Arthur Rimbaud

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

French poet and adventurer, who stopped writing verse at the age of 19, and became after his early death an inextricable myth in French gay life. Rimbaud's poetry, partially written in free verse, is characterized 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 in the Symbolist movement, which included in France such poets as Stéphane Mallarme and Paul Paul Verlaine, and playwrights as Maurice Maeterlinck. Rimbaud's best-known work is 'Le Bateau ivre' (1871, The Drunken Boat). In the poem he sent a toy boat on a journey through fantastic seas, an allegory for a spiritual quest. It was written before Rimbaud had seen the sea.

Few poets have had the lasting impact that Jean Nicholas Arthur Rimbaud has. Today, over one-hundred years after his death, his mark on modern literature, poetry, music and mindset can still be felt.

What's so interesting about Rimbaud's poetry is the complete innocence of its nature. He was a sixteen year old coming to terms with the world around him, trying to make sense of things before the world got its cynical, blinding claws on him. He wasn't writing to be published, he wasn't creating to impress the bourgeosie of 19th century France, nor for monetary gain. All that seemed to matter to Arthur Rimbaud was the process of writing, the actual act of putting pen to paper and capturing the images in his young head. Rimbaud was doing this for no one but himself. That's artistry.

In his time, Rimbaud was considered a filthy, cocky child with a small talent and a big mouth. His works weren't appreciated until long after he stopped writing (at the terribly young age of 19.) Many of his works were considered obscene; so much so, that after his death, his sister attempted to stop the publishing of many of his more risque works. However, thanks to his one-time partner, poet Paul Verlaine , the majority of his works have remained intact and are available to this day.

Rimbaud's collection of poetry and prose pieces, A Season in Hell, appeared in 1873. "One evening, I sat Beauty in my lap. – And I found her bitter. – And I cursed her." Rimbaud gave some copies of the book to his friends – one was sent to P. Verlaine at the Petits Carmes Prison - but the spiritual autobiography did not receive any reviews. After completing in England ILLUMINATIONS, a collection of prose poems, Rimbaud gave up literature and burned his manuscripts. In 1901 the first edition of A Season in Hell was found at the printers' in its original packing. Eventually the work became a touchstone for anguished poets, artists, and lovers. In 1874 Rimbaud spent some time in London with Germain Nouveau, a young poet, who had only one testicle. Nouveau member of the Zutistes circle – a group of poets who wrote verses in a notebook, the Zutiste Album. At the British Library Rimbaud was not allowed to read Marquis de Sade's books because he was under twenty-one. Verlaine, whom Rimbaud saw 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 many languages, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arabic and Greek, and started his vagabond life again. He worked 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 series of French employers dealing everything from porcelain to weaponry – possibly he was 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 walked occasionally hundreds of miles at the head of trading caravans through dangerous lands. He was the first European to penetrate into the country of Ogadain. His expertise and learning 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. A rumor started to spread in September 1888 that Rimbaud was dead and next yearLe Décadent published as a joke a list of donors to the statue of Rimbaud. In February 1891 Rimbaud felt pain in his left knee, and went to Marseilles to see a doctor. The leg had to be amputated because of enormous, cancerous swelling. Rimbaud died in Marseilles on November 10, 1891, and was buried in Charleville in strict family intimacy. Isabelle, Rimbaud's sister, had never known till after her brother's death, that he had been a poet. Rimbaud's African servant boy, Djami Wadaï, was one of his major heirs apart from his family.