Rimbaud, (Jean Nicolas) Arthur 1854-91
French poet

He was born in Charleville, Ardennes, the son of an army captain and his stern disciplinarian wife. After a brilliant academic career at the Coll�ge de Charleville, in 1870 he published his first book of poems and ran away to Paris. He soon returned to Charleville, where he lived as a writer and indulged in a life of leisure, drinking and bawdy conversation. There he published Le Bateau ivre (1871, Eng trans The Drunken Boat, 1952) which, with its verbal eccentricities, daring imagery and evocative language, is among his most popular works. Soon after its publication in August 1871, Paul Verlaine invited him to Paris, where they began a homosexual relationship. In Brussels in July 1873 he threatened to terminate the friendship; Verlaine shot and wounded him, and was imprisoned for attempted murder. From the summer of 1872, when the relationship was at its strongest, date many of his Les Illuminations (Eng trans 1971), which most clearly state his poetic doctrine. These prose and verse poems show Rimbaud as a precursor of Symbolism, especially in his use of childhood, dream and mystical images to express dissatisfaction with the material world and a longing for the spiritual. In 1873 he published Une Saison en enfer (Eng trans A Season in Hell, 1939), a prose volume which symbolized his struggle to break with his past. He was bitterly disappointed at its cold reception by the literary critics, burned all his manuscripts, and at the age of 19 turned his back on literature. For a time he occupied himself travelling in Europe and the East, taking on the role of soldier, trader, explorer and gunrunner. Meanwhile, in 1866, Verlaine published Les Illuminations as by the 'late Arthur Rimbaud'. Rimbaud knew of the sensation they caused and the reputation they were making for him, but reacted with indifference. In 1891, troubled by a leg infection, he left Harar and sailed to Marseilles; there his leg was amputated, and he died.

Bibliography: E Starkie, Rimbaud (1961)