Rimbaud House (For Sale) - Why Rimbaud
The building has gained this name because during the lodging of the french poet Arthur Rimbaud in Aden between (1880 to 1891) he remained in this building.
Who Is Arthur Rimbaud?
Introduction
Rimbaud is known as the poet who stopped writing poetry.
Norbert Bonenkamp
Whereas Victor Hugo wrote poetry most of his adult life, Arthur Rimbaud's poetry was written between the ages of 16 and 19. Rimbaud's precocious eruption of poetic activity lasted only three years and was followed by silence. Around this explosion of unsettling poetry a potent myth has been spun: Rimbaud the genius, the prodigy, the meteor:
É clat, lui, d'un météore, allumé sans motif autre que sa présence, issu seul et s'éteignant.
Stéphane Mallarmé |
Rimbaud aged 17
The name is pronounced 'Rambo' |
Life (1854 - 1891)
An issue that all our readings of Rimbaud, and by this I mean both our readings of his poetry and of the critical discourses about Rimbaud, must somehow negotiate is that of the relationship between his life and his work. A number of critical writings on Rimbaud have tended to privilege the biographical context in their readings of his poetry. Many argue, for example, that images of adventures running aground (cf. `Le Bateau ivre') refer back to Rimbaud's claustrophobic childhood. We should, however, remain wary of the dangers of this kind of biographical reductivism. Not all rebellious teenagers write great poetry and, as readers, we risk falsifying the complex reading experience that Rimbaud's work demands by smoothing over any difficulties we encounter by referring them back to the `facts' of his life.
Rimbaud was born in 1854 in Charleville near the Belgium border. It was a small provincial town which, when he was older, he detested and which in turn, detested him. His earliest poetry often attack the petty restrictions of small town life that conspired to frustrate his poetic ambitions. As a child Rimbaud was possessed of a precocious verbal facility, and his accomplished Latin verses often won prizes. In contrast to the monotony of Charleville, it was the world of words which offered adventure and excitement. Rimbaud's father died young and his mother, by many accounts a rather authoritarian figure, offered a rather perfunctory, dutiful love. Rimbaud reacted violently against his upbringing. In 1870, at the height of the Prussian advance, he ran away to Paris to witness the downfall of Napoleon III. He was arrested there and thrown in jail. A little later he ran away to Brussels, only to be brought home from where he once again fled to Paris. In Paris he witnessed the bloody crushing of the Commune. In September 1871 Rimbaud returned to Paris where he met the poet Verlaine. A poetic as well as a sexual relationship ensued as the pair wandered around Europe. The couple were not compatible and their relationship ended in July 1873 when, following a violent quarrel Verlaine fired twice on Rimbaud, wounding him slightly. Following this incident Rimbaud ventured further afield, first Europe then on to the Middle East and finally to Abyssinia. He had long since lost all interest in poetry. After ten years as a trader, explorer and gun-runner, he fell ill with cancer. He returned to France where he died in November 1891.
Work
Four principal stages can be discerned in Rimbaud's poetic career:
1. Early formally conventional verse poetry written between 1870 and 1871.
2. Much less conventional poetry in verse written between late 1871 and 1872.
3. Prose poems grouped under the title Illuminations whose date is disputed.
4. The prose poems Une Saison en Enfer written in 1871.
Reputation
Rimbaud's poetry, little known, during his own lifetime, had an exceptional influence on succeeding generations of writers: Claudel saw him as a Christian apologist, and the Surrealists of the 1920's and 1930's found in Rimbaud's rejection of the rational intellect, a precursor to their own movement. Rimbaud was for many of the avant-garde groupings that emerged in France at the beginning of the century, as he was for many others later, one of the first authentic poetic revolutionaries, one of the first truly dissentient voices to emerge in French poetry. He enjoyed cult status during the student rebellions of 1968 for his sustained attitude of revolt.
Revolt against Bourgeois Values
Rimbaud wrote abrasively satirical, sarcastic poems attacking the mindless and petty values and customs of the bourgeoisie. His poems constitute a portrait gallery of bloated `bons bourgeois' too self-satisfied to question their own lives. In the poem `A la musique' , Rimbaud takes the ritual of a Sunday afternoon musical concert to expose the phoney conventionality and concern for order of the bourgeois of Charleville. A similar attack on the complacent middle-classes of Charleville, hostile to Rimbaud's aspirations is found in `Les Assis' . In `Les Effarés' and `Les Douaniers' the object of his attacks are petty-minded and faceless bureaucrats. His attacks on the bourgeoisie become more serious and more virulent after the brutal suppression of the Paris Commune as in `Les Mains de Jeanne-Marie' and `Chant de guerre parisien' . Poems like `Rages de César' and `L'Orgie parisienne' offer a critique of the corruption of the established political order.
