![]() Although the versification in The Drunken Boat is traditional, Rimbaud's daring images and complex metaphors anticipated the philosophical concerns of his later works and his fascination with alchemy. Before he left, Rimbaud composed The Drunken Boat (published posthumously in 1920), a visual and verbal evocation of a savage universe in which a drifting boat serves to symbolize Rimbaud's fate as a poet. Verlaine responded with praise and an invitation to visit him in Paris. Feeling stifled and depressed, he sent several poems to the renowned poet Paul Verlaine, whose works Rimbaud admired. Soon after writing the “lettre du voyant,” Rimbaud returned again to Charleville. Rimbaud acknowledged that while this painful process involved much suffering and introspection, it was necessary to the development of vital and progressive poetry. Castigating such authors as Alfred de Musset and Victor Hugo for their rigid and archaic writing, Rimbaud declared that the poet must “derange” his senses and delve into his unconscious in order to create a language accessible to all the senses. After tracing the history of the genre, Rimbaud concluded that only the ancient Greeks and the French poets Louis Racine and Charles Baudelaire had created verse of any value. The letter, now known as the “lettre du voyant,” or “letter of the seer,” lays out Rimbaud's concept of poetry and of his own role as a poet. ![]() He returned home three weeks later, just before the commune was brutally suppressed by the army.įidelity to an Aesthetic Ideal and Unconscious Inspiration In 1871 Rimbaud created an aesthetic doctrine, which he articulated in several letters-two to Izambard and another to a friend, Paul Demeny. In February 1871 he ran away again to join the insurgents in the Paris Commune, a sort of anarchist, proto-communist society that controlled Paris in the wake of France's defeat. After the incident, Rimbaud renounced his sentimental early verse and wrote poems in which he expressed disgust with life and a desire to escape from reality. Some biographers suggest that Rimbaud may have been sexually abused by soldiers. ![]() Scholars believe that his experiences as a runaway may have included at least one brutal incident that strongly altered both his personality and the tone of his work. Rimbaud's growing disgust with provincial life drove him away again a few months later. He spent several months wandering in France and Belgium before Izam-bard eventually rescued the youth and brought him home. In August he went to Paris, but was arrested at the train station for traveling without a ticket and was briefly imprisoned. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870, which ultimately ended the Second French Empire, led to the closing of his school, ending Rim-baud's formal education. Run Away Attempts, Arrest, and Suspected Abuse Between 18, Rimbaud ran away from home three times. His rhetoric professor, Georges Izam-bard, befriended the boy, and under his tutelage Rim-baud avidly read the Romantic and Parnassian poets and strove to emulate their work. While enrolled at the Collège de Charleville, Rimbaud excelled in all his subjects and was considered a brilliant student. An overprotective woman, she accompanied her child to and from school, supervised his homework, and would not allow him to associate with other boys. His parents separated when he was six years old, and Rim-baud was thereafter raised by his mother in a strict religious environment. Rimbaud's difficult relationship with his authoritarian mother is reflected in many of his early poems. Rim-baud's father was absent during most of his childhood. Works in Biographical and Historical ContextĬhildhood with an Absent Father and Authoritarian Mother Jean-Nicolas-Arthur Rimbaud was born in Charleville in northeastern France on October 20, 1854, the second son of an army captain, Frédéric Rimbaud, and Marie-Cathérine-Vitalie Rimbaud. Although his writing career was brief and his output small, Rimbaud's development of the prose poem and innovative use of the unconscious mind as a source of literary inspiration influenced the symbolist movement and anticipated theįreedom of form characteristic of much contemporary poetry. Arthur Rimbaud is considered one of the most influential poets in the history of French letters.
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