Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud (Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud) is a Poète French, born the October 20th 1854 with Charleville, in the the Ardennes, and dead the November 10th 1891 at the hospital of the Design with Marseilles.

Youth

Arthur Rimbaud was born with Charleville, the October 20th 1854. His/her father, Frederic Rimbaud, Captain of army, in Garrison with Wall, took part in the countryside of Algeria, for which it is rewarded for the Légion of honor. With a concert given place of the Music to Charleville, he would have noticed Vitalie Cuif, a young country-woman of Roche, small village close to Attigny and installed in Charleville. Married very quickly with it, he will set out again with his garrison, returning only some rare times, time to make him an “annual” child quasi. After the birth of five children (Frederic, Arthur, Victorine (deceased at the one month age), Vitalie and Isabelle), it gives up his family.

At the beginning of the father, Vitalie moves in with his children in a slum, street Bourbon, one of the most miserable streets of Charleville. Arthur is then 7 years old.

It evokes this period in its poems:

His/her mother, appears rigid and concerned of education and respectability, prohibited thus with her children to play in the street with the children of workmen. Sunday, one sees passing the family to the tail-leu-leu, the mother closing walk towards the church. But, in this hearth, Vitalie also takes care on his/her children, and, so violent - and so natural - that was the revolt of Arthur later, it is towards it that it will always return, or more precisely near his/her younger sister Isabelle.

Arthur continues its studies at the Rossat institution, then with the college, where its exceptional schooling shows its extraordinary precocity: it collects all the outstanding commendation awards, in literature, version, topic, and writes with virtuosity in Latin Poème S, reduced S, dialog S. But its heart boils in him:

In July 1869, it takes part the academic Contest proof of Latin composition on the topic “Jugurtha”, which it gains easily. The main thing of the M.  college; Desdouets would have said of him: Nothing banal germinates in this head, it will be the genius of the Evil or the genius of the Good. . By obtaining all the prices as of the 15 years age, it is freed from humiliations of early childhood.

Towards poetry

In 1870, it binds friendship with Georges Izambard, his young professor of rhetoric - last year of Humanités -, its elder of a few years, six exactly. It becomes a kind of rampart against the “mother”, still called by Arthur “mom plague” or “mother rimbe”, and especially it lends its books to him, because the Arthur young person “recognized poet”.

From this time, the first remain towards: New Year's gifts of the orphans and this unit that criticism calls the “Demeny collection” (at the end of 1870). The poetic orientation is then clearly that of the Parnassus. The collective review, the contemporary Parnassus, initiates Arthur Rimbaud, with the poetry of its time. In a letter of May 24th, 1870, sent to the leader of the Parnassus Theodore de Banville, Arthur, then 15 years old, which seeks to be made publish in the contemporary Parnassus , affirms in its letter presentation to want to become “Parnassien” or nothing. It joined three poems there: Ophélie , By the blue evenings of summer… and Creed in unam . Banville answers him, but the poems in question, neither, nor later, are then printed in the Parnassus .

The poem With the music , written with the autumn 1870, evokes this discomfort of living in Charleville:

“The child-poet” wants to join Paris. August 29th 1870, a few days before the Battle of Sedan, Arthur flees of Charleville for Paris, where he wants to become journalist. This first running away is completed with the Prison of Refined, and follows a return to Charleville, where his/her mother flanks to him a memorable flight in the middle of the quay of the Madeleine, beside the current Rimbaud museum. But it is only the beginning of long series of runnings away, because Arthur is reached of a morbid need to go, still and still, to approach another world beyond the oceans and the mountains, always further. One will say of him: a “ traveller hat ”.

Parisian stays of 1871-1872

Arthur Rimbaud shining raises, refuses to turn over to the college, he drinks wormwood and makes a new running away which leads it to Paris at the conclusion of the seat in February 1871. During its stay in Paris, it very deeply feels the tragedy of the Commune (March in May 1871).

If he thinks well of joining Paris, and if he makes a success of indeed his project, one cannot determine the share which he takes truly in the riots at the time of the events of the Commune. In May 1871, in its letter known as “of the Indicator”, it expresses its difference: development of a true poetic program or parody of the foreword-proclamations which enamelled the 19th century.

It corresponds in August and September 1871 with Paul Verlaine to which it sends some poems. In August 1871, in its parodic poem, what one says to the poet in connection with flowers , it expresses an open criticism of poetic of Banville. Finally Verlaine, doubtless pressed by Rimbaud, calls it in Paris: “ Come dear great heart, one calls you, one awaits you! ” Rimbaud arrives in the capital, in September 1871, with probably in its pockets the drunk Boat , poem that it déclame in front of a circle of Parisian, friendly poets of Verlaine. It is successively placed by Verlaine, street Nicolet, not without clashes with the woman of this last, then at Charles Cros, André Gill and even a few days at Theodore de Banville. In a violent poem, the Parisian orgy (or: Paris repopulates) , it denounces the cowardice of the winners. Its poetry is still radicalized, becomes increasingly sarcastic: the Poor with the Church , for example. The writing changes gradually, Rimbaud comes from there to hate the poetry of the Parnassiens , and in famous the Lettre in Paul Demeny known as Lettre of the Indicator , it affirms its rejection of “subjective poetry”. It is also in this letter that it exposes its own search of poetry: he wants to be made “indicator”, by a “length, immense and reasoned disordered state of all the directions”.

