Rimbaud: A Biography

The first thing one needs to know is that Rimbaud is famous both because of his work and his life (one of the most amazing and strange ever lived - Rimbaud makes Hemmingway a simple poser in questions such as courage and adventurousness).Let us speak first of his poetry.>Rimbaud's PoetryRimbaud is considered one of the fathers of modern poetry. He was one of the first writers to use disjointed and apparently unrelated metaphors and similes, and strange and kinesthetic imagery. He was also one of the first poets to use free verse and prose poetry.However, judging Rimbaud as the father of modern poetry is almost a crime, keeping in view the sloppy and deeply obscure state of contemporary poems and poetry: it's a crime perpetrated against Rimbaud to call him the father of such abortions. Rimbaud was a prodigy: at about 12, 13 years of age he showed an extraordinary ability to write poetry, in both French and Latin. His school and his teachers were all proud of him: he won several poetry competitions and his abilities were developing at a breathtaking speed. By studying the Latin classics, Rimbaud learned to master all the classical meters, how to stress syllables in the classical way and the traditional construction of metaphors and similes. His studies of French and European literature familiarized him with the rhyme, and his knowledge of assonance and alliteration was brilliant. Thus, one can realize that Rimbaud, before innovating the traditional verse, completely dominated the classical poetry: all the poetic techniques and wisdom of poets past were known by him. But the majority of writers influenced by him (As Allen Ginsberg and the beatnik generation, and the pseudo-poet Jim Morrison) never bothered to dissect the basic and classic skeleton of the poetic art that was calcified by generations of poets thorough the centuries: they readily go for the non-fixed forms, for free experimentation (without the basis, without the vertebral spine), and thus produced only mediocre works.As for the poetry of Rimbaud, it is one of the most memorable I know: his bizarre and aggressive images, and his constant exotic/toxic perfume have hardly been equaled. It needs to be understood that the poetic production of Rimbaud in French occurred between the ages of 15 and 22 years old: namely, his work has never failed to discolor that youthful freshness, that taste and relish in the weird, in the colorful, in the metaphors and similes created to catch the reader's attention by the nose and pulling it to them. Rimbaud's work is constantly screaming at you from the pages, howling and begging for your attention: it's like a firework exhibition - a barrage of flames, sounds and luminosities. Rimbaud always keeps this delight in shocking the reader and waking (actually plucking) the dormant surprise that was rooted deep inside its rooms on the brain (you know: it is not easy to surprise experienced readers).It must be said, however, that Rimbaud is not one of the main great poets of the world. In reality, he is a poet for writers, a poet for specific readers. His work does not lend itself to all tastes. Rimbaud writes in a monotone; he has only one style (actually a blend of two styles): the weird and wonderful, the strangely aggressive caricatures and the suave lyrical beauties of the nature. Let's compare Rimbaud with Shakespeare (the greatest poet of all time): Shakespeare wrote in several different styles, and exhibited a multitude of speeches, from the simple and routine - like colloquial passages of Twelfth Night: "Out o 'tune, sir: ye lie. Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? " - to the most sublime (the great metaphorical passages such as this excerpt from Macbeth: "his virtues / Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against / The deep damnation of his taking-off ;/ And pity, like a naked newborn babe, / Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed / Upon the sightless couriers of the air, / Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, / That tears Shall drown the wind."). Rimbaud, however, always weaves poems with a mesh of strange and disjointed metaphors: it is as if he always wrote as the fool of King Lear. While Shakespeare is a great feast, with different dishes and a plethora of different flavors, Rimbaud is a extremely strong liqueur, a glass of hallucinogenic liquid pepper that not everyone has the stomach to support. Here, for example, is his biographer Graham Robb speaking about the satirical aspects of Rimbaud's poetry:"The Rimbaldian human being is a repellent piece of animated vegetation, a poxy assemblage of femurs, sinciputs, scapulas and hypogastria, a prey to cephalalgia, clottings, fluxions, rickets, nits and nasal mucus - a monster in the shape of a philosophical question-mark: if Man was made in the image of God, then what must God be like?(...)"With its neologisms and barbarisms, its slang words jarring with the drawing-room syntax, Rimbaud's new idiom was dramatic proof that social distinctions in the new France were as virulent as ever. It was also an expression of his hybrid roots: urban and rural, burgeois and peasant."Of course, there is the other side of Rimbaud: the one that writes lyrical and strange songs, primeval hymns about the woods, about the see and its "starry archipelagos"; the poet that writes that "It’s found we see./– What? – Eternity./It’s the sun, mingled/With the sea.", and poems like:The fox howled in the leavesSpitting out bright plumesFrom his poultry feast:Like him I self-consume.The fruits and the vegWait only for the pickers;But the spider in the hedgeEats violets, no others.Let me sleep! Let me simmerOn the fires of Solomon.Down the rust, boiling over,Mingling there with the Kedron.And also he is the poet capable of this orgy of colors, this pictorial rhapsody:A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:A, black velvety jacket of brilliant fliesWhich buzz around cruel smells,Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lipsIn anger or in the raptures of penitence;U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrowsWhich alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes!Rimbaud was one of the first poets who I loved; reading him was the first time I discovered how language could be aggressive, and found that literature possessed black and dark corners where it is difficult to breathe. Many of the metaphors of Rimbaud never abandoned me. In Le Bateau Ivre (justly considered the greatest of all the poems of Rimbaud) there are wonderful pictures of huge fat snakes (pythons) sliding on trees, being devoured by lice, and huge leviathans (the beast of chaos) rotting in swamps, mouldering the rivers with its putrescence. And the opening of the first poem in prose from