Rimbaud in Paris
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Rimbaud was born in 1854 in the provincial town of Charleville, near the Belgian border. A talented student of Latin and classic French poetic forms, he ran away from home at 16 when the Franco-Prussian war swept through his hometown. He walked a hundred miles to Paris, living through the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871 before returning home. At the age of 17, he wrote letters to all the major figures in the avant-garde Paris literary scene. Paul Verlaine, on the strength of the poems Rimbaud had sent, invited him to Paris. His sudden appearance stunned Verlaine's friends. They were amazed by his revolutionary approach to poetry, even as their middle-class sensibilities were shocked by this insolent teenager from the sticks. Rimbaud's persona was partly authentic, but partly meant to shock, as a way to protect himself among Verlaine's circle of respectable, middle-aged government bureaucrats who by night became decadent aesthetes. Despite being the talk of the town, Rimbaud was still a boy far from home, penniless and sleeping on the couches of people he barely knew.
Léon Valade described Rimbaud's introduction to Verlaine's salon circle:
"You certainly missed out by not coming to the last dinner of the Affreux Bonhommes. There we saw exhibited by Verlaine, his inventor and indeed his John the Baptist on the left bank, a most alarming underage poet. Big hands, big feet, babyish face you might have mistaken for a child of thirteen, deep blue eyes, manners more wild than timid: Such is the boy whose imagination, full of power and unheard-of corruption, has fascinated and terrified all our friends.
D’Hervilly said: “Behold Jesus in the midst of the doctors.” “More likely Satan!” replied Maître, and so the most apt description occurred to me, “Satan in the midst of the doctors.” Come and you will be able to read his verses and judge for yourself. I would say that we are here beholding the birth of a genius. This is the statement of my considered opinion, which I have reached after three weeks of reflection, and it is not merely a passing whim."
Armand Silvestre recalled later:
"I must not forget, among the hosts of the dinner of the Vilains-Bonshommes, a young poet, almost a child then, whom the public absolutely ignores and who seemed destined nevertheless to make people talk about him. Arthur Rimbaud, tall, thin, lanky, very strange in appearance, had been brought by Paul Verlaine who believed and absolutely still believes in his genius, as he proclaims in his recently published little volume: Les Poètes Maudits. The fact is that this young boy wrote extraordinary verses, with a disconcerting mastery. If I dwell on him, it is because he is the true father of the young decadent school whose development is taking place today before the eyes of the literary world. I need not say here what I think of his aspirations. I will only recall that one of the new theories is that the vowels have not only a sound, but a color, ut pictura poësis, and that the poet paints even more than he sings. But it is to Arthur Rimbaud, then not yet twenty years old, that the glory goes for having imagined this new physics. Arthur Rimbaud spent only long enough among us to astonish us and threaten the unfortunate Étienne Carjat, who had disagreed about a hemistich, with a sword cane. Genus irritabile vatum! It seems that he left Europe afterwards, traveled the world, and some claim that he is an opulent industrialist today. Too bad, because I remain convinced that he could have been a poet."
Others were less charitable. Edmond Lepelletier remembered:
"Rimbaud's life was hectic like his meter and incoherent like his thought, on bad days. He was an unbearable companion. I knew him. He ate greedily and behaved badly at the table. He kept a disdainful silence for hours, then volubly spouted insults and paradoxes. He was no fun. The timorous, in his presence, experienced certain anxieties. On seeing him for the first time, one thought of Troppmann as a child rather than of Shakespeare in the village. We weren't quite sure when reading his horoscope twenty years ago that he wouldn't end up on the scaffold; but we were convinced that his head would fall haloed with glory in the infamous basket."
Least charitable of all was Mathilde Verlaine, whose proper middle-class marriage to Paul did not survive his subsequent two-year affair with Rimbaud:
"He was a large sturdy lad with a reddish face: a peasant. He looked like a young schoolkid who had grown too fast. His trousers were too short for him, and you could see his blue cotton socks, clearly his mother’s handiwork. His hair was tousled, his necktie stringy, his clothes untidy. His eyes were blue, rather beautiful, but they had a shifty look which, indulgently, we took for shyness."
Paul Verlaine himself was besotted. Knowing nothing about Rimbaud apart from the poetry the younger man had sent him, he found himself face-to-face with Rimbaud at the door of his own home. Writing long afterwards, he said:
"The youth was tall, almost athletic in build, with the perfectly oval face of an angel in exile, with dishevelled light-brown hair, and eyes of a disturbingly pale blue. From the Ardennes, he possessed an attractive native accent, too swiftly lost, and the gift of prompt assimilation natural to the people of that region, which perhaps explains the rapid evaporation beneath the bland sun of Paris of that vein, that tendency to speak like our forefathers whose direct and precise language was not, in the end, always wrong! Here, a parenthesis: if these lines chance to meet his eyes, Arthur Rimbaud should know that we do not judge men’s motives and he is assured of our complete approbation (and of our deep sadness, also) at his abandonment of poetry provided, as we do not doubt, that this abandonment is for him, logical, genuine and necessary."