Rimbaud is made forget some time while turning over to Charleville, then returns in the capital in the current of first half of the year 1872 for leaving Paris again on July 7th, this time in company of Verlaine. Start then with a its elder love affair and an agitated life with London, then with Brussels.

This tumultuous connection ends in what the literary history indicates under the name of “drama of Brussels”: in 1873, the two lovers are in London. Verlaine leaves Rimbaud abruptly, while affirming to want to join his wife, decided, if it does not accept, to draw a ball in the head. It resides in a hotel of Brussels. Rimbaud joined it, persuaded that Verlaine will not have courage to put an end to its days. Whereas Rimbaud wants to leave it, Verlaine, drunk, draws to him above twice, slightly wounding it with the wrist. Verlaine is imprisoned with Mons, Rimbaud joined the family farm of Roche where he writes One season in hell .

One season in Hell is perhaps, like claimed it Verlaine, a “extraordinary spiritual autobiography” of Rimbaud. The chaotic writing is unceasingly crossed by a multiplicity of interior voices. The speaker shouts his suffering, his intimate experiment there: he understood that he could not “only steal fire” for him. A “burning patience” is essential so that the defeat is not final. But to want to forget “the Hell”, it is to betray humanity. However, in the atrocious loneliness of the City, tiredness étreint the young poet.

Regularly aphasic or crossed by cries of hatred for the Church, for the company of the XIXe century which locks up the individual, Rimbaud made share with the reader of his failures: failure in love, and one can think of his relation with Verlaine, but also of the fact that for him, “the love is to be reinvented”. Failure also of its step of Indicator : it is a being which, only, wanted damner to find the true direction of poetry.

The poems written thereafter, are not identified. There remain remote regions on what Verlaine with called the first then the continuation litéraire did the title of certain a number of fragments Illuminations , Its course is completed by the irruption of “rough reality with étreindre”. Also it will be keep silent, at 21 years, because it achieved all that was in its capacity, in the “desert and the night” which surround it. It knows from now on that with it only, poetry cannot change the life if it is not been useful by a total revolution where love, freedom and poetry is combined at the present.

Life in Africa

It turns over a time to London in company of the poet New Germain, which takes part in the settings in clean of the manuscript of the Illuminations . It gives its manuscript to Verlaine in 1875 to Stuttgart. Then, the young poet gives up the world of the literature, to live the adventure like remedy for the trouble, sailing, as from 21 years, through all Europe (Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Suisse, Cyprus). During this tour, at the time of a passage in Belgium in 1876, after having met a tout, it agrees to engage in the colonial troops of the the Indies Dutchwomen (current Indonesia), but once her pay perceived (one year equivalent of working wages for the time), it deserted three days after its arrival in the island of Java and undertakes incognito a return in Europe. It continues its wandering starting from 1880 worms of the countries to the names which make dream (Egypt, Yemen, in current the République of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Érythrée), but which, for him, is not that places of trade, but also the theater of a long personal drift in which it will end up being lost.

The documentary film Athar describes this period of its life.

Newcomer with Aden, it is asserted, as worker manual, simple working. August 7th, 1880, it settles as foreman of the coffee sorters of the Bardey company. At the time, the port of Mokha (Yemen) knows a flourishing trade thanks to the coffee.

In December 1880, it arrives at Harar in Abyssinie, the city with the 99 minarets. The legend wants that it is one of the first Westerners to be penetrated in this Holy City of Islam. He becomes manager of a commercial and practical counter the trade of the ivory, coffee, skins and gold, which he exchanges against of fabrics of Lyon, the pans, the bimbelotery. He also delivers himself to the trade of the weapons, the area being agitated many conflicts at the time. On the other hand, the legend making of Rimbaud a slave trader is unfounded: it is only true that it asks, in 1889, a couple of slaves to a friend “for his personal service” and that he never accepted.

It makes the meeting of the Father Bernardin who is there missionary and catholic tutor of the orthodoxe son of the Négus. This atypical capuchin, which does not hesitate to resort to the care exempted by local healers, entrusts later to the provincial Library of Toulouse of invaluable documents rimbaldiens.

