Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was the marvelous boy-poet of French literature, established in a few short years his reputation for hallucinative verbal creation, only to give up poetry at the age of 19.
Background
Arthur Rimbaud was born in 1854 in the provincial town of Charleville (now part of Charleville-Mézières) in the Ardennes département in northeastern France. He was the second child of Frédéric Rimbaud (7 October 1814 – 16 November 1878) and Marie Catherine Vitalie Cuif (10 March 1825 – 16 November 1907).
Education
Arthur had been taught at home by his mother, was sent to the Pension Rossat. Throughout the five years that he attended the school, however, his formidable mother still imposed her will upon him, pushing him for scholastic success. Rimbaud disliked schoolwork and resented his mother's constant supervision.
Later he was sent to the Collège de Charleville. At the Collège he became a highly successful student, heading his class in all subjects except mathematics and the sciences; his schoolmasters remarked upon his ability to absorb great quantities of material.
Career
Rimbaud published his first known French verses (Les Étrennes des orphelins ) in La Revue pour tous for January 2, 1870. Other early poems were Sensation, Ophélie, Credo in Unam (later called Soleil et chair), and Le Dormeur du val. Les Chercheuses de poux is a memorable example of beauty created from what seems at first a most unpromising subject; and Voyelles, with its coloring of the vowels ("A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels."), aroused considerable interest in the aspect of synesthesia known as audition colorée (colored hearing).
In late September 1871 Rimbaud joined Verlaine in Paris, bringing with him the manuscript of Le Bateauivre, one of the most remarkable poems of the century. The poem is a marvel of hallucinative evocation and seems in a way to foreshadow Rimbaud's own strange life. The turbulent relationship between Verlaine and Rimbaud ended finally with Verlaine in prison for shooting his friend in the wrist and with Rimbaud disoriented and restless.
Rimbaud had Une Saison en Enfer printed in Belgium in 1873 and distributed a few copies, but he did not even claim the rest of the edition. Les Illuminations did not appear until Verlaine published the volume in 1886. Meanwhile, Rimbaud had given up poetry forever. After years of wandering, Rimbaud lived as an African explorer, trader, and gunrunner. In 1888 he was at Harar working for an exporter of coffee, hides, and musk.
A tumor of the knee forced his return to Marseilles in 1891, where his right leg was amputated. He died in the hospital there on November 10, 1891.
An ardent Catholic like his mother, Rimbaud had his First Communion when he was eleven.
Views
Quotations:
On May 15, 1871, Rimbaud wrote: "I say that one must be a seer, make himself a seer. The Poet makes himself a seer by a long, immense and reasoned derangement of all the senses. He exhausts in himself all the poisons, to preserve only their quintessences. For he arrives at the unknown."
Personality
Rimbaud was known to have been a libertine and a restless soul.
Quotes from others about the person
French poet Paul Valéry stated that "all known literature is written in the language of common sense - except Rimbaud's".
Interests
Writers
Rimbaud was inspired by the work of Charles Baudelaire.
Connections
Rimbaud and Verlaine began a short and torrid affair. They led a wild, vagabond-like life spiced by absinthe and hashish. Verlaine abandoned his wife and infant son. In 1874 he returned to London with the poet Germain Nouveau. They lived together for three months.