the Illuminations is one of the lightest and most charming passages in world literature about renewal and rebirth: "As soon as the idea of the Flood was finished, a hare halted in the clover and the trembling flower bells, and said its prayer to the rainbow through the spider’s web."As for poetry in translation, don't pay attention to that annoying bunch of readers that constantly state that, if you don't read something in the original, then is better not to read at all. Not all of us have time to learn all the languages in witch all the many great poets of the world wrote, and although we may lost some of the beauty and technical power of the original, we will also get several rewards. And other thing: on of the ways by witch the literature of one people and one time is fertilized by the literature of other nation/era is by translation. Actually, the sperm of translated poetry can fertilize the eggs of the brains of other poets, and generate an progeny of new masters of literature. Want an example? You know that Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Milton all wrote their major works on Blank Verse (and that means that Blank Verse is one of the most successful verse forms in the history of world literature - if not the most successful). Well, The first documented use of blank verse in the English language was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his translation of the Æneid. That means that a translation was responsible for one of the greatest verse forms ever invented: Surrey did not saved every technical wonder of the original Latin poem, but he did something much more important: he gave England a new verse form.>Rimbaud's LifeRimbaud is the poet who lived the most poetic life of all: there is none like him in the history of literature. He began life as a shy blond rose-cheeked white boy (the son of an extremely religious mother) and ended it as an black arms dealer, slim and tanned by the sun in Africa.Rimbaud's father abandoned the family when he was a baby, and his mother raised him alone: she forced the children to study for hours during the day, and also to read the Bible and attend church. Rimbaud was up to 14, 15 years a respectful and obedient boy: he won several poetry contests and had the highest grades of the school. However, with the reach of adolescence, he began to revolt, and ran away several times from home, traveling by foot across France, and going all the way up to Belgium. Imagine yourself with about 15 years of age walking alone on empty roads, sleeping under the stars, under the dew and serene, with no money in your pocket to eat, traveling just for the pleasure of traveling: it is something that would awake fear in many people, but Rimbaud did it several times.When he was 16 years old Rimbaud sent his poems to Verlaine (a famous poet in Paris), and Verlaine, amazed by the talent of the young provincial, collected money with other poets and artists and was able to buy train tickets to bring Rimbaud to Paris(Rimbaud had fled to Paris before to see a popular uprising called The Paris Commune - it is even possible that has been raped by soldiers on that occasion).When the teenager arrived at Paris, he shocked everyone with his talent and his physical beauty. However, he soon made many enemies because he usually mocking the mediocrity of other poets (one of his trolling examples: in an poetical dinner, when one of the other writes was declaiming his poem Rimbaud shouted, after every single verse, the world "s***": one of the guests, to defend the honor of the bad-poet, attempted to assault Rimbaud and expelled him from the hall, pushing him out of the dining room; latter that night this gentleman was attacked by Rimbaud - who was out there waiting for him - with a knife. On another occasion Rimbaud ejaculated in the latte of a painter) and expended his days drinking and doing drugs like opium and hashish. He almost did not shower, and was a walking colony of lice, flies and fleas.Verlaine fell in love with Rimbaud and the two began an love affair, so that Verlaine fled, leaving his wife and new-born daughter to follow Rimbaud to England. Latter, in a fight motivated by jealousy, Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist, and ended up arrested (he was accused of sodomy).Rimbaud continued to write until the completion of his only published book Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell). The book did not succeed, and around this time Rimbaud stopped writing forever. What he did next was traveling on almost all European countries: Germany, Sweden, Norway, Italy. He once was crossing the Alps on foot and ended up getting sunstroke; he was found by a lady on the road, that took care of him. He even got a inflammation caused by the contact of the rib-cage with the flesh: a body-punishment caused by his incessantly foot-walking. He worked in various strange departments : as a translator in a circus, and as book-keeper and janitor in big engineering work camps. He never, however, rested in one single place.He finally ended up in Africa, traveling through several countries, but was in Ethiopia that he began his career as an arms dealer: Rimbaud used to sell guns to Menelik, king of Ethiopia. He was the first European to enter certain sacred cities and to cross inhospitable deserts (he described them as "The presumed horror of the lunar landscapes"). Some of the desert-crossings he did (that took about 3-4 months) were so brutal that camels usually had to be euthanized after the trip because they were totally exhausted and useless for the job. On such trips, Rimbaud carried with him cyanide pills because if he ended up captured by native tribes he would be tortured, and suicide was better than having your testicles slowly cut off. What he ate were only a handful of dried dates, and he drank some milky water, preserved with strange oils and fats.He ended up winning a lot of money (he carried a large sack of gold tied to his waste in all the places he go). His mind was so skilled that he also learned several native languages, many now extinct. He could speak more than 15 languages. For a time he lived with Ethiopian with a very beautiful and elegant black woman, who was his mistress.Anyway, eventually he developed a tumor on his leg (a cancer). He had to return to France, where he had his leg amputated. A few weeks later, with fever and possessed by delirium (he was on colossal amounts of morphine), he died. His body was black (almost as carbon), his hair gray, his body slim and bony. He died with only 33 years of age.He was certainly one of the strangest souls that this world has ever hosted. So you see, is not enough to know Rimbaud's poetry: one must also read about Rimbaud's life, and Robb's book is one of the best on the subject.

