Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was born at Charleville, October 20, 1854,
and from the most tender age showed traits of the most insupportable
blackguardism. His brief stay in Paris was in 1870-71. He followed
Verlaine in England, then in Belgium. After the little misunderstanding
which separated them, Rimbaud roved through the world, followed the
most diverse trades, a soldier in the army of Holland, ticket taker
at Stockholm in the Loisset circus, contractor in the Isle of Cyprus,
trader at Harrar, then at Cape Guardafui, in Africa, where a friend
of M. Vittorio Pico saw him, applying himself to the fur trade. It
is likely that, scorning all that lacks brutal gratification, savage
adventure, the violent life, this poet, singular among all, willingly
renounced poetry. None of the authentic pieces of _Reliquaire_ seem
more recent than 1873; although he did not die before the end of
1891. The verses of his extreme youth are weak, but from the age of
seventeen Rimbaud acquired originality, and his work will endure,
at least by virtue of phenomena. He is often obscure, bizarre and
absurd. Of sincerity nothing, with a woman's character, a girl's,
inherently wicked and even savage, Rimbaud has that kind of talent
which interests without pleasing. In his works are pages which give the
impression of beauty one feels before a pustulous toad, a good-looking
syphillitic woman, or the Chateau-Rouge at eleven o'clock in the
evening. _Les Pauvres â l'èglise, les Premières Communions_ possess an
uncommon quality of infamy and blasphemy. _Les Assis_ and _le Bateau
ivre_,--there we have the excellent Rimbaud, and I detest neither
_Oraison du soir_ nor _les Chercheuses de Poux._ He was somebody after
all, since genius ennobles even baseness. He was a poet. Some verses of
his have remained living almost in the state of ordinary speech:
Avec l'assentiment des grands héliotropes.
(Tr. 42)
Some stanzas of _Bateau ivre_ belong to true and great poetry:
Et dès lors je me suis baigné dans le poème
De la mer, infusé d'astres et latescent,
Dévorant les azurs verts où, flottaison blême
Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend,
Où, teignant tout à coup les bleuités, délires
Et rythmes lents sous les rutilements du jour,
Plus fortes que l'alcool, plus vastes que vos lyres,
Fermentent les rousseurs amères de l'amour.
(Tr. 43)
The whole poem marches: all of Rimbaud's poems march, and in _les
Illuminations_ there are marvelous belly dances.
It is a pity that his life, so poorly known, was not the true _vita
abscondita_; what is known disgusts from what can be understood of it.
Rimbaud was like those women whom we are not surprised to learn have
taken to religion in some house of shame; but what revolts still more
is that he seems to have been a jealous and passionate mistress: here
the aberration becomes debauched, being sentimental. Senancour, the
man who has spoken most freely of love, says of these inharmonious
liaisons where the female falls so low that she has no name except in
the dirtiest slang:
"When in a very particular situation, the need results in a minute
of misconduct, we can perhaps pardon men totally vulgar, or at least
banish its memory; but how understand that which becomes a habit, an
attachment? The fault may have been accidental; but that which is
joined to this act of brutality, that which is not unforseen, becomes
ignoble. If even a passion capable of troubling the head and almost of
depriving one of liberty, has often left an ineffaceable stain, what
disgust will not a consent given in cold-blood inspire? Intimacy in
this manner, that is the height of shame, the irremediable infamy."
But the intelligence, conscious or unconscious, though not having all
rights, has the right of all absolutions.
... Qui sait si le genie
N'est pas une de vos vertus,
(Tr. 44)
monsters, whether you are called Rimbaud,--or Verlaine?