Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) is a riddle in the
history of literature. His life is nearly as fascinating as the poetic
visions he created. His body of work, concentrated in a very short period
of time, left behind it an important influence in poetry, fiction, music or
plastic art, which has reached our day. Suddenly, when he was about
twenty, Rimbaud would abandon poetry forever to become a completely different
being.
He was born in 1854 in Charleville, Ardennes, in
Northeastern France. By 1860, his father, Frédéric Rimbaud, a career
captain, got fed up of family life and abandoned his wife and four
children. Marie-Catherine Vitalie, the mother, vigorously
undertook the children´s education. When she thought it time to punish
them, she would get them to memorize long Latin verses and recite them. If they
missed some, they would be sent to bed without dinner. At school, Arthur
was a brilliant student. He would absorb all knowledge like a sponge and won
several school awards.
In 1870, Rimbaud began to write poetry, and
passionately asserted himself as a poet. In a letter to his tutor
Izambard, he declared that the poet "had to become a
clairvoyant throughout a rational derangement of all senses, traversing every
pain, pleasure, experience. By this time there is a change in his
manners and behavior. Thefts in bookstores, alcohol drinking, rough
poetry. He becomes foul-mouthed, his appearance careless, he lets his hair
grow thick. A friend suggests he send a sample of his poems to French
symbolist poet Paul Verlaine, who will be fascinated by the sample and
will invite Arthur to visit him in Paris.
Rimbaud and Verlaine
That was the beginning of one of the most famous and
troubled relationships in the history of literature. In 1871, Paul
Verlaine, 27, was married to Mathilde Maute, 17, and with a child on the
way. The poet had just quit his job and had started to hit the
bottle, his bourgeois life beginning to fall apart.
Verlaine´s virulent homosexual infatuation for the
infant Shakespeare (as Victor Hugo called Rimbaud), would lead
them both, for a time, to a creeping and bohemian life. There begins a
period of absinthe and hashish, with the two wandering about like tramps,
and Verlaine abusing his family. Rimbaud´s constant sarcasms and
put-downs in the circle of poets introduced by Verlaine become
intolerable. Finally, in November 1872, they both leave Paris and make
their way to London.
In the English capital, they live hand to
mouth. They settle in Bloomsbury and Camden Town, and they are often found
without a dime. They place imaginative newspaper ads, in which they
present themselves as educated French gentlemen, who offer French language
tutoring.
The relationship between the two is becoming
increasingly bitter and crazy. At some point Verlaine thinks he's had
enough and just runs away to Brussels, leaving a penniless Rimbaud in
London. But in Brussels, Verlaine misses Rimbaud. He writes to
him offering a reunion, which Rimbaud accepts straight away. In the
Belgian capital things will not go any better for the disrupted
couple. One afternoon, Verlaine, drunk and infuriated, fires two pistol
shots at Rimbaud, one of which strikes him in the wrist. Rimbaud clears
off. The incident will cost Verlaine two years in
jail. Mathilde, Verlaine´s jilted wife, did not restrain herself from
declaring the sordid nature of the relationship between the two poets.
The "non-literary" years
From this moment on and for the next (and last)
fifteen years of his life, Arthur Rimbaud left poetry all together and will
carry out, in three continents, completely "material" jobs, not the
least "spiritual". In 1876, he enlisted in the Dutch colonial
army, which allows him to travel for free to Indonesia. The thing does not
work and he ends up defecting. Then he will try his luck in a construction
company in Cyprus.
Later on, it will be Yemen and then Abyssinia (present
day Ethiopia). Traffic of several kinds: coffee, weapons, perhaps
slaves. Native lovers. In Abyssinia he tries self-employment as a dealer,
and he manages to make some money. The letters he sent to France do not
show the tiniest spark of poetry. In February 1891 he feels a tremendous
pain in the knee, which later reveals itself as a bone cancer. His leg is
amputated in Marseille. Nevertheless, he tries to return to Africa, but he
will repatriate himself in the end. He dies in November.
The Drunken Boat (1871), A
Season in Hell (1873) and The Illuminations (1874)
are among the impressive books of poems he left. The mystery has not vanished.
What was the reason for his transformation, his abandonment at 20 of his true
talent? Some speak of a total reinvention, sort of leaving himself behind. Others
speculate that, after making some money, he would have returned to writing and
poetry without material worries. We'll never know.
But much remains: his poetic art, his powerful
clairvoyance, his rampant creativity. His own attitude to life, his sense
of rebellion and independence. Arthur Rimbaud is one of the strongest
poisons of Western culture. Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan or Dylan Thomas are
only among the many intoxicated.
