetrating Verlaine then being penetrated by him I just don't think it has the importance that White ascribes to it. The 'top' or 'bottom' category assumed tremendous tremendous significance in ideological terms in the early US gay movement of the 1960's, primarily because it was a way of fighting against the cliches and tropes that portrayed gays as effeminate in the dominant culture and specifically the post WWII American obsession about manliness.
I think White is projecting back into history, and across the Atlantic, views on homosexual attitudes from 1950s New York on to 19th century Paris. If the sexual relationship of Rimbaud and Verlaine did follow a cultural path it was more likely to be the Socratic one of the pupil, Rimbaud, being the submissive one to his mentor, Verlaine.
But ultimately I don't think it matters - there were many dynamics in the Rimbaud/Verlaine relationship - who screwed who was, if it ever mattered, merely a pretext within a dynamic which was much more about art, literature, defiance of custom, rebellion against family and conformity and the other ideological currents of France in the 1870's.
This is an introduction to Rimbaud but a poor one and I doubt it will lead any reader to explore, even in translation, Rimbaud's poetry.
"It would take a very brave or a very arrogant writer to produce a biography of Rimbaud and demand that it be given shelf space next to Robb's."
White's biography not only doesn't deserve shelf space next to Robb's it doesn't deserve to be in the same room. On top of that this very short biography concentrates on Rimbaud's life rather than his poetry and for me, a writer's 'life' is only important insofar as it relates to his work. To concentrate almost exclusively on Rimbaud's life, rather than on his work, is to miss the point (and means that White never brings any insight drawn from his own life as a writer). It is astonishing, to me, that White doesn't realise that what is important is Rimbaud's work, not his affair with Verlaine. It is the same with any writer, Byron isn't worth remembering for his incestuous relations with his half sister and Hemingway isn't a genius because of his love of bull fights and prize fighters. It is the writing that matters. A biography of a writer that doesn't leave you desperate to read their works is a failure.
White's only original contribution is his insistence that Rimbaud was the top in the bedroom. I have reservations on this for two reasons:
1. In Robb's biography there is a quote from one of Rimbaud's Parisian contemporaries describing Rimbaud sitting in a café and banging his head on the table and complaining over and over again 'he fucked me, he fucked me, he fucked me' because Rimbaud was annoyed that Verlaine's sperm was at that moment dribbling out of his butt (Rimbaud's was wonderfully scatological). So he wasn't always on top.
2. Even if Rimbaud spent more time penetrating Verlaine then being penetrated by him I just don't think it has the importance that White ascribes to it. The 'top' or 'bottom' category assumed tremendous tremendous significance in ideological terms in the early US gay movement of the 1960's, primarily because it was a way of fighting against the cliches and tropes that portrayed gays as effeminate in the dominant culture and specifically the post WWII American obsession about manliness.
I think White is projecting back into history, and across the Atlantic, views on homosexual attitudes from 1950s New York on to 19th century Paris. If the sexual relationship of Rimbaud and Verlaine did follow a cultural path it was more likely to be the Socratic one of the pupil, Rimbaud, being the submissive one to his mentor, Verlaine.
But ultimately I don't think it matters - there were many dynamics in the Rimbaud/Verlaine relationship - who screwed who was, if it ever mattered, merely a pretext within a dynamic which was much more about art, literature, defiance of custom, rebellion against family and conformity and the other ideological currents of France in the 1870's.
This is an introduction to Rimbaud but a poor one and I doubt it will lead any reader to explore, even in translation, Rimbaud's poetry.
April 20, 2011
The first biographical book I have ever read about my teenage obsession/idol, Arthur Rimbaud. I still think he is a fascinating figure and an amazing poet. If you are interested in learning more about his short and turbulent life, his relationship with Verlaine or his mother and other interesting trivia, I highly recommend this book by Edmund White.
White really touched me, when he said that he used to sneak out in the night to read Rimbaud's poetry in the bathroom of his strict all-boys boarding school. He sort of reminded me of my own young-self. I used to sleep late every night trying to read Rimbaud from the original French and used to store a copy of "Season in Hell" under my pillow, so that I could feel a bit closer to him *sigh*
White really touched me, when he said that he used to sneak out in the night to read Rimbaud's poetry in the bathroom of his strict all-boys boarding school. He sort of reminded me of my own young-self. I used to sleep late every night trying to read Rimbaud from the original French and used to store a copy of "Season in Hell" under my pillow, so that I could feel a bit closer to him *sigh*
March 20, 2011
"In order to become a true poet, Rimbaud wrote, the writer must turn himself into a seer. 'The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense and carefully reasoned disordering of all the senses.' The poet must subject himself to a self-instigated torture; he must undergo all the agonies of love, suffering and madness. 'He needs all his faith, all his superhuman force, and he will become the great sick man, the great criminal, the great cursed sinner-and the supreme Wise Man, since he'll have reached the Unkown" (pg 51).
"Je est un autre, which meant that in the act of introspection we objectify the self, we experience our self as if it belongs to another person. In the act of introspection there is an observer and there is an observed-and the observed half of the ego feels distant, alien. This much seems obvious to me: I am present at the explosion of my thought. I watch and listen to it. I wave the baton; the symphony murmurs form its depths or comes leaping onto the stage."
(pg 50)
"The goal of poetry is the Beautiful and the Beautiful alone without any reference to the Useful, the True or the Just" -Verlaine
We all have a house of the knives and the herring.
Relationships have all been bad, mine have been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud's. -Bob Dylan
"Je est un autre, which meant that in the act of introspection we objectify the self, we experience our self as if it belongs to another person. In the act of introspection there is an observer and there is an observed-and the observed half of the ego feels distant, alien. This much seems obvious to me: I am present at the explosion of my thought. I watch and listen to it. I wave the baton; the symphony murmurs form its depths or comes leaping onto the stage."
(pg 50)
"The goal of poetry is the Beautiful and the Beautiful alone without any reference to the Useful, the True or the Just" -Verlaine
We all have a house of the knives and the herring.
Relationships have all been bad, mine have been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud's. -Bob Dylan
March 26, 2020
Concise and very entertaining. I appreciated the inclusion of the poet‘s words, interspersed where relevant throughout the text, and the casual tone. This is a very good introduction to Rimbaud’s Life story including his turbulent love life and tenths familial relations.
November 24, 2012
The French homosexual poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) had a significant influence on major early 20th-c writers, musicians and artists, despite the fact that his own writing covers at most the five year period from when he was 16 to 21 years of age (at which time he swore off poetry forever). His influence on the Symbolists, Dadaists and Surrealists, who took his cold, cruel, often deliberately ugly descriptions of reality as he saw it, was extensive. It was used, perhaps, to express and give credence to the extremely negative emotions following the disasters and debacles of the first half of the 20th-c in Europe. They saw these abominations as consequent to the naive optimism and unquestioning idealism of the beau-monde, fin-de-siecle European culture. Rimbaud's rich, chilling and disturbing imagery and language found sympathetic ears with the French philosophers and writers of the 20th-c to justify a negative, deeply despondent and depressing response requiring the overthrowing of the old ideals in all areas. This concern still affects most cultural responses to culture and the arts today, particularly through the excesses of post-modernism.
Whether the above is true as a prophetic assessment of Rimbaud, Edmund White's elegant and even poetic attempt at an evaluation of this disturbing poet is problematic. One thing that emerged from this work was that, for me, Rimbaud would have been an extremely unpleasant and untrustworthy person; more of a general rebel against any form of authority, particularly in the world of poetry, which was seen to reflect concepts related to belles lettres (beautiful writing). Rimbaud comes across more as a trouble-maker than as someone truly concerned by what 'beautiful writing' might mean. He does not seem to have any real sympathy with anyone, even with his more gentle and 'poetic' lover Verlaine. It seems to me that as a person he had no sense whatsoever of compassion or sensitivity. Many see the opposite as the basis for poetry and the arts; Rimbaud, apparently, does not. Attempting to reconcile these two conflicting concepts will tend to fail — yet ironically, it remains one of the 'tasks' assessors set themselves in dealing with this strange man. In the end, however, such a resolution is unachievable: so Rimbaud remains an enigma.
