Rimbaud, Arthur

(1854-1891)

   poet

   Born in Charleville, Arthur Rimbaud, a poet of the symbolist school, is the subject of a perennial mythology. over the image of a precocious genius (he wrote verse at age 10) is superimposed that of an adventurer who, abandoning literature, threw himself into affairs, the details of which are little known, although he always tried to cultivate such an image. An early virtuoso of Latin verse, Rimbaud wrote his first French poem, Les Étrennes des orphelins, in 1869. The friendship that he began in 1870 with his French literature professor, G. izam-bard, was then decisive; he discovered especially françois rabelais, victor hugo, and théodore de Banville. Disturbed by the French declaration of war against Russia in 1870 (then later by the defeat of the Paris commune in 1871), Rimbaud attempted several visits to Paris, each of which ended with his return to Charleville. His poetry at that time shows his feeling against the war (Le Dormeur du val, 1870), against power (L'Orgie parisienne ou Paris se repeuple, 1871), and the clergy (Les premières Communions, 1871). At this point he developed a radical esthetic, particularly apparent in his Lettre du voyant (1871), in which he seeks to break with all traditional poetic forms. His works and ideas so impressed paul verlaine that he invited him to Paris, where Rimbaud attended many meeting of the Cercle Zutique, an avant-garde poetry group. His liaison with Verlaine, which was often stormy, was carried on in Belgium, London, then back to Brussels, where the relationship climaxed with verlaine twice attempting to take the life of the younger poet, wounding him seriously (July 1873). Rimbaud wrote an allegorical account of this in Une Saison en enfer that, along with Illuminations, constitutes his literary testament and marks his entrance into modernity. A series of visits followed to Germany, switzerland, and italy, then after 1878 to North Africa, where he worked as a trader (1880). Rimbaud then went to Egypt, Aden, and Ethiopia. verlaine, believing Rimbaud was no longer alive, published Illuminations (1886), which contains the famous Sonnet des voyelles, in which each of the five vowels is associated with a different color. In 1891, Rimbaud returned to France for medical treatment and died in Marseille.