'Gods who bit, mad with love, the bark of the boughs'
I'm in love, at the moment, with this child of anarchy- Arthur Rimbaud
He burst into the French literary world in the mid-1800's: a 16 year-old boy from the provinces who wrote like a fiend, and an angel, for three years and then stopped writing at the age of 19. One of his professors said about him: "Intelligent, as much as you want, but he has eyes and a smile which I do not like. He will end badly: in any case, nothing banal will germinate in that head: he will be the genius of good or evil!"
In three years he completely changed French poetry. He ran off with a much older male poet, Paul Verlaine, whom he stole away from his wife and infant son. Their love affair was a scandal. They led a dissolute life and haunted cafes, getting drunk on absinthe. After a serious of fist and knife fights Verlaine eventually shot Rimbaud in a drunken rage in Brussels. The wound was superficial, to the left wrist. He wandered through Europe, mostly on foot, with nothing but his bad reputation to keep him company. After enlisting in the Dutch Army he deserted and travelled to Java and then Africa where he worked as a gun-runner. He returned to France minus one leg and died in Marseille at the age of 37.
from The Drunken Boat 1871
'I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance
The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities
I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets!
I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to sailor:
- Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? - '
He burst into the French literary world in the mid-1800's: a 16 year-old boy from the provinces who wrote like a fiend, and an angel, for three years and then stopped writing at the age of 19. One of his professors said about him: "Intelligent, as much as you want, but he has eyes and a smile which I do not like. He will end badly: in any case, nothing banal will germinate in that head: he will be the genius of good or evil!"
In three years he completely changed French poetry. He ran off with a much older male poet, Paul Verlaine, whom he stole away from his wife and infant son. Their love affair was a scandal. They led a dissolute life and haunted cafes, getting drunk on absinthe. After a serious of fist and knife fights Verlaine eventually shot Rimbaud in a drunken rage in Brussels. The wound was superficial, to the left wrist. He wandered through Europe, mostly on foot, with nothing but his bad reputation to keep him company. After enlisting in the Dutch Army he deserted and travelled to Java and then Africa where he worked as a gun-runner. He returned to France minus one leg and died in Marseille at the age of 37.
from The Drunken Boat 1871
'I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance
The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities
I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets!
I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to sailor:
- Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? - '