Whether the above is true as a prophetic assessment of Rimbaud, Edmund White's elegant and even poetic attempt at an evaluation of this disturbing poet is problematic. One thing that emerged from this work was that, for me, Rimbaud would have been an extremely unpleasant and untrustworthy person; more of a general rebel against any form of authority, particularly in the world of poetry, which was seen to reflect concepts related to belles lettres (beautiful writing). Rimbaud comes across more as a trouble-maker than as someone truly concerned by what 'beautiful writing' might mean. He does not seem to have any real sympathy with anyone, even with his more gentle and 'poetic' lover Verlaine. It seems to me that as a person he had no sense whatsoever of compassion or sensitivity. Many see the opposite as the basis for poetry and the arts; Rimbaud, apparently, does not. Attempting to reconcile these two conflicting concepts will tend to fail — yet ironically, it remains one of the 'tasks' assessors set themselves in dealing with this strange man. In the end, however, such a resolution is unachievable: so Rimbaud remains an enigma.
October 24, 2020
Come for the erudition. Stay for the dish. Thank you, Edmund, for reading all those recent biographies in French and the rest of the ongoing critical apparatus, and then turning it into something as succinct and smart as this. And for doing your own translations to boot. This is a delicious little book. White has the perfect mind for the task at hand. And I like that he addresses some of the major hoaxes that have been injected into the Rimbaud myth. The book has a tenderness and a love for its subject, but it doesn't sacrifice clarity for that. Because White understands how literary "economies" function, he can go that extra mile for you in analyzing the politics of Rimbaud's ascent. And because he is bi-cultural, he can add perspectival clarity to much of the historical background. I didn't expect to be surprised by any new biography of Rimbaud, but here we are. (Okay, new is a stretch, as this was published in 2008, but it was new to me.)
October 20, 2014
Strictly speaking this is not a biography of Rimbaud nor does White claim it to be. In fact he recommends the best biographies in English and French in his bibliography. He also states clearly that he is indebted for his research to Graham Robb's biography. He makes no claim to original research or insights but he does put a few of Enid Starkie's wilder claims to bed as being nothing but wild speculation or a fruit of whatever psychological theory happened to be in vogue at the time.
It is a simple introduction to the poet's life and his relationship with Verlaine drawn with broad brush strokes. What White does however is give lots of examples of Rimbaud's poetry in context and explores some of the meanings behind the words. It is basically an art critics appraisal of Rimbaud's work without going into too much detail. So if you want a broad introduction to Rimbaud and Verlaine's troubled relationship, his poetry, and why he is held in such high regard for such a small output over four years then this is the book for you.
It is a simple introduction to the poet's life and his relationship with Verlaine drawn with broad brush strokes. What White does however is give lots of examples of Rimbaud's poetry in context and explores some of the meanings behind the words. It is basically an art critics appraisal of Rimbaud's work without going into too much detail. So if you want a broad introduction to Rimbaud and Verlaine's troubled relationship, his poetry, and why he is held in such high regard for such a small output over four years then this is the book for you.
May 8, 2011
This is an excellent book for what it is -- a very brief and readable biography of this remarkable figure, focused largely on his sick relationship with Verlaine; but also an intelligent meditation on Rimbaud's poetics, albeit in brief.
White thinks that Enid Starkie's biography is excellent and readable and almost novelistic -- but questions its accuracy. As one example, he shows how Starkie first infers the notorious gang-rape from one of Rimbaud's poems (there is no hard evidence for it), and then goes on to treat this inference as fact in what follows.
The picture of Rimbaud racing to Paris during the Siege (like Céline heading to Berlin in 1945) -- into the maw of the volcano... in the grip of History's moment -- and his general vagabondage through Europe during these years of upheaval -- is quite something to remember.
White thinks that Enid Starkie's biography is excellent and readable and almost novelistic -- but questions its accuracy. As one example, he shows how Starkie first infers the notorious gang-rape from one of Rimbaud's poems (there is no hard evidence for it), and then goes on to treat this inference as fact in what follows.
The picture of Rimbaud racing to Paris during the Siege (like Céline heading to Berlin in 1945) -- into the maw of the volcano... in the grip of History's moment -- and his general vagabondage through Europe during these years of upheaval -- is quite something to remember.
August 21, 2015
Edmund White is a fine writer, and his subject is fascinating, but this left me slightly underwhelmed. I think I was spoiled by reading Graham Robb's biography of Rimbaud first - which, despite its length, is an absorbing delight. White acknowledges his debt to Robb, but really Robb tells you all you could possibly want to know about Rimbaud, so if you've already read him, you don't really need to read this. On the other hand, this is a great appetite-whetter if you read it first. White also assumes his readers have no French, which I am pompous enough to find mildly annoying...of course I'm glad to see Rimbaud's words rendered into English, but only if the original is printed alongside, which it too often isn't.
February 8, 2016
It probably takes a gap of around 150 years to be able to read about the life of someone as unpleasant as Rimbaud without wanting to bathe yourself in disinfectant afterwards. He really was an absolute bastard. One story about him that isn't mentioned in this biography concerns him secretly spiking an acquaintance's glass of milk with his semen.
About ten years ago I read Graham Robb's excellent and detailed biography of the poet. Edmund White's short book has served as a bracing refresher. The writing is so energetic and has such clarity that it's made me want to seek out the author's works on other subjects.
About ten years ago I read Graham Robb's excellent and detailed biography of the poet. Edmund White's short book has served as a bracing refresher. The writing is so energetic and has such clarity that it's made me want to seek out the author's works on other subjects.
August 4, 2017
Intriguing and obviously well written short biography of Rimbaud. Although my preference will always go to Graham Robb's outstanding biography and, for Rimbaud's 'second life', to the excellent Somebody Else by Charles Nicholl.
January 1, 2016
A very nice and concise introduction to the life of one of the greatest french poets. Taked in consideration is also the relatioship of Rimbaud with Verlaine.
June 11, 2017
The author lays it all out for you here, he personally identified with Rimbaud his youth dealing with his own homosexuality and desire for escape. He does all the translations of poems he quotes. He gives his suggestions of the best translations and originals, best books on Rimbaud in French and English, and all while not lingering too long over anything. Enjoyable, clear-eyed, steady read.
Quotes:
As Paul Valery declared, "Before Rimbaud all literature was written in the language of common sense."
[R & V] associated in England with the former Communards; the anarchists who had tried unsuccessfully in 1871 to establish Paris as a free city-state.
The contrast between Rimbaud, the short-tempered, willful hellion, prompt to renounce one career after another until he ended up sick and despondent and virtually friendless, and Verlaine, the subtle, self-pitying equivocator, quick to yield even to his worst impulses—this contrast fascinated me.
While still a kid, he had already become resolutely anti-bourgeois in the great tradition of French bourgeois authors. He once scrawled in a school notebook, invoking the names of two of the bloodiest (and long-dead) participants in the French Revolution, "Marat and Robespierre, the young await you!"
[Line of poetry] The heart goes madly Robinsonning through novels
[At a bookstore in Charleville] Rimbaud immersed himself in the work of a fairly new school of poetry, the Parnassians, the apostles of Art for Art's Sake, who subscribed to Theophile Gautier's statement, "Only that which serves no end is beautiful; everything useful is ugly." Though they were heirs to Romanticism, they reproached the Romantics for their sentimentality and for taking political positions (for or against democracy, for or against Napoleon). Unlike the Romantics, the Parnassians emphasized a return to the literature of antiquity and prized impersonality and the icy perfection of form.
Years later, Izambard could remember his brilliant pupil repeating again and again a passage he had discovered in the essays of Montaigne: "The poet, seated on the tripod of the Muses, furiously spits out everything that enters his mouth, acting like a fountain gargoyle, and out of him flow things of all different sorts, contrary substances in an uneven flow." This idea of the grotesque, varied, and artesian inspiration would haunt the young poet, the image of the writer as simple conduit for conflicting, heterodox forces welling up out of him.