Revolt against Christianity
Many of Rimbaud's poems are fiercely anti-Christian. He bitterly resented the established church which seemed more interested in wealth than welfare. In `Les Pauvres à l'église' Rimbaud describes a group of poor people in church, who, despite their humiliation are happy: "Heureux, humiliés comme des chiens battus". The poem is an attack on the oppressive nature of church authority, the image of God is a feudal and capitalist one: "bon Dieu, le patron et le sire". Christianity is complicit with the dominant political and economic order, fostering the value of passivity: "Christ! ô Christ, éternel voleur des énergies" ( `Les Premières communions' ). Moreover Rimbaud resented Christianity's denial of the sensual. This is particularly noticeable in the poem `Soleil et chair' which has the following invocation to Venus, the Pagan goddess of love: "Je crois en toi! je crois en toi! Divine mère/Aphrodité marine! - Oh! la route est amère/Depuis que l'autre Dieu nous attelle à sa croix". This theme is explored from a feminist perspective in `Les premières communions' which attacks Christianity's denial of female sexuality and its insistence on chastity.
Revolt against Conventional Poetry
Rimbaud's spirit of revolt also manifests itself in his rejection or subversion of prevailing poetic conventions. There is in his poems a rejection of classicism's and neoclassical poetry's insistence on a restricted poetic vocabulary of `mots propres' as opposed to `mots bas'. Rimbaud's poetry is characterized by its diverse and disparate language levels, its clashes of tone and register, its use of neologisms ("Robinsonner" in `Roman' and "silluner" in `Les Poètes de sept ans'), and its inclusion of vocabulary from semantic fields not traditionally considered appropriate to poetry. Rimbaud's works are characterized by both a syntactical impoverishment that obscures immediate comprehension and by a lexical overloading that exploits language's full potential. Rimbaud violates Classicism's ideal of `clarté'. This perhaps explains why the contemporary American poet John Ashbery makes the claim that Rimbaud is the only poet to have "gotten beyond the lucidity of the French language". The French critic Jean-Louis Baudry has described two particular forms of linguistic subversion operative within his work:
i) `L'Interdit' or `ce qui ne doit pas être dit'. This is the violation of taboo subjects such as sexuality, or the description of bodily functions such as one finds in `Accroupissements' . In `Vénus Anadyomène' the description of the goddess Venus, very much part of the aesthetic of the Parnassians (a school of neoclassical poets including Banville, Gautier, Heredia and Leconte de Lisle), is undermined. Rimbaud's Venus, an ugly fat woman getting out of a dirty zinc bath, is a direct parody of the poetic conventions of the Parnassian poets. The poem's final rhyme of "Vénus" with "l'anus" completes the act of poetic subversion.
ii) `Le Prosaïque' or `qui devrait par définition être exclu de la poésie'. This refers to Rimbaud's tendency to incorporate within his poetry a vocabulary that, although not necessarily obscene, is nonetheless at variance with conventional notions of what is considered poetic. The medical, anatomical, vegetal and botanical vocabulary used in `Les Assis' is one example of this. The inclusion of spoken working-class diction ("c'est une bonne farce" in `Soleil et chair') and the use of familiar, vulgar or pejorative expressions in verse is another violation of formality encountered in his poems. Audaciously and truculently Rimbaud used `mots bas' and slang in many of his poems, eg. "leurs culs en rond" in `Les Effarés', "tétons" in `Au Cabaret vert' and "caboche" in `Les Assis'. In `Oraison du soir' Rimbaud employs the sonnet form, used in France since the sixteenth century and associated with traditional lyric poetry, yet subverts it by filling it with an explosive content; "Tel que les excréments chauds d'un vieux colombier,/Mille Rêves en moi font de douces brûlures". In the poem `Ce qu'on dit au poète à propos des fleurs', Rimbaud addresses Banville, the oldest and most respected of the Parnassians. In stanza 5 of the third part the poet wonders why some flowers are considered poetic and others not, and continues this questionning by asking why the "excrément d'un oiseau marin" cannot be deemed suitable material for poetry. Rimbaud wants to rescue poetry from the dead hand of convention, to bring it back to the real and into the surreal, inventing a new symbolism. Rimbaud wanted to abandon stereotype and to explode the range of subject matter and verbal resources available to the poet. It is possible to argue that Rimbaud's subversion of poetic discourse equates to a political subversion, and that via a revolt against linguistic conventions he is offering resistance to the prevailing political order. The relationship between linguistic and political subversion remains a problematic one when reading Rimbaud.
