It is said that the Chinese have a curse: “May you live in interesting times.” The lives of those who lived through tumultuous events, or whose lives were exciting in themselves may make for good reading, but were perhaps not so much fun to live through. This is the story of a man with two lives. He was a precocious poet, a gay lover at a time when this was forbidden, a reckless, wild and shocking young man. He was also a merchant, a business pioneer in far-off lands, who died aged 37 in the faith of his fathers, and was buried in the town from which he came. This is the story of the short, but definitely interesting life of Arthur Rimbaud.
First Communion
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was born on the 20th October 1854 in provincial, northeastern France. He was the second of five children, two boys, and three girls, born to a career soldier and his young wife. His father abandoned the family after the last child was born, and his mother Vitalie thereafter referred to herself as a widow. She pushed her sons to academic success, and Arthur, though not liking school, excelled at it, winning fifteen first-class prizes in competitions in just two years. He was befriended by a young teacher called Georges Izambard, who encouraged him to read widely and to continue writing the verse he had already shown an interest in. He was a devoutly Catholic young man, making his First Communion at 11, and being teased by his schoolmates for his piety.
The First Life: Poet
A fairly normal beginning, a fairly ordinary provincial childhood. Then, on 19th July 1870, when Rimbaud was fifteen, war broke out between France and Prussia. Northeastern France was invaded, the French Emperor surrendered to the Prussians, Paris came under siege, and France itself had to surrender. There were riots in Paris and an attempt at revolution, before the country settled into the Third Republic (which lasted until 1940).
Amid the turmoil of war, Rimbaud’s school became a military hospital, and his friend and teacher departed to Douai. Restless, in August 1870 Rimbaud ran away to Paris, stowing away on the train. He was arrested on arrival at the Gare du Nord and imprisoned in the Mazas Prison on charges of vagrancy and fare evasion. His plea to his former teacher secured his release, and he eventually got home again at the end of September. He only stayed for ten days before again running away, and when he did return, took up drinking, shoplifting, rudeness, writing obscene verse and growing his hair long. In other words, he was a rebellious teenager, although he wrote to his friends saying he was deliberately deranging his senses for the sake of poetic transcendence.
Rimbaud
As an ambitious young poet, Rimbaud had been writing letters to various established poets, though only one responded to him – Paul Verlaine. Verlaine was a Symbolist poet, and also a wife-beating drunk, and he was impressed with Rimbaud’s poetry. He wrote back to him, saying,
Come, dear great soul. We await you; we desire you.
and sent him a ticket to Paris. So, just before he turned 17, on 24 