The horror of a settled existence, this deep aversion to a sedentary life, would obsess him till the end of his days.
Rimbaud: Christ, O Christ, eternal thief of the will
Rimbaud and Izambard lived in a rough-and-tumble bohemian world of heavy-teasing and ready banter.
Rimbaud studied alchemy seriously in the Charleville library
Back in Charleville and the moral and political vacuum created by the Commune, Rimbaud became a sophisticated idler. He scrawled obscenities on the walls of his town ("Shit on God" was a favorite).
His letter to Mallarme sounded fawning and insincere, and in the first quatrain of his own enclosed verse Rimbaud referred to lilies as "enemas of ecstasy." A few lines down he spoke of "a sea bird's excrement," and of violets that were the "sugary spittle of black nymphs."
Perhaps Rimbaud had built up such a head of belligerent steam that even when he wanted to court someone he couldn't help but offend.
An older gay man of Falstaffian girth, Charles Bretagne, lent him books about alchemy, mysticism, and the occult.
Rimbaud said that he was bored to the point of extinction in Charleville.
Verlaine: "Come, dear great soul, we call you, we await you."
[Imagined Rimbaud Rant] [He was [Verlaine] (and is) a homicidal satyr lurking near the gazing pond for willful and satanic ephebes who like their own reflections—he is a djinn in an ivory starched desert of wanton crones without a shriveled testicle among them—a one-eyed opium addict in the land of the willfully blind, one eye on the fresh shit bestowed God's lofty brow they call his flesh, the other simmering in the absinthe-tinged abyss—even if his poetry is as soft and fragile as the baby's buttocks to the whip or its little patch of piecrust skin at its crown on entrance to the sham. For Matthew my words (for the satyr will withhold them from your tender ears aside his clinched asshole): Blessed are the stupid, shall they endure the earth.
And the damned? We shall exit at the nearest station far away from the wastes one calls modern, and one assumes is essential, as if the steamship or the airplane were of any importance to the geometry of the atom.]
Rimbaud was influenced by "illuminism" including the belief in the transmigration of the souls.
Rimbaud was an impossible guest. He took to nude sunbathing just outside the house. He turned his room into a squalid den. He mutilated an heirloom crucifix. He was proud of the lice infesting his long mane and even pretended he was encouraging the vermin to jump onto passerby.
The Decadents (a "school" that took its name from a line by Verlaine: "I am the Empire at the end of its decadence").
Within a week Banville had asked the miscreant to leave, but only after Rimbaud had smashed the china in his room, soiled the bed sheets with his muddy boots, and sold some of the furniture.
Undoubtedly Rimbaud's persona was compounded out of an ambition to fall into becoming neither a colorfully eccentric bohemian nor a stiff-collared Parnassian bourgeois; the only other alternative was to be a monster, to be "impossible."
Again and again Rimbaud imagines a future epoch ruled by love; perhaps he was so attracted to universal utopian love in the future because he was so incapable of simple affection in the present for even one other person. [something about his utopian fantasies of the future could be brought up and have some sort of relation to WSB section]
Paris (or "Pamerde" as he called it in a variation of the word for shit)
Just as radicals in Europe and America during the 1960s would reject homosexuals, the Communards and anarchists drew the line short of "inversion" or "pederasty" or "sodomy." If a revolutionary is a nice manly man, he's acceptable. But if he's compromised by perversion, then he is nothing more than a "corrupt" member of the bourgeoisie.
Once again we encounter the familiar objection to work, which Rimbaud made in a letter to Verlaine and which the young poet was doubtless repeating now to his family members, who labored in the fields while he stayed alone in the attic muttering to himself.
Rimbaud's aspirations to become an alchemist and to learn a mage's secrets are here reported by his partner [in USEE]: "Beside his dear sleeping body, how many hours at night I stayed awake wondering why he wished to run away from reality. Never did anyone have such a wish. I recognized (without fearing for him) that he could pose a serious danger to society. Perhaps he possessed secrets for changing life?"
Rimbaud himself embraced the spirit of progress and science that characterized his century, although in A Season in Hell there is enough Christian language to lend some substance to later critical claims that he, too, was a Catholic poet. Perhaps those same critics have been less ready to acknowledge the essential impiety of the title, which suggests that hell is finite and not eternal, seasonal and not everlasting.
He took about ten copies of Saison, deposited one at Verlaine's prison for him and departed for Paris. There he handed out seven copies to his few remaining friends—none of whom had any celebrity or clout. This was all around his 19th birthday, October 20, 1973.
What must be underlined is that Rimbaud had bade farewell forever to literature. He didn't write it and he didn't even read it from now on till the end of his life. He looked back on his years of creativity (from age 15 to 19) as shameful, a time of drunkenness, a period of homosexual scandal, of arrogance and rebellion that led to nothing.
Since he'd failed as a writer he rejected all bohemian values and longed for the sort of respectability and financial gain that his mother would admire.
When Delahaye asked him if he was still writing poetry, Rimbaud looked half-annoyed, half-amused, as if he'd been asked if he still played with hoops, and replied, "I'm no longer concerned with that." When a year later one of his friends in Charleville boasted of just having bought several books of poetry, Rimbaud muttered that such books served no function except to hide the cracks in the walls.
As soon as he'd saved a few hundred francs he'd head for the nearly mythical island of Zanzibar; over the years he would mention Zanzibar over and over as his dream destination, always adding, "There's a lot of work down there." [When he talks about reincarnating he talks about doing so on Zanzibar, but still hasn't since his death.]
Although Rimbaud had turned his back squarely on literature, he remained obsessed with books. Rimbaud wanted to learn everything in every domain of practical knowledge. He ordered books from France on mettallurgy, hydraulics, operating a steamship, naval architecture, minearlogy, how to set up a lumber yard, a pocket guide to carpentry, masonry, and so on...He who had hoped to reshape the world through the alchemy of language was now reduced to the study of actual practical techniques. And yet the goal—to know everything and control everything—remained the same.
Sometimes in Harrar hyenas would wriggle in through breaches in the mud wall to devour the sick and invalid who lived in the streets.
His dreams in those years were to go to Zanzibar, to marry a nice girl from the Ardennes who would be willing to live in Africa, to have a son he could raise as an engineer, and to become rich from African trading. Not one of these dreams was ever realized.
Rimbaud had nothing but scorn for his previous Parisian literary life. When his boss Bardey, for instance, asked him about his time in London, he dismissed it as a "period of drunkenness." And when another curious colleague in Africa asked him about his career as a poet, Rimbaud said, "Hogwash—it was only hogwash." [Rincures was French word: rinsing, dishwater, slops, bad wine]
Rimbaud had been a gunrunner but never a slave-trader. Slavery and the slave trade were facts of life in Africa, though none of the slave-traders were white (they were all Arab).
He wasn't merely racist; his misanthropy was general. He despised everyone.
The fact that Rimbaud had taken so much time to settle his affairs, first in Harar and then in Aden, weighed against his chances of a cure. He was condemned to death through his own greed.
Milan Kundera wrote that in 1968 "thousands of Rimbauds" took to the barricades in the worldwide student rebellions.
Recommends: Penguin Arthur Rimbaud: Selected Poems and Letters, translated by Jeremy harding and John Sturrock.
Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle
Quotes:
As Paul Valery declared, "Before Rimbaud all literature was written in the language of common sense."
[R & V] associated in England with the former Communards; the anarchists who had tried unsuccessfully in 1871 to establish Paris as a free city-state.
The contrast between Rimbaud, the short-tempered, willful hellion, prompt to renounce one career after another until he ended up sick and despondent and virtually friendless, and Verlaine, the subtle, self-pitying equivocator, quick to yield even to his worst impulses—this contrast fascinated me.
