|
 Arthur Rimbaud
France
|
 |
 |
Rimbaud, l'homme aux semelles de vent, (the man with heels of wind) travelled the world with his youth's flashing stride. As a boy he won all the Academy prizes for his Latin verses first at l'Institution Rossat and then at the public school, where he disconcerted his teachers and dazzled his future friend and confidant Georges Izambard.
- He rejected his stifling family and the bourgoisie, running away from home several times and volunteering in the defense of the Paris commune of 1870. He wrote "les étrennes des orphelins" (the Orphans' New Year Presents) , his first publication, and "les poètes de 7 ans" (Seven-Year-Old Poets), the first of the glittering Masterpieces which fascinated Verlaine and which he finally gave up in 1873 (75?) at an age when most others have only begun writing.
He repudiated poetry, becoming an adventurer and sending remarkable reports to the Academy of Sciences .
Throughout his life he was racked by a thirst that he tried vainly to quench : "Et la soif malsaine obscurcit mes veines" ( a sick thirst darkens my veins) ..."pleurant, je vis de l'or et ne pus boire"( Weeping, I saw gold and could not drink)...
He believed he could satisfy this eagerness by making himself a voyant (visionary) by a "lent et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens" ( "a long and well thought-out deregulation of all the senses") with Verlaine, ruthlessly rejecting whatever might turn him from his path : "mais moi, je ne veux rire à rien".
It woul turn out to be nothing but long torments with rambling, misery, and quarrels with the "pitoyable frère", the"docteur satanique" culminating in Verlaine's shooting of Rimbaud in Brussels.
He soon came back to earth - "on ne part pas, reprenons les chemins d'ici" ("we're not going ; let's go back along these old roads") - not without having thought, in dazzling glimpses, he would see beyond the veil :"c'est la vision des nombres. Nous allons à l'Esprit"..."Mais je m'aperçois que mon esprit dort...Par l'esprit, on va à Dieu! Déchirante infortune!" ("It's the vision of numbers. We're going toward the Spirit... But I perceive that my spirit is asleep.. through the spirit one goes to God. Excruciating misfortune!")
He, who jeered wildly at the faithful, confessed: "j'attends Dieu avec gourmandise" ("Greedily I await God").
From that time, he rushed into adventure like a "bateau ivre" ("drunken boat") casting off its moorings.
Exhausted, he came back to the Roche family farm where he had written "Une saison en enfer" ("A Season in Hell"), with a gangrene-infected leg which had to be amputated : "les femmes soignent ces féroces infirmes retour des pays chauds" ("Women nurse these fierce invalids home from hot countries").
His sister Isabelle played this part, with patience and tenderness, accompanying him to the hospital in Marseille where death, perhaps, at last opened doors to his vision. |
|
