Arthur Rimbaud Biography and List of Works

French poet and adventurer, who stopped writing verse at the age of 21. Rimbaud's poetry, partially written in free verse, is characterised by dramatic and imaginative vision. "I say that one must be a visionary - that one must make oneself a VISIONARY." His works are among the most original of the Symbolist movement, whose ranks included such poets as Stéphane Mallarme and Paul Paul Verlaine, and playwrights such as Maurice Maeterlinck. Rimbaud's best-known work, LE BÂTEAU IVRE (The Drunken Boat), appeared in 1871. In the poem a toy boat embarks on a journey, an allegory for a spiritual quest.

It is found again.
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Gone with the sun.
(from L'Éternite, 1872)

Arthur Rimbaud was born in Charleville, in the northern Ardennes region of France, the son of Fréderic Rimbaud, a career soldier, and Marie-Catherine-Vitale Cuif. Rimbaud's father left the family and from the age of six his strictly religious mother raised him. Rimbaud was educated at a provincial school until the age of fifteen. After publishing his first poem in 1870 at the age of 16, Rimbaud wandered through northern France and Belgium, and was returned to his home in Paris by police.

In 1871 he met the poet Paul Verlaine, who abandoned his family - his wife was expecting a baby - and fled with Rimbaud to London in 1872 to live a bohemian life. Their relationship ended the next year in Brussels.Verlaine, drunk and desolate, tried to shoot Rimbaud in the wrist after a jealous quarrel. Verlaine was tried for attempted murder and imprisoned. Rimbaud returned to his mother's house in the Ardennes.

Rimbaud's collection of poetry and prose pieces UNE SAISON EN ENFER (A Season in Hell) appeared in 1873. "One evening, I sat Beauty in my lap. - And I found her bitter. - And I cursed her." The spiritual autobiography was received with insulting coldness. Deeply hurt, Rimbaud gave up writing and burned his manuscripts. The book has subsequently become a touchtone for anguished poets, artists, and lovers. Verlaine, whom he saw for last time in 1875, and with whom he had a violent quarrel, published a selection of Rimbaud's poems and wrote about him in LES POÈTES MAUDITS (1884).

In 1875-76 Rimbaud learned several languages, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arabic and Greek, and followed his vagabond instinct again. He worked as a teacher in Germany, unloaded cargo in Marseilles, enlisted in the Netherlands army, but deserted in Sumatra. In 1876 Rimbaud robbed a cabman in Vienna. In the last dozen years of his life, Rimbaud worked in the import-export field for a series of French employers, dealing with everything from porcelain to weaponry - possibly he was also a slave dealer.

Rimbaud arrived in 1880 in Aden after short sojourns in Java and Cyprus. Rimbaud made business travels in modern-day Yemen, Ethiopia, and Egypt, and occasionally walked hundreds of miles at the head of trading caravans. He was the first European to penetrate into the country of Ogadain. His expertise and knowledge of the language, religion, and culture of local peoples was acknowledged when the French Geographical Society deemed his commercial and geographical report on East Africa worthy of publication.

In 1886 Verlaine published Rimbaud's book of poems, ILLUMINATIONS. It revealed Rimbaud's longing for spiritual values and re-established his reputation as a major poet. In February 1891 Rimbaud felt pain in his left knee, and went to Marseille to see a doctor. The leg had to be amputated because of an enormous, cancerous swelling. Rimbaud died in Marseille on November 10, 1891, and was buried in Charleville in strict family privacy. Isabelle, Rimbaud's sister, had no knowledge that her brother had been a poet until after his death.

Tête de Faune

Dans la feuillée, écrin vert taché d'or,
Dans la feuillée incertaine et fleurie
De splendides fleurs où le baiser dort,
Vif et crevant l'exquise broderie,

Un faune égaré montre ses deux yeux
Et mord les fleurs rouges de ses dents blanches.
Brunie et sanglante ainsi qu'un vin vieux,
Sa lévre éclate en rires sous les branches.

Et quand il a fui - tel qu'un écureuil, -
Son rire tremble encore à chaque feuille,
Et l'on voit épeuré par un bouvreuil
Le Baiser d'or du Bois, qui se recueille.

For further reading: La Vie de Rimbaud et de son oeuvre by Marcel Coulon (1929); Flagrant délit by André Breton (1949); Le Mythe de Rimbaud by René Etiemble (1954); The Time of the Assassin by Henry Miller (1954); Rimbaud by Cecil Hackett (1957); Arthur Rimbaud by Enid Starkie (1962); Rimbaud vu par Verlaine by Henri Peyre (1975); Season in Hell by John Le Carre (1979); Rimbaud: a Critical Introduction by Cecil Hackett (1981); Rimbaud by Pierre Petitfils (1982); Arthur Rimbaud: portraits, dessins, manuscripts, ed. by Hélène Dufour and André Guyaux (1991); Delirium by Jeremy Reed (1991); La vie d' Arthur Rimbaud by Jean Bourgignon and Charles Houin (1991); Arthur Rimbaud by Benjamin Ivry (1998); Somebody Else: Rimbaud in Africa 1880-1891 by Charles Nicholl (1999); Arthur Rimbaud by Jean Luc Steinmetz (published 2000) - Note: The rock star Jim Morrison was influenced by Rimbaud's poems, and by the 1980s punk rockers, such as Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine,and punk groups such as Crass were inspired by the poet's sexual unconventionality and obscenity - Rimbaud Museum: Le Vieux Moulin, quai Arthur Rimbaud, F-08000 Charleville-Mézières, Ardennes - Film: Total Eclipse (1995), a hysterical dramatization of the famous literary conjunction, the destructive love affair of Verlaine and Rimbaud. Directed by Agnieszka Holland, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, David Thewlis

LE BÂTEAU IVRE, (1871)