While still a kid, he had already become resolutely anti-bourgeois in the great tradition of French bourgeois authors. He once scrawled in a school notebook, invoking the names of two of the bloodiest (and long-dead) participants in the French Revolution, "Marat and Robespierre, the young await you!"
[Line of poetry] The heart goes madly Robinsonning through novels
[At a bookstore in Charleville] Rimbaud immersed himself in the work of a fairly new school of poetry, the Parnassians, the apostles of Art for Art's Sake, who subscribed to Theophile Gautier's statement, "Only that which serves no end is beautiful; everything useful is ugly." Though they were heirs to Romanticism, they reproached the Romantics for their sentimentality and for taking political positions (for or against democracy, for or against Napoleon). Unlike the Romantics, the Parnassians emphasized a return to the literature of antiquity and prized impersonality and the icy perfection of form.
Years later, Izambard could remember his brilliant pupil repeating again and again a passage he had discovered in the essays of Montaigne: "The poet, seated on the tripod of the Muses, furiously spits out everything that enters his mouth, acting like a fountain gargoyle, and out of him flow things of all different sorts, contrary substances in an uneven flow." This idea of the grotesque, varied, and artesian inspiration would haunt the young poet, the image of the writer as simple conduit for conflicting, heterodox forces welling up out of him.
The horror of a settled existence, this deep aversion to a sedentary life, would obsess him till the end of his days.
Rimbaud: Christ, O Christ, eternal thief of the will
Rimbaud and Izambard lived in a rough-and-tumble bohemian world of heavy-teasing and ready banter.
Rimbaud studied alchemy seriously in the Charleville library
Back in Charleville and the moral and political vacuum created by the Commune, Rimbaud became a sophisticated idler. He scrawled obscenities on the walls of his town ("Shit on God" was a favorite).
His letter to Mallarme sounded fawning and insincere, and in the first quatrain of his own enclosed verse Rimbaud referred to lilies as "enemas of ecstasy." A few lines down he spoke of "a sea bird's excrement," and of violets that were the "sugary spittle of black nymphs."
Perhaps Rimbaud had built up such a head of belligerent steam that even when he wanted to court someone he couldn't help but offend.
An older gay man of Falstaffian girth, Charles Bretagne, lent him books about alchemy, mysticism, and the occult.
Rimbaud said that he was bored to the point of extinction in Charleville.
Verlaine: "Come, dear great soul, we call you, we await you."
[Imagined Rimbaud Rant] [He was [Verlaine] (and is) a homicidal satyr lurking near the gazing pond for willful and satanic ephebes who like their own reflections—he is a djinn in an ivory starched desert of wanton crones without a shriveled testicle among them—a one-eyed opium addict in the land of the willfully blind, one eye on the fresh shit bestowed God's lofty brow they call his flesh, the other simmering in the absinthe-tinged abyss—even if his poetry is as soft and fragile as the baby's buttocks to the whip or its little patch of piecrust skin at its crown on entrance to the sham. For Matthew my words (for the satyr will withhold them from your tender ears aside his clinched asshole): Blessed are the stupid, shall they endure the earth.
And the damned? We shall exit at the nearest station far away from the wastes one calls modern, and one assumes is essential, as if the steamship or the airplane were of any importance to the geometry of the atom.]
Rimbaud was influenced by "illuminism" including the belief in the transmigration of the souls.
Rimbaud was an impossible guest. He took to nude sunbathing just outside the house. He turned his room into a squalid den. He mutilated an heirloom crucifix. He was proud of the lice infesting his long mane and even pretended he was encouraging the vermin to jump onto passerby.
The Decadents (a "school" that took its name from a line by Verlaine: "I am the Empire at the end of its decadence").
Within a week Banville had asked the miscreant to leave, but only after Rimbaud had smashed the china in his room, soiled the bed sheets with his muddy boots, and sold some of the furniture.
Undoubtedly Rimbaud's persona was compounded out of an ambition to fall into becoming neither a colorfully eccentric bohemian nor a stiff-collared Parnassian bourgeois; the only other alternative was to be a monster, to be "impossible."
Again and again Rimbaud imagines a future epoch ruled by love; perhaps he was so attracted to universal utopian love in the future because he was so incapable of simple affection in the present for even one other person. [something about his utopian fantasies of the future could be brought up and have some sort of relation to WSB section]
Paris (or "Pamerde" as he called it in a variation of the word for shit)
Just as radicals in Europe and America during the 1960s would reject homosexuals, the Communards and anarchists drew the line short of "inversion" or "pederasty" or "sodomy." If a revolutionary is a nice manly man, he's acceptable. But if he's compromised by perversion, then he is nothing more than a "corrupt" member of the bourgeoisie.
Once again we encounter the familiar objection to work, which Rimbaud made in a letter to Verlaine and which the young poet was doubtless repeating now to his family members, who labored in the fields while he stayed alone in the attic muttering to himself.
Rimbaud's aspirations to become an alchemist and to learn a mage's secrets are here reported by his partner [in USEE]: "Beside his dear sleeping body, how many hours at night I stayed awake wondering why he wished to run away from reality. Never did anyone have such a wish. I recognized (without fearing for him) that he could pose a serious danger to society. Perhaps he possessed secrets for changing life?"
Rimbaud himself embraced the spirit of progress and science that characterized his century, although in A Season in Hell there is enough Christian language to lend some substance to later critical claims that he, too, was a Catholic poet. Perhaps those same critics have been less ready to acknowledge the essential impiety of the title, which suggests that hell is finite and not eternal, seasonal and not everlasting.
He took about ten copies of Saison, deposited one at Verlaine's prison for him and departed for Paris. There he handed out seven copies to his few remaining friends—none of whom had any celebrity or clout. This was all around his 19th birthday, October 20, 1973.
What must be underlined is that Rimbaud had bade farewell forever to literature. He didn't write it and he didn't even read it from now on till the end of his life. He looked back on his years of creativity (from age 15 to 19) as shameful, a time of drunkenness, a period of homosexual scandal, of arrogance and rebellion that led to nothing.
Since he'd failed as a writer he rejected all bohemian values and longed for the sort of respectability and financial gain that his mother would admire.
When Delahaye asked him if he was still writing poetry, Rimbaud looked half-annoyed, half-amused, as if he'd been asked if he still played with hoops, and replied, "I'm no longer concerned with that." When a year later one of his friends in Charleville boasted of just having bought several books of poetry, Rimbaud muttered that such books served no function except to hide the cracks in the walls.
As soon as he'd saved a few hundred francs he'd head for the nearly mythical island of Zanzibar; over the years he would mention Zanzibar over and over as his dream destination, always adding, "There's a lot of work down there." [When he talks about reincarnating he talks about doing so on Zanzibar, but still hasn't since his death.]
Although Rimbaud had turned his back squarely on literature, he remained obsessed with books. Rimbaud wanted to learn everything in every domain of practical knowledge. He ordered books from France on mettallurgy, hydraulics, operating a steamship, naval architecture, minearlogy, how to set up a lumber yard, a pocket guide to carpentry, masonry, and so on...He who had hoped to reshape the world through the alchemy of language was now reduced to the study of actual practical techniques. And yet the goal—to know everything and control everything—remained the same.
Sometimes in Harrar hyenas would wriggle in through breaches in the mud wall to devour the sick and invalid who lived in the streets.
His dreams in those years were to go to Zanzibar, to marry a nice girl from the Ardennes who would be willing to live in Africa, to have a son he could raise as an engineer, and to become rich from African trading. Not one of these dreams was ever realized.
Rimbaud had nothing but scorn for his previous Parisian literary life. When his boss Bardey, for instance, asked him about his time in London, he dismissed it as a "period of drunkenness." And when another curious colleague in Africa asked him about his career as a poet, Rimbaud said, "Hogwash—it was only hogwash." [Rincures was French word: rinsing, dishwater, slops, bad wine]
Rimbaud had been a gunrunner but never a slave-trader. Slavery and the slave trade were facts of life in Africa, though none of the slave-traders were white (they were all Arab).