This is a fascinating, well- researched biography. It gives you a very precise picture into Rimbaud's ever-evolving life. For anyone who thought he was a complete failure in Africa, this book will completely dispel that myth. Just read it from a perspective that allows you to accept the hardcore conservatism of the second half of his life. Both halves of his difficult life are admirable in many ways

I had search a long time for a good Rimbaud biography, so when I stumbled across Graham Robb's book: RIMBAUD, I thought it couldn't hurt to lift the cover and take a peek. What I found was a treasure-trove! Graham Robb obviously took great care in writing this, a biography of someone who forever changed the face of poetry. I am now looking forward to reading Robb's work on Victor Hugo, for if it is written with the same skill, which Robb affords to the biography of Arthur Rimbaud, I know it will be brilliant.

I personally think that this is the best biography written about Arthur Rimbaud. A truly fascinating and inspiring read!

A fabulous biography! I've read Enid's which is marvelous, but Graham's sensational reportage is enticing and without all that French.

I think it is an excellent biography, well researched and well written. it is also witty, dry and to the point. I liked it very much

We know for certain that Athena sprang from the head of Zeus fully armored. But from where did Rimbaud spring? His mom was authoritarian and did her best to stifle his quest for knowledge (although, alone, she fed, clothed and housed him, as well as sending him to school); his dad, an officer, left the family when the boy was six, leaving behind enough writings to suggest a man of intelligence. His school counted on HIM for honors and prizes, the first in its mediocre existence. Photos of the boy range from drop-dead gorgeous to a girlish slut. He was said to be `a vile, vicious, disgusting, smutty little schoolboy,' who had left, as a parting gift, a turd on the pillow of a friend. His lover was an old man of whom he said he `'f----- me all night long, and now I can't keep my sh--in. He wants me to practice on him but he's far too filthy.''Since the beginning of the world one of the hallmarks of boys is that they often make disastrous decisions, thanks to which we have skydivers, a legless boy who runs in the Olympics and world records of all kinds constantly shattered. Who knows why Rimbaud decided to go to Abyssinia, a land of murder, slavery, war, pestilence and famine, about which he wrote, `'I'm forced to speak their gibberish, to eat their filthy food and suffer a thousand aggravations caused by their idleness, treachery and stupidity.' He went as an arms salesman and made it back home rich, to die from the same hereditary disease that killed his sister. Graham Robb's RIMBAUD is beautifully written, the poems beautifully translated (I'm French), and so interesting that I read through it in just 3 days (at 550 pages, it's rather big). Because I'm personally incapable of judging Rimbaud's poetry, you'll have to arbitrate his historical impact. My own books can be found on Amazon under Michael Hone.

This was bought as a gift and was requested by the recipient. Apparently, not an easy read but very interesting if you have read Rimbaud works.

Der Autor hat akribisch das Leben des Arthur Rimbaud untersucht - und alle erreichbaren Details zusammengetragen.Das Buch ist ein Muß für jeden Rimbaud-Fan.Ein Beispiel: R. beziffert seine Verluste durch die Waffenlieferung an Menelik mit 60% - Robb errechnet aufgrund der gefundenen Dokumente einen GEWINN von über 200%.Ich selbst habe Robbs Arbeit genutzt für die kleine Publikation "Nach Charleville ! Zu Rimbaud".Für die Diskussion von Detailfragen empfehle ich als Ergänzung die Portale [...]Erwin Stegentritt