Rimbaud, Arthur

Rimbaud, Arthur (ärtür` răNbō`), 1854–91, French poet who had a great influence on the symbolists and subsequent modern poets, b. Charleville. A defiant and precocious youth, Rimbaud at 16 sent some poems to Verlaine, who liked his work and invited him to Paris. In 1872–73 the two poets lived together in London and Brussels. In a drunken quarrel Verlaine fired a pistol, wounding Rimbaud, and their relationship ended. Rimbaud returned home and finished Une Saison en enfer (1873), a confessional autobiography in which he renounces his former hellish life and his work. At an undetermined time he produced Les Illuminations, consisting of prose poems that transcend all traditional syntax and narrative elements.

Rimbaud is thought to have stopped writing poetry at the age of 19, and he never wrote another literary work. Thereafter, he wandered throughout Europe and N Africa, working in various jobs, from circus cashier to commercial traveler to African gunrunner, and engaging in numerous business ventures. Six months after the amputation of his leg due to cancer, he died in Marseilles at 37. Rimbaud's poetry has been called hallucinatory because the poet seems to write not of material reality but of his dreamworld; his technique anticipates the symbolists in its suggestiveness, its abstract verbal music, and its images drawn from the subconscious. "Le Bateau ivre" ("The Drunken Boat") is an outstanding example. Rimbaud's works were published by Verlaine in several posthumous editions, the first complete collection appearing in 1898.

Bibliography

See W. Mason, ed. and tr., Rimbaud Complete (2002) and I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (2003); biographies by E. Starkie (3d ed. 1961, repr. 1968) and G. Robb (2000); studies by W. M. Frohock (1963), W. Fowlie (1966), R. G. Cohn (1974), K. Ross (1980), C. A. Hackett (1981), and C. Nicholl (1999).

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Rimbaud, (Jean-Nicolas-) Arthur

Rimbaud, detail from “Un Coin de table,” oil painting by Henri Fantin-Latour, 1872; in …

(credit: Giraudon/Art Resource, New York)

(born Oct. 20, 1854, Charleville, France—died Nov. 10, 1891, Marseille) French poet and adventurer. The provincial son of an army captain, he had begun by age 16 to write violent, blasphemous poems, and he formulated an aesthetic doctrine stating that a poet must become a seer, break down the restraints and controls on personality, and thus become the instrument for the voice of the eternal. He was invited to Paris by Paul Verlaine, with whom he had a homosexual relationship and engaged in a wild and dissipated life. The Drunken Boat (written 1871), perhaps his finest poem, displays his astonishing verbal virtuosity and a daring choice of images and metaphors. In Les Illuminations (written 1872–74), a collection of mainly prose poems, he tried to abolish the distinction between reality and hallucination. A Season in Hell (1873), which alternates prose passages with dazzling lyrics, became his farewell to poetry at age 19. After they had a falling-out, Verlaine shot and wounded Rimbaud; afterward their final meeting ended in a violent quarrel. Rimbaud abandoned literature and from 1875 led an international vagabond life as a merchant and trader, mainly in Ethiopia; he died at age 37 after his leg was amputated. The Dionysian power of his verse and his liberation of language from the constraints of form greatly influenced the Symbolist movement and 20th-century poetry.

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Rimbaud, Arthur 

Born Oct. 20, 1854, in Charleville; died Nov. 10, 1891, in Marseille. French poet.

Rimbaud grew up in a petit bourgeois environment. He studied in a lycée until 1871 but did not graduate. His poetry was influenced by T. de Banville, V. Hugo, and especially C. Baudelaire. Rimbaud sarcastically attacked the petite bourgeoisie in “The Assessors,” the Second Empire in “Caesar’s Rage” and religion in “The Punishment of Tartuffe” and “Evil.” He expressed hopes that society would become reorganized under the Republic in “The Blacksmith.”

Rimbaud’s subsequent disillusionment with the government of “national betrayal” brought on a personal crisis early in 1871. Periods of despair and ostentatious cynicism alternated with dreams of the supernatural power of a clairvoyant poet who could show humanity the way to a harmonious world order. The Paris Commune of 1871 gave Rimbaud renewed faith in social progress. He attempted to take a personal part in the struggle, and wrote such masterpieces of French revolutionary poetry as “Parisian Battle Song,” “Paris Is Filled With People Again,” and “The Hands of Jeanne-Marie” (1871). His poetry became imbued with realistic imagery, psychological insights, and satire, as seen in “The Seven-year-old Poets,” “Poor People in Church,” “The Sisters of Charity,” and the satirical verses in the Album Zutique. The onset of reaction had a detrimental effect on Rimbaud’s emotional state and his development as a poet.

Rimbaud’s transition to symbolism was seen in “The Drunken Ship” and the “Sonnet on Vowels.” During his symbolist period, he wrote Last Verses (1872) and the prose poems The Illuminations (written 1872–73, published 1886). The book A Season in Hell (1873), which combined a tragic stylistic incoherence with a devastating critique of symbolism, prepared the way for the poetic realism of the 20th century.

In the second half of the 1870’s, Rimbaud abandoned literature and after a long period of wandering was obliged in 1880 to become an agent of a commercial firm in Ethiopia.

During the 20th century, Rimbaud’s works have evoked a polemic between realists and modernists. The best of his poetic tradition influenced G. Apollinaire, P. Eluard, and the poets of the Resistance.

WORKS

Oeuvres [2nd ed.]. Paris [1964].
Oeuvres. Paris [1966].
In Russian translation:
Stikhotvoreniia. Moscow, 1960.
[“Stikhi.”] In Ten’ derev’ev: Stikhi zarubezhnykh poetov v per. I. Erenburga. Moscow, 1969.

REFERENCES

Livshits, B. K. Ot romantikov do siurrealistov. Leningrad [1934].
Balashov, N. “Rembo.” In Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 3. Moscow, 1959.
Balashov, N. “Blez Sandrar i problema poeticheskogo realizma XX v.” In B. Sandrar, Po vsemu miru. Moscow, 1974.
Etiemble, R., and Y. Gauclère. Rimbaud. Paris, 1950.
Fowlie, W. Rimbaud: [A critical study]. Chicago-London [1967].
Gascar, P. Rimbaud et la Commune. [Paris, 1971.]
Europe, 1973, no. 529–30. (Issue dedicated to Rimbaud.)

N. I. BALASHOV