He wasn't merely racist; his misanthropy was general. He despised everyone.
The fact that Rimbaud had taken so much time to settle his affairs, first in Harar and then in Aden, weighed against his chances of a cure. He was condemned to death through his own greed.
Milan Kundera wrote that in 1968 "thousands of Rimbauds" took to the barricades in the worldwide student rebellions.
Recommends: Penguin Arthur Rimbaud: Selected Poems and Letters, translated by Jeremy harding and John Sturrock.
Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle
July 28, 2021
Enjoyable reading written with literary flair.
And, yes. Rambo was a gunrunner also, among others. 3.5
And, yes. Rambo was a gunrunner also, among others. 3.5
March 26, 2023
Needless to say, very interesting life. This is the book to read if you're not after an extensive and thorough biography. White describes it as a biographical essay, which I think is right. There is some nice commentary and critique on his poetry but that is not the focus. (To Civ VI players who might be reading this, the Menelik guy mentioned in the last chapters is the one you're thinking.)
September 22, 2015
What an incredible existence Rimbaud led. I pity bisexual and married man Verlaine. He didn't stand a chance.
How could he resist such a force of nature?
Beauty, fierceness, genius, madness, integrity, self-loathing, duality, ideas of grandeur, intelligence, curiosity, youth, and tragedy--Rimbaud had it all and must have been impossible to ignore, love or forget.
Rimbaud: "I'm leaving for Belgium."
Verlaine: "I was on my way to the pharmacy to buy my wife Mathilde her medication."
Rimbaud: "Leave us alone with your wife. Come. We leave now."
Verlaine: "Yes. Okay."
Then Verlaine writes to Mathilde: "Ne pleurs pas. Je fais un mauvais rêve. Je reviendrai."
Don't cry. I'm having a bad dream. I'll return.
Well, Verlain eventually went a little crazy loving that blue-eyed demon, they later referred to as Mr. Thing. During one of their absinthe binges in a crummy hotel, Verlaine shot his young lover, but thankfully missed and only hit Rimbaud in the wrist. However, Rimbaud was very pissed and testified against Verlaine, sending Verlaine to jail for two years. It's the stuff gay romance writers live for.
They wrote, fought, suffered and yearned but the relationship between older Verlaine, who was a phenomenal poet as well, and young slightly maniacal Arthur, eventually wore out under the pressure of being broke, gay, despised, ridiculed and criminalized.
Convention won.
However, Rimbaud's tantrums and excessive fucking personality probably had a little to do with Verlaine continually going back to his wife. By the way, Mathilde, Verlaine's wife, soon left him for good and burned all of the letters she found of Rimbaud--letters he'd written to her husband. I wish I could read those letters. But they're gone forever.
Now, in his short career, Rimbaud seems to have written across all genres of poetry and even created one--surrealism. He's inspired everybody. From musicians like Jim Morisson and Bob Dylan, to the beatnik poets like Kerouac and Ginsberg, who credited Rimbaud's "disorganization of the senses" for their ambitions of stirring shit with their poetry.
Then, like a comet passing through, Rimbaud just disappeared. Quit poetry. Boozing. Men? Just upped and left for Africa. Spent ten years there before his death, trading guns. This was during the scramble for Africa. He lived in Egypt and Ethiopia, and wrote his mother long suffering letters in which he complained about how much he hated his life, but couldn't imagine coming back to France.
Rimbaud never wrote another line of poetry, but ordered book after book on various subjects such as metallurgy, steamships, medicine, alchemy, etc. He was truly an auto-dictate with a quench for knowledge I can relate to. He couldn't stop wanting, aching, needing to know know know. This was really his true quest, I think.
Rimbaud dreamed BIG. But cancer got him and he was forced to return to France, where he died in a Marseilles hospital. They had to amputate his leg. Ironic. This young man who'd spent his life running, always on the move, desperate to cover as much ground as he possibly could (did he foresee he'd live a short life?)in the end, was forced down into a chair, his every movement causing him atrocious pain.
While Rimbaud was in Africa, Verlaine and a few other poets gathered attention to Rimbaud's work and got him published. Soon, the buzz was on in Europe and rumors flew. Where was the young mad poet? Some said he'd died, others swore he was alive and a slave trader. This only fueled people's imaginations and contributed greatly to their growing fascination with the poet.
After his death, Rimbaud was already well on his way of becoming a legend.
Verlaine never forgot his tumultuous love affair with the golden boy and continued to honor Rimbaud long after he had passed.
A passage from Crimen Amoris (the crime of love), a poem that Verlaine wrote when he was in prison for having shot Rimbaud.
Or, le plus beau d'entre tous ces mauvais anges
Avait seize ans sous sa couronnes de fleurs
Les bras croisés sur les colliers et les franges
Il rêve, oeil plein de flammes et de pleurs
Il résistait à toutes les câlineries
Et le chagrin mettait un papillon noir
A son cher front tout brûlant d'orfèvreries
Ô l'immortel et terrible désespoir!
How could he resist such a force of nature?
Beauty, fierceness, genius, madness, integrity, self-loathing, duality, ideas of grandeur, intelligence, curiosity, youth, and tragedy--Rimbaud had it all and must have been impossible to ignore, love or forget.
Rimbaud: "I'm leaving for Belgium."
Verlaine: "I was on my way to the pharmacy to buy my wife Mathilde her medication."
Rimbaud: "Leave us alone with your wife. Come. We leave now."
Verlaine: "Yes. Okay."
Then Verlaine writes to Mathilde: "Ne pleurs pas. Je fais un mauvais rêve. Je reviendrai."
Don't cry. I'm having a bad dream. I'll return.
Well, Verlain eventually went a little crazy loving that blue-eyed demon, they later referred to as Mr. Thing. During one of their absinthe binges in a crummy hotel, Verlaine shot his young lover, but thankfully missed and only hit Rimbaud in the wrist. However, Rimbaud was very pissed and testified against Verlaine, sending Verlaine to jail for two years. It's the stuff gay romance writers live for.
They wrote, fought, suffered and yearned but the relationship between older Verlaine, who was a phenomenal poet as well, and young slightly maniacal Arthur, eventually wore out under the pressure of being broke, gay, despised, ridiculed and criminalized.
Convention won.
However, Rimbaud's tantrums and excessive fucking personality probably had a little to do with Verlaine continually going back to his wife. By the way, Mathilde, Verlaine's wife, soon left him for good and burned all of the letters she found of Rimbaud--letters he'd written to her husband. I wish I could read those letters. But they're gone forever.
Now, in his short career, Rimbaud seems to have written across all genres of poetry and even created one--surrealism. He's inspired everybody. From musicians like Jim Morisson and Bob Dylan, to the beatnik poets like Kerouac and Ginsberg, who credited Rimbaud's "disorganization of the senses" for their ambitions of stirring shit with their poetry.
Then, like a comet passing through, Rimbaud just disappeared. Quit poetry. Boozing. Men? Just upped and left for Africa. Spent ten years there before his death, trading guns. This was during the scramble for Africa. He lived in Egypt and Ethiopia, and wrote his mother long suffering letters in which he complained about how much he hated his life, but couldn't imagine coming back to France.
Rimbaud never wrote another line of poetry, but ordered book after book on various subjects such as metallurgy, steamships, medicine, alchemy, etc. He was truly an auto-dictate with a quench for knowledge I can relate to. He couldn't stop wanting, aching, needing to know know know. This was really his true quest, I think.
Rimbaud dreamed BIG. But cancer got him and he was forced to return to France, where he died in a Marseilles hospital. They had to amputate his leg. Ironic. This young man who'd spent his life running, always on the move, desperate to cover as much ground as he possibly could (did he foresee he'd live a short life?)in the end, was forced down into a chair, his every movement causing him atrocious pain.