After a year in Paris, spent writing poetry and scandalizing Verlaine's friends, Rimbaud and Verlaine took off to London, where they lived in poverty for two years, supporting themselves by tutoring in French, fighting constantly and drinking heavily. Finally, in Brussels, Verlaine bought a gun with which he threatened to kill himself if Rimbaud left him. In the heat of argument, he instead shot wildly at Rimbaud, grazing him on the wrist. Rimbaud had had enough of the whole affair and left. He declined to press charges, but the police seized on the opportunity to come down hard on Verlaine, whom they saw as degenerate. He spent two years in prison.
Léon Valade described Rimbaud's introduction to Verlaine's salon circle:
"You certainly missed out by not coming to the last dinner of the Affreux Bonhommes. There we saw exhibited by Verlaine, his inventor and indeed his John the Baptist on the left bank, a most alarming underage poet. Big hands, big feet, babyish face you might have mistaken for a child of thirteen, deep blue eyes, manners more wild than timid: Such is the boy whose imagination, full of power and unheard-of corruption, has fascinated and terrified all our friends.
D’Hervilly said: “Behold Jesus in the midst of the doctors.” “More likely Satan!” replied Maître, and so the most apt description occurred to me, “Satan in the midst of the doctors.” Come and you will be able to read his verses and judge for yourself. I would say that we are here beholding the birth of a genius. This is the statement of my considered opinion, which I have reached after three weeks of reflection, and it is not merely a passing whim."
Armand Silvestre recalled later:
"I must not forget, among the hosts of the dinner of the Vilains-Bonshommes, a young poet, almost a child then, whom the public absolutely ignores and who seemed destined nevertheless to make people talk about him. Arthur Rimbaud, tall, thin, lanky, very strange in appearance, had been brought by Paul Verlaine who believed and absolutely still believes in his genius, as he proclaims in his recently published little volume: Les Poètes Maudits. The fact is that this young boy wrote extraordinary verses, with a disconcerting mastery. If I dwell on him, it is because he is the true father of the young decadent school whose development is taking place today before the eyes of the literary world. I need not say here what I think of his aspirations. I will only recall that one of the new theories is that the vowels have not only a sound, but a color, ut pictura poësis, and that the poet paints even more than he sings. But it is to Arthur Rimbaud, then not yet twenty years old, that the glory goes for having imagined this new physics. Arthur Rimbaud spent only long enough among us to astonish us and threaten the unfortunate Étienne Carjat, who had disagreed about a hemistich, with a sword cane. Genus irritabile vatum! It seems that he left Europe afterwards, traveled the world, and some claim that he is an opulent industrialist today. Too bad, because I remain convinced that he could have been a poet."
Others were less charitable. Edmond Lepelletier remembered:
"Rimbaud's life was hectic like his meter and incoherent like his thought, on bad days. He was an unbearable companion. I knew him. He ate greedily and behaved badly at the table. He kept a disdainful silence for hours, then volubly spouted insults and paradoxes. He was no fun. The timorous, in his presence, experienced certain anxieties. On seeing him for the first time, one thought of Troppmann as a child rather than of Shakespeare in the village. We weren't quite sure when reading his horoscope twenty years ago that he wouldn't end up on the scaffold; but we were convinced that his head would fall haloed with glory in the infamous basket."
Least charitable of all was Mathilde Verlaine, whose proper middle-class marriage to Paul did not survive his subsequent two-year affair with Rimbaud:
"He was a large sturdy lad with a reddish face: a peasant. He looked like a young schoolkid who had grown too fast. His trousers were too short for him, and you could see his blue cotton socks, clearly his mother’s handiwork. His hair was tousled, his necktie stringy, his clothes untidy. His eyes were blue, rather beautiful, but they had a shifty look which, indulgently, we took for shyness."
Paul Verlaine himself was besotted. Knowing nothing about Rimbaud apart from the poetry the younger man had sent him, he found himself face-to-face with Rimbaud at the door of his own home. Writing long afterwards, he said:
"The youth was tall, almost athletic in build, with the perfectly oval face of an angel in exile, with dishevelled light-brown hair, and eyes of a disturbingly pale blue. From the Ardennes, he possessed an attractive native accent, too swiftly lost, and the gift of prompt assimilation natural to the people of that region, which perhaps explains the rapid evaporation beneath the bland sun of Paris of that vein, that tendency to speak like our forefathers whose direct and precise language was not, in the end, always wrong! Here, a parenthesis: if these lines chance to meet his eyes, Arthur Rimbaud should know that we do not judge men’s motives and he is assured of our complete approbation (and of our deep sadness, also) at his abandonment of poetry provided, as we do not doubt, that this abandonment is for him, logical, genuine and necessary."
After a year in Paris, spent writing poetry and scandalizing Verlaine's friends, Rimbaud and Verlaine took off to London, where they lived in poverty for two years, supporting themselves by tutoring in French, fighting constantly and drinking heavily. Finally, in Brussels, Verlaine bought a gun with which he threatened to kill himself if Rimbaud left him. In the heat of argument, he instead shot wildly at Rimbaud, grazing him on the wrist. Rimbaud had had enough of the whole affair and left. He declined to press charges, but the police seized on the opportunity to come down hard on Verlaine, whom they saw as degenerate. He spent two years in prison.
