dogmatika
soul on fire
10 January 2008
I will return with limbs of iron, dark skin and a furious gaze
Following the release of Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel, Edmund White revisits a literary tempest:
The penniless and friendless Rimbaud could never survive for long away from home during these chaotic times. But in the early autumn in 1871 he fired off a letter to Paul Verlaine, his favourite poet. Without waiting for a response, Rimbaud sent off a few more poems to Verlaine two days later. Then came the fateful response from Paris: "Come, dear great soul, we call you, we await you." Verlaine enclosed the train fare.
Rimbaud was an impossible guest. He took to nude sunbathing just outside the house. He turned his room into a squalid den. He mutilated an heirloom crucifix. He was proud of the lice infesting his long mane and even pretended he was encouraging the vermin to jump on to passers-by. Verlaine was delighted with Rimbaud's antisocial antics, which recalled to him his own younger excesses before his marriage. Verlaine introduced Rimbaud to his friends in the cafés where they congregated regularly. After the first encounter, one of Verlaine's friends, Léon Valade, wrote the next day to an absent member, "You missed a great deal by not being there. A most daring poet not yet 18 was introduced by Paul Verlaine, his inventor and in fact his John the Baptist. Big hands, big feet, a wholly babyish face like a child of 13, deep blue eyes! Such is this boy, whose character is more antisocial than timid and whose imagination combines great powers with unheard-of corruption and who has fascinated and terrified all our friends."
The modern reader can't help but smile at the readiness of Parisians of that epoch to be "terrified" by "unheard-of corruption". In fact, these poets would soon form the core group of the Decadents (a "school" that took its name from a line by Verlaine: "I am the Empire at the end of its decadence"). Valade concluded by calling Rimbaud "Satan in the midst of the doctors", as opposed to Christ among the rabbis at the temple. When one of the Goncourt brothers shook Rimbaud's hand, he claimed he felt as if he were touching the most notorious murderer of the day.
Related: Only One Rimbaud / Rimbaud meets Rambo / A Poet Against Poetry / Insulting Beauty / Rimbaud est un Autre / 150ème anniversaire de la naissance d'Arthur Rimbaud (French site) / A Season In Hell / The Connection (radio debate).
Rimbaud was an impossible guest. He took to nude sunbathing just outside the house. He turned his room into a squalid den. He mutilated an heirloom crucifix. He was proud of the lice infesting his long mane and even pretended he was encouraging the vermin to jump on to passers-by. Verlaine was delighted with Rimbaud's antisocial antics, which recalled to him his own younger excesses before his marriage. Verlaine introduced Rimbaud to his friends in the cafés where they congregated regularly. After the first encounter, one of Verlaine's friends, Léon Valade, wrote the next day to an absent member, "You missed a great deal by not being there. A most daring poet not yet 18 was introduced by Paul Verlaine, his inventor and in fact his John the Baptist. Big hands, big feet, a wholly babyish face like a child of 13, deep blue eyes! Such is this boy, whose character is more antisocial than timid and whose imagination combines great powers with unheard-of corruption and who has fascinated and terrified all our friends."
The modern reader can't help but smile at the readiness of Parisians of that epoch to be "terrified" by "unheard-of corruption". In fact, these poets would soon form the core group of the Decadents (a "school" that took its name from a line by Verlaine: "I am the Empire at the end of its decadence"). Valade concluded by calling Rimbaud "Satan in the midst of the doctors", as opposed to Christ among the rabbis at the temple. When one of the Goncourt brothers shook Rimbaud's hand, he claimed he felt as if he were touching the most notorious murderer of the day.
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