While Rimbaud was in Africa, Verlaine and a few other poets gathered attention to Rimbaud's work and got him published. Soon, the buzz was on in Europe and rumors flew. Where was the young mad poet? Some said he'd died, others swore he was alive and a slave trader. This only fueled people's imaginations and contributed greatly to their growing fascination with the poet.
After his death, Rimbaud was already well on his way of becoming a legend.
Verlaine never forgot his tumultuous love affair with the golden boy and continued to honor Rimbaud long after he had passed.
A passage from Crimen Amoris (the crime of love), a poem that Verlaine wrote when he was in prison for having shot Rimbaud.
Or, le plus beau d'entre tous ces mauvais anges
Avait seize ans sous sa couronnes de fleurs
Les bras croisés sur les colliers et les franges
Il rêve, oeil plein de flammes et de pleurs
Il résistait à toutes les câlineries
Et le chagrin mettait un papillon noir
A son cher front tout brûlant d'orfèvreries
Ô l'immortel et terrible désespoir!
October 4, 2018
This, on the other hand, is one of his best. The way in which White keeps you glued to the page in this tale of literary woes, is quite uncanny. It has much to do with the poignancy with which White lays bare the vulnerability of Rimbaud and Verlaine's lives and loves. Definitely a 'must read again'.
December 8, 2012
A well-written glimpse into the world of a true literary genius, from the perspective of a homosexual author, Edmund White. Exerting a strong influence on surrealism, as one of the most important poets of his time, whose 'power of incantation' Andre Breton found overwhelming-- and who would always remain a key source in the development of surrealist thought-- Rimbaud quickly felt that poetry must break with tradition and "usher in a new era of human history." He felt that all poetry was written in the language of common sense. This of course, among other things, makes Rimbaud a controversial figure in the literary world, as it has been said, "either Rimabud is a genius, to whom everything is permitted, or he's a brat." Opinions vary, though for the most part, Arthur Rimbaud was both revered and loathed. Rimbaud told the world that he was going to write in a 'new, made-up language' and he did just that. "To create a poetic language that speaks to all the senses, I'll take words from scholarly and technical vocabularies, from foreign languages, wherever I can..."
The arduous love/hate relationship between the older Paul Verlaine and the young genius Rimbaud is of course detailed as in all Rimbaud biographies, a relationship in which Rimbaud saw himself as an archangel descended to earth to liberate Verlaine from his bourgeois temptations as a man and the tendencies towards prettiness in his poetry. They pursued Rimbaud's program of "the disordering of the senses," and became the most notorious homosexual couple of the day. Nevertheless, without Verlaine's efforts, Rimbaud would be just a footnote in the history of a forgotten literary movement.
Rimbaud's greatest quote, which canonizes him as a Surrealist saint, is thus: "The writer must turn himself into a seer. The Poet becomes a seer through a long, immense and carefully reasoned disordering of the senses. The poet must subject himself to a self-instigated torture; he must undergo all the agonies of love, suffering, and madness. He needs all his faith, all his superhuman force, and he will become the great sick man, the great criminal, the great cursed sinner-- and the supreme Wise Man, since he'll have reached the Unknown." With such a new radical motive for thought looming among turn-of-the-century poets, beginning in the 1920's, Rimbaud was declared as one of the formative influences and precursors of the Surrealistic movement. Rimbaud is also considered one of the leaders of the Symbolists and also the Decadents (a movement he no doubt had never heard of)-- a term coined by Verlaine himself.
It is difficult not to write endless volumes, praising Rimbaud as a phenomenon (which he was). He is the godfather of modern poetry and a deity of surrealistic literature. Better known for his infamous character than for his poetry during his lifetime, he was a ragged dandy, the bohemian picture of the day. Edmund White's naked analyzation of Rimbaud's life evokes a gracious tone of wild rebeliousness and dry-eyed realism, as Rimbaud's difficult life was a far cry from any sort of fairy-tale grandeur. Rimabaud had no academic upbringing or bona fide set of skills-- just true genius, which no one seemed to appreciate. Rimbaud's reputation as a teen rebel and anti-bourgeois revolutionary makes him all the more interesting to grasp. He began his literary career as a fifteen-year old and retired at the age of nineteen. He marks an epoch...
The arduous love/hate relationship between the older Paul Verlaine and the young genius Rimbaud is of course detailed as in all Rimbaud biographies, a relationship in which Rimbaud saw himself as an archangel descended to earth to liberate Verlaine from his bourgeois temptations as a man and the tendencies towards prettiness in his poetry. They pursued Rimbaud's program of "the disordering of the senses," and became the most notorious homosexual couple of the day. Nevertheless, without Verlaine's efforts, Rimbaud would be just a footnote in the history of a forgotten literary movement.
Rimbaud's greatest quote, which canonizes him as a Surrealist saint, is thus: "The writer must turn himself into a seer. The Poet becomes a seer through a long, immense and carefully reasoned disordering of the senses. The poet must subject himself to a self-instigated torture; he must undergo all the agonies of love, suffering, and madness. He needs all his faith, all his superhuman force, and he will become the great sick man, the great criminal, the great cursed sinner-- and the supreme Wise Man, since he'll have reached the Unknown." With such a new radical motive for thought looming among turn-of-the-century poets, beginning in the 1920's, Rimbaud was declared as one of the formative influences and precursors of the Surrealistic movement. Rimbaud is also considered one of the leaders of the Symbolists and also the Decadents (a movement he no doubt had never heard of)-- a term coined by Verlaine himself.
It is difficult not to write endless volumes, praising Rimbaud as a phenomenon (which he was). He is the godfather of modern poetry and a deity of surrealistic literature. Better known for his infamous character than for his poetry during his lifetime, he was a ragged dandy, the bohemian picture of the day. Edmund White's naked analyzation of Rimbaud's life evokes a gracious tone of wild rebeliousness and dry-eyed realism, as Rimbaud's difficult life was a far cry from any sort of fairy-tale grandeur. Rimabaud had no academic upbringing or bona fide set of skills-- just true genius, which no one seemed to appreciate. Rimbaud's reputation as a teen rebel and anti-bourgeois revolutionary makes him all the more interesting to grasp. He began his literary career as a fifteen-year old and retired at the age of nineteen. He marks an epoch...
December 7, 2014
Usually books I read get 3-4 stars. This is the result of picking books with subject matter that interests me, or books written by authors I enjoy reading. Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel is no exception. In this case, however, I didn't choose the book because I am a fan of Rimbaud - who, by all accounts wasn't a person you'd want to spend a lot of time with - or his poetry - in fact, I will confess to never having read any of his work. I picked up the book because the biographer, Edmund White, is an author I do know and admire.
And I was not disappointed in my choice. White traces Rimbaud's life from his childhood in rural France to his death in Marseille after leaving Africa for treatment of an ulcerated sore in his leg. The most compelling portion of the book occurs in the chapters covering the 4 years of Rimbaud's life in his late teens when he actually wrote poetry. These short few years coincide with Rimbaud's notorious relationship with Paul Verlaine.
White obviously likes and admires Rimbaud. But he doesn't falsely elevate the young poet. Instead, the biographer dutifully (and with well-written prose) reveals both the genius and the serious flaws of his subject. White admits to being taken with the works of Rimbaud when he (White) was in school. At the book's outset, White also confesses to an oddly disturbing occurrence in his own life that has parallels to actions Rimbaud took in his own life. As a fan of Edmund White, I am not sure that I wanted to know what he reveals about himself.
Following the end of his writing career (at age 19), Rimbaud went to find his fortune in Africa. He renounced his previous life as a poet. He worked at various times for others and then for himself, doing bookkeeping, import export, and ultimately, gun-running. He had some interaction with well-known figures in Abyssinian (Ethiopian) history. And during all the years Rimbaud was living and working abroad, Paul Verlaine (who had spent time in prison partly for his own fault, and partly because of Rimbaud) continued to promote the genius of Rimbaud in books and magazines in France.
