Bored, evidently, with the artsy scene in Paris, Rimbaud went to Africa and remained there for the rest of his life. The second phase of Rimbaud's life, from the mid-1870s to his death, was as a capitalist and explorer. He became a role model for poets and artists who equated decadence with genius, and alongside the likes of William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, remains so to this day. He was often seen staggering the streets in the wee hours half out of his mind from drugs and drink. Another time, at the Cafe du Rat Mort, he pulled a knife on poet Paul Verlaine, his lover, slashing Verlaine's wrists and stabbing his thigh. Once he poured sulfuric acid into someone's cocktail. Then the teen-ager lit out for Paris, where he quickly ensconced himself in the underground literary scene. His greatest talent, however, was in languages, and while still an adolescent he was composing poetry in Greek and Latin and winning prestigious awards.
Rimbaud's childhood was unpleasant and brooding, but early he was recognized by his schoolmasters as a prodigy in every subject he studied.
No wonder: Seldom in the history of letters, and rarely in the history of colonial expansion, has there been a character more interesting and noteworthy.
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On the "cursed" desolate shores of this century, Rimbaud is still an ambiguous presence - warning his unknown readers of the hell to which "derangement" inevitably leads, and showing them exactly how to get there.īiographies of the French poet began to appear promptly after his death in 1891. Romanticism's best bad example - and best-selling poet - became the Lord Byron of modern literature: a seductive role-model whose life and work were seen as complementary parts of the same dangerous experiment. Biographer Graham Robb writes in his epilogue:Īn icon to the Beat poets, the students of May 1968, intellectual rock musicians and the gay movement, Rimbaud has done more than any other writer to import romantic ideals into the distant twentieth century. Arthur Rimbaud's importance cannot be overstated.
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