It is also recognized that Rimbaud piled up a small fortune during its African forwardings, that it partly deposited in an banking agency of the Cairo at the time of a stay in Egypt in August 1887. On this occasion, it publishes in the newspaper the Egyptian Bosphorus a long paper reporting its voyage in the Choa and criticizing the French businesses in the horn of Africa, in the editions the August 25th and 27th 1887. The following week, he would have walked to the accesses of the the Nile, until Louxor, where he would have left a “graffiti” on a column present on the birthplace of the Pharaon Aménophis III, found graffiti, several decades later, by Jean Cocteau (inter alia).

However, in Harar like elsewhere, Rimbaud is always bored, and, in one of its letters to its family, he says:

“I am bored much, always; I even never knew anybody who was bored as much as me. ”

In 1891, it is made repatriate, a tumor with the right knee was declared. It must be amputee as of his arrival at the hospital of the Design of Marseilles. July 24th, 1891, it unloads at the station of Voncq, 3 kilometers of Roche, with its crutch and its new wooden leg. But cancer extends, its right-hand man is also reached by a Métastase, neuralgias settle, it sets out again one month later, in the train, to go “to make a good death” in Marseilles, where it dies on November 10th, 1891, at the 37 years age, in atrocious sufferings, taken care by his/her younger sister Isabelle. On its bed of anguish, he begs that one makes it “go back to edge” “to leave for Suez”. Nevertheless, its body is brought back to Charleville, where it is buried in the tomb of its family maternal where his/her grandfather Jean Nicolas Cuif rests, died in 1858, and its Vitalie sister died in 17 years in 1875. His/her mother, Mrs. Rimbaud, born Vitalie Cuif, joined them in 1907.

His/her friend Paul Verlaine summarizes of a sentence the last decade of Rimbaud: “ (…) he did not only any more make travel terribly and die very young person. ”. However, testimonys of Alfred Bardey, trading and member of the Geographical Company, as well as others of his/her companions of life in the horn of Africa and with Aden are eloquent as for its talents of tradesman, explorer and polyglot. These testimonys inform moreover on the private life of Rimbaud with Harar, providing details on its various adventures with African women, particularly with an Abyssinian woman of great beauty, whose a photograph was preserved.

In short, Rimbaud had in Africa and in Asia Mineure “new a long and complex life”, that the attitude scornful - and perhaps simply jealous - of Verlaine (which, at that time, evokes Arthur as being its “great radiant sin”, in its poem Laeti and Errabundi ) does not have the capacity to destroy.

Its contribution with poetry

Why this personal writing, this absolute search of the gasoline of poetry did have as much repercussion? First of all because the writing of Rimbaud gives the universal example of an experiment of the limits, each one during its existence having felt this revolt that the cursed poet, releasing all the mooring ropes, pushes with his roof whereas the man is satisfied frileusement to shelter it under the social mask. Rimbaud invents also a new language, as it wishes it: “of the heart for the heart, summarizing all, perfumes, sounds, colors, of the thought hanging the thought and drawing” ( Letter of the indicator ). No meticulous description: a form, a carnal violence in the bright color. By its visions, the beings, the objects become animated and link themselves in the life of the image. This new poetic verb makes jump the standards of civilization and the social determination. (see poetic Art) With him, poetry with the color of the music and painting, the movement of the dance and dream. It wishes that “horrible workers” succeed to him. And they came, the Jarry, the Artaud, the surrealist Vitrac and all the , without forgetting the poets of the Big game like Rene Daumal, or Henri Michaux. Like the drunk Boat , they plunged at the bottom of the unknown, opening the way with contemporary poetry.

Works

  • Illuminations (1873-1875)
  • Reliquary , poetries (1891)
  • complete Poetries (1895)
  • Letters, Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia (1899)
  • Works, towards and proses (1912)
  • Hands of Jeanne-Marie (1872)
  • Stupra (1923)
  • a Heart under a cassock (1870)
  • Letters of the literary life (1870-1875)

Monuments

  • a sculpture of Ipoustéguy, located place of Father-Teilhard-of-Chardin in the 4th district of Paris, is a ordering of the president of the Republic, François Mitterrand. The artist cut out it into two to express surprising it destiny of the poet, always trained towards elsewhere, from where the title of work: the Man with the soles in front of - allusion to “the man with the soles of wind”, nickname which Verlaine had given him.

  • With Marseilles, on the beach of Prado, is exposed since 1989 a sculpture of Jean Amado dedicated to the drunk Bateau , accompanied by a quotation of the famous poem:
“I know the skies bursting in flashes, and the trombes
And the undertows and the currents, I know the evening,
The paddle exaltée as well as people of doves,
And sometimes I saw what the man believed to see! ”
  • At the time of their second voyage in England, Rimbaud and Verlaine lived in 1873 in a house located at the 8 Great College Street in London, in the district of Camden.
  • has Charlevilles-Mézière, the museum Arthur Rimbaud

Illustrators of works of Rimbaud

Authors of portraits, drawings and caricatures of Rimbaud

Sources

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