Ultimately, thanks to my dumb luck in finding this work at my local library as I was simply walking by a shelf of non-fiction (I love serendipity), I got to read a work by one of my favorite authors about a very interesting poet and historical figure about whom I knew very little. You do not have to be a fan of poetry to enjoy a well-told biographical story like this one. White's book, however, has piqued my interest. I will be adding Rimbaud's, A Season in Hell, and Illuminations, to my reading lists shortly.
I heartily recommend this to anyone looking for a good read and who might want to learn a bit about a celebrated writer in the process.
And I was not disappointed in my choice. White traces Rimbaud's life from his childhood in rural France to his death in Marseille after leaving Africa for treatment of an ulcerated sore in his leg. The most compelling portion of the book occurs in the chapters covering the 4 years of Rimbaud's life in his late teens when he actually wrote poetry. These short few years coincide with Rimbaud's notorious relationship with Paul Verlaine.
White obviously likes and admires Rimbaud. But he doesn't falsely elevate the young poet. Instead, the biographer dutifully (and with well-written prose) reveals both the genius and the serious flaws of his subject. White admits to being taken with the works of Rimbaud when he (White) was in school. At the book's outset, White also confesses to an oddly disturbing occurrence in his own life that has parallels to actions Rimbaud took in his own life. As a fan of Edmund White, I am not sure that I wanted to know what he reveals about himself.
Following the end of his writing career (at age 19), Rimbaud went to find his fortune in Africa. He renounced his previous life as a poet. He worked at various times for others and then for himself, doing bookkeeping, import export, and ultimately, gun-running. He had some interaction with well-known figures in Abyssinian (Ethiopian) history. And during all the years Rimbaud was living and working abroad, Paul Verlaine (who had spent time in prison partly for his own fault, and partly because of Rimbaud) continued to promote the genius of Rimbaud in books and magazines in France.
Ultimately, thanks to my dumb luck in finding this work at my local library as I was simply walking by a shelf of non-fiction (I love serendipity), I got to read a work by one of my favorite authors about a very interesting poet and historical figure about whom I knew very little. You do not have to be a fan of poetry to enjoy a well-told biographical story like this one. White's book, however, has piqued my interest. I will be adding Rimbaud's, A Season in Hell, and Illuminations, to my reading lists shortly.
I heartily recommend this to anyone looking for a good read and who might want to learn a bit about a celebrated writer in the process.
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June 1, 2015What a magnificent character Arthur Rimbaud must have been! He lived a strange, decadent, chaotic and lamentably short life. Like so many misunderstood poets, ahead of its time. Like a blazing star, he burned so brightly that he burned himself out. But in his short 37 years, he may have lived more than most who live twice as long. He was truly and s[spectacularly larger-than-life, yet at the same time, he is exceedingly, almost exaggeratedly human in his vices and other failings of character. This book gives an interesting perspective on his life. The biographer speaks in the introduction of reading Rimbaud's poetry as a young gay man struggling to accept himself in an intolerant society, and finding inspiration in the person of this short, sneering Frenchman that was frequently compared to angels and devils, but never anything in between - a study in extremes. He focuses very doggedly on the whirlwind, passionate and violent relationship between Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, and takes a very casual, familiar and sometimes very glib tone about their adventures together, often peppering the time line with amusing anecdotes to shock the reader with Rimbaud's heady audacity, so that the story never turns dry or dull. Though the author makes no attempt to hide Rimbaud's flaws - and there were many, not the least of which was his personal hygiene - one can't help but feel a twinge of regret that one cannot travel back in time to meet this eccentric creature oneself. This book left me wondering what would have become of Rimbaud's work if he had lived longer; did his abrupt cessation of his writing career at age 19, coupled with his death at 37, cement his legend? If he'd lived to a ripe old age, would his poetry have faded slowly into oblivion along with his life? No one can say, but as it stands, he is one of the most shocking and fascinating poets that I've ever come across and his amazing life story only serves to illuminate and reinforce the fascination of his poetry. I REALLY enjoyed this book!
January 10, 2011
Arthur Rimbaud is probably one of the most fascinating people, to me, of all time. Everything about his life intrigues me, and his relationship with Paul Verlaine was both a thing of beauty and a treacherous, unhealthy addiction that neither of them could seem to break. I feel connected to Rimbaud through that typical, sad isolation; the kind only met when someone is too much like who they are idolizing but probably too unbelievable for anyone else to take notice.
Singlehandedly, Rimbaud pretty much created the idea of self-contradiction as he weaved himself a reputation that he slowly grew to detest and, eventually, deny. Instead of being recognized for his work, Rimbaud was plagued by the gossip of his personal life. It wasn’t until he was dead that the literary world gave him a second chance. And, without a doubt, his poetry is beautiful. It’s beautiful because it constantly changes. At one moment he can be perverse and sardonic, until, a line later, he can capture our emotions with easy effort. Rimbaud was truly astonishing, which is why I admire his work, his persona and his life.
Reading through Edmund White’s biography was insightful, and I appreciated the time White took to debunk the misinformation that has been spread about Rimbaud. He offered a great outlook on the more mysterious aspects of Rimbaud’s life while never becoming bias. There’s a reasonable amount of biographies about Rimbaud, though many of them are only in French, which is why I’m very pleased with White’s fluid, English presentation. I am especially looking forward to revisiting Rimbaud’s poetry with this biography in mind.
Rimbaud is just someone I’ll always admire and respect. His jealousy, his contempt and bitterness for most things that did not involve himself—oh, he was a child in many aspects, yet beneath that exterior dwelled a genius, and it’s amazing his work still reads so loudly today.
Singlehandedly, Rimbaud pretty much created the idea of self-contradiction as he weaved himself a reputation that he slowly grew to detest and, eventually, deny. Instead of being recognized for his work, Rimbaud was plagued by the gossip of his personal life. It wasn’t until he was dead that the literary world gave him a second chance. And, without a doubt, his poetry is beautiful. It’s beautiful because it constantly changes. At one moment he can be perverse and sardonic, until, a line later, he can capture our emotions with easy effort. Rimbaud was truly astonishing, which is why I admire his work, his persona and his life.
Reading through Edmund White’s biography was insightful, and I appreciated the time White took to debunk the misinformation that has been spread about Rimbaud. He offered a great outlook on the more mysterious aspects of Rimbaud’s life while never becoming bias. There’s a reasonable amount of biographies about Rimbaud, though many of them are only in French, which is why I’m very pleased with White’s fluid, English presentation. I am especially looking forward to revisiting Rimbaud’s poetry with this biography in mind.
Rimbaud is just someone I’ll always admire and respect. His jealousy, his contempt and bitterness for most things that did not involve himself—oh, he was a child in many aspects, yet beneath that exterior dwelled a genius, and it’s amazing his work still reads so loudly today.
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August 7, 2020Biyografi okumak konusunda çok deneyimli değilim, bu kitap da Edmund White’dan okuduğum ilk kitap. Ancak zaten biyografileriyle tanınan(Türkiye'de pek de tanınmayan) White’ın işini iyi yaptığını düşünüyorum. Tanımadığım bir yayın evinden çıkan, Cem Uzungüneş’in çevirisini oldukça beğenmeme rağmen yazım hatalarıyla dolu olması sebebiyle sınırlarımı zorlayan bir kitaptı. Yine de oldukça akıcı olmasını White’ın yeteneğine kanıt olarak sunuyorum. Bu akıcılıkla biyografinin nesnelliğini kaybetmemesi, White’ın “hikayeleştirmek” için boşlukları doldurmaması sevdiğim noktalardan. White, kendinden önceki biyografileri de değerlendirerek eldeki belgelerle birlikte ortaya atılan teorileri de açıklıyor. Bu teorilerden hangilerinin kanıtları olduğunu ve hangilerinin asılsız iddialar olabileceğini yazıyor. Rimbaud gibi sansasyonel bir hayat yaşamış, ölümü ve şöhreti zaman çizgisinde aynı noktada kesişmiş biri için ortada birçok söylence dolaşması elbette ki normal. Başarısız olduğunu düşünerek bu dünyadan ayrıldıktan sonra şiirlerinin ünlenmesinin de sanat dünyasında sıra dışı bir durum olduğu söylenemez aslında.