Revolt against `Commonsense' Vision of Reality
Rimbaud's conception of the poet was that he was a kind of instrument for a new perception of the world, exploring beyond the surface of so-called reality. In his famous `Lettre du voyant' written in 1871 he describes his poetic programme:
Le Poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné déreglèment de tous les sens.
There is in his work a fascination with otherness or deviancy through drugs, mysticism and sexuality. Like Baudelaire and Lautréamont, two other notable nineteenth century poet-outcasts, there is a will to knowledge through evil. Rimbaud's poetry is marked by an anti-rationalist view of human consciousness. The world described in his poems is a fantastic one, an imaginative transfiguration or deformation which disturbs any settled idea of reality. Hallucinatory images recur throughout his work; "J'ai tendu des cordes de clocher à clocher, des guirlandes de fenêtre à fenêtre; des chaînes d'or d'étoile à étoile, et je danse" (`Phrases'). In the poem `Parade' Rimbaud claims; "J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage". In revolt against the conventional `opaque' vision of things Rimbaud's poetry contains a vast appetite for direct sensation, for an apprehension of the world in all its physicality.
Rimbaud Web Sites
One of the first Web sites you might like to visit in your encounter with Rimbaud's work is the RimbaudWeb page in French which features all of his work, including key correspondance, contemporary accounts of the poet by Verlaine and others and a short biography.
A la Musique
For vocabulary assistance, click here
Sur la place taillée en mesquines pelouses,
Square où tout est correct, les arbres et les fleurs,
Tous les bourgeois poussifs qu'étranglent les chaleurs
Portent, les jeudis soirs, leurs bêtises jalouses.
- L'orchestre militaire, au milieu du jardin,
Balance ses schakos dans la Valse des fifres:
- Autour, aux premiers rangs, parade le gandin;
Le notaire pend à ses breloques à chiffres.
Des rentiers à lorgnons soulignent tous les couacs:
Les gros bureaux bouffis traînent leurs grosses dames
Auprès desquelles vont, officieux cornacs,
Celles dont les volants ont des airs de réclames;
Sur les bancs verts, des clubs d'épiciers retraités
Qui tissonent le sable avec leur canne à pomme,
Fort sérieusement discutent les traités,
Puis prisent en argent, et reprennent: "En somme! ..."
Epatant sur son banc les rondeurs de ses reins,
Un bourgeois à boutons clairs, bedaine flamande,
Savoure son onnaing d'où le tabac par brins
Déborde - vous savez, c'est de la contrebande; -
Le long des gazons verts ricanent les voyous;
Et, rendus amoureux par le chant des trombones,
Très naïfs, et fumant des roses, les pioupious
Caressent les bébés pour enjôler les bonnes ...
- Moi, je suis, débraillé comme un étudiant,
Sous les marronniers verts les alertes fillettes:
Elles le savent bien; et tournent en riant,
Vers moi, leurs yeux sont pleins de choses indiscrètes.
Je ne dis pas un mot: je regarde toujours
La chair de leurs cous blancs brodés de mèches folles:
Je suis, sous le corsage et les frêles atours,
Le dos divin après la courbe des épaules.
J'ai bientôt déniché la bottine, le bas ...
- Je reconstruis les corps, brûlé de belles fièvres.
Elles me trouvent drôle et se parlent tout bas ...
- Et mes désirs brutaux s'accrochent à leurs levres ...
Further Reading
· Y. Bonnefoy, Rimbaud par lui-même (Paris: Seuil, 1961)
· P. Brunel, Rimbaud: projets et réalisations (Paris: Champion, 1983)
· P. Brunel, Arthur Rimbaud ou l'éclatant désastre (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1983)
· W.M. Frohock, Rimbaud's Poetic Practice: Image and Theme in the Major Poems (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963)
· P. Gascar, Rimbaud et la commune (Paris: Gallimard, 1971)
· C.A. Hackett, Rimbaud: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
· R. Little, Rimbaud: Illuminations (London: Grant & Cutler, 1983)
· Y. Nakaji, Combat spirituel ou immense dérision: essai d'analyse textuelle d'Une Saison en enfer (Paris: José Corti 1987)
· J. Richer, L'Alchimie du verbe de Rimbaud (Paris: Didier, 1972)
· K. Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988)
· E. Starkie, Arthur Rimbaud (London: Faber and Faber, 1973)
· M.J. Whitaker, La structure du monde imaginaire de Rimbaud (Paris: Nizet, 1972)
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