Türkçe baskı konusunda rahatsız olduğum başka bir nokta şiirlerin İngilizceden çevrilmesiyle artık 3. dile ulaşılması sebebiyle kısmen yitirilmiş olması. Bunu Cem Uzungüneş kendisi de belirtmiş, Erdoğan Alkan veya Özdemir İnce çevirileriyle okunabileceğini söylemiş. Sanıyorum ki telif hakları nedeniyle Cem Uzungüneş’in kendi çevirileri kullanılmış. Kendisinin şiirlerini sevmeme rağmen, şiir çevirmenin farklı bir alan olduğunu ve ana dilden çevirinin önemini göstermiş oldu. En güzeli her yazanı, her yazarı kendi dilinden okumak deyip, elimde Rimbaud’nunki gibi (neredeyse) imkansız bir amaçla bu kitabı da kütüphaneye geri götüreyim.
Türkçe baskı konusunda rahatsız olduğum başka bir nokta şiirlerin İngilizceden çevrilmesiyle artık 3. dile ulaşılması sebebiyle kısmen yitirilmiş olması. Bunu Cem Uzungüneş kendisi de belirtmiş, Erdoğan Alkan veya Özdemir İnce çevirileriyle okunabileceğini söylemiş. Sanıyorum ki telif hakları nedeniyle Cem Uzungüneş’in kendi çevirileri kullanılmış. Kendisinin şiirlerini sevmeme rağmen, şiir çevirmenin farklı bir alan olduğunu ve ana dilden çevirinin önemini göstermiş oldu. En güzeli her yazanı, her yazarı kendi dilinden okumak deyip, elimde Rimbaud’nunki gibi (neredeyse) imkansız bir amaçla bu kitabı da kütüphaneye geri götüreyim.
March 26, 2014
Mr. White has undertaken the task of dissecting and probing the elusive nature of Arthur Rimbaud, a progenitor of Surrealism and one of the influences behind the Decadent era. The book is thorough, exhaustive and spares no punches about its subject. Bratty, willful, cruel, needy, offensive, churlish, lazy and contradictory, Rimbaud affected everyone who met him—usually in the negative. He alienated his friends, offended strangers and engaged in a torrid affair with Paul Verlaine, the violent, moody married alcoholic who nearly ruined himself on Rimbaud’s account.
However, Mr. White’s book is not merely about Rimbaud but about the nature of his world, its changing aspects, its history, art, culture and the countries in which he moved. It mentions Rimbaud’s poetry in English translation but wisely doesn’t include it. The author manages both to capture the nature of Rimbaud’s character and leave his basic motivations a complete puzzlement. Thus, being more about the man than the poet, this book is absorbing and repellant at once, much like the Rimbaud himself.
However, Mr. White’s book is not merely about Rimbaud but about the nature of his world, its changing aspects, its history, art, culture and the countries in which he moved. It mentions Rimbaud’s poetry in English translation but wisely doesn’t include it. The author manages both to capture the nature of Rimbaud’s character and leave his basic motivations a complete puzzlement. Thus, being more about the man than the poet, this book is absorbing and repellant at once, much like the Rimbaud himself.
July 6, 2015
Arthur Rimbaud's life was so exciting it was almost monotonous. Most people have periods of rest and dullness in which they gather up their spirits and plan their escapes. He escaped as a teenager and never looked back, packing more into 37 years than most of us do into double that number. His tempestuous relationship with Verlaine takes up most of the book, but it's a riveting read.
The trouble with his unstinting excitement is that you will wind up with a paragraph like "Rimbaud decided he wanted to learn Russian, so he locked himself in an armoire with a Russian dictionary. Then he tried to make it across the border but got beaten up by a border guard and sent home." This is a THROWAWAY PARAGRAPH because compared to the rest of Rimbaud's life it's actually rather dull, but it would be a highlight of any other biography.
White has an eye for lurid details, which I appreciated -- if you want to hear about an arch made of the severed testes of enemies, this is a good book for you.
The trouble with his unstinting excitement is that you will wind up with a paragraph like "Rimbaud decided he wanted to learn Russian, so he locked himself in an armoire with a Russian dictionary. Then he tried to make it across the border but got beaten up by a border guard and sent home." This is a THROWAWAY PARAGRAPH because compared to the rest of Rimbaud's life it's actually rather dull, but it would be a highlight of any other biography.
White has an eye for lurid details, which I appreciated -- if you want to hear about an arch made of the severed testes of enemies, this is a good book for you.
December 4, 2009
Turning thirty-one is depressing because if you haven't become a professional athlete by that age, you know it's never going to happen. Similar could be said of turning nineteen: if you haven't become Arthur Rimbaud by that age, then it's never going to happen.
Edmund White's slim biography is pure entertainment with generous helpings of research and a dash of memoir. Rimbaud's biography is the stuff of literary legend: enfant terrible seducing an older poet, getting shot by said poet, walking away from literature at nineteen, then having his poems change the world.
Keeping it concise, White takes us a little deeper than the prurient rumors that make the myth, and the picture of Rimbaud he leaves us with may not be quite as romantic as the fair-haired dream boy that people love, but he is ultimately the Rimbaud that influence the likes of Proust, Milan Kundera, Jim Morrison, Sartre, and Kerouac.
Edmund White's slim biography is pure entertainment with generous helpings of research and a dash of memoir. Rimbaud's biography is the stuff of literary legend: enfant terrible seducing an older poet, getting shot by said poet, walking away from literature at nineteen, then having his poems change the world.
Keeping it concise, White takes us a little deeper than the prurient rumors that make the myth, and the picture of Rimbaud he leaves us with may not be quite as romantic as the fair-haired dream boy that people love, but he is ultimately the Rimbaud that influence the likes of Proust, Milan Kundera, Jim Morrison, Sartre, and Kerouac.
June 1, 2010
This was an easy read, other than White's impressive vocabulary making me look up a word every few pages. I wanted to learn the scandal and the genius of Rimbaud, whose work I have never read. I enjoyed White's A Boy's Own Story so I sought out this biography. White steers clear, at least in these two books, of emotionality. His fiction does not suffer much for this; it's never less than compelling (though I think it would be unmatched if White could convey feeling as well as a Toni Morrison). This piece of non-fiction was not wholly compelling to me. Largely that's because I had no prior feelings about the subject. I think I would have preferred a fat, conventional retelling of Rimbaud's life. White does this adequately and explains his artistic significance very well, but I never really connected to the person or persona of Rimbaud, whose reputation suggests there's a lot to be intrigued by.
December 5, 2008
A short work (less than 200 pages) that just touches upon the greatest moments on the life of Rimbaud, from the early "deplorable behavior" of his late teen years to his different un-poetic persona (cut short by his death at the age of 37). Not enough text to fully satisfy one's curiosity about this amazing personality, but at least an introduction that makes one want to read more (such as the 1000+ pages of Lefrere's biography published in 2001). The author, White, has a tendency to let some of his personal tastes and feelings creep into his writing, but that does not make the small book less interesting.
August 25, 2018
I knew nothing of the life or work of Arthur Rimbaud until picking up this thoroughly entertaining biography. I chose to read it because of the musician/poets that he has said to have influenced such as Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Tom Verlaine (there’s a clue in the name) and Bob Dylan.
Although Edmund White informs us there are many more exhaustive volumes on the subject I found this one perfectly readable and to the point, telling the rise and fall of the ‘enfant terrible’ of 19th century prose poetry in a style that isn’t too heavy or patronising to the uninformed reader. In other words a great book on a artist I would not normally read about.
Although Edmund White informs us there are many more exhaustive volumes on the subject I found this one perfectly readable and to the point, telling the rise and fall of the ‘enfant terrible’ of 19th century prose poetry in a style that isn’t too heavy or patronising to the uninformed reader. In other words a great book on a artist I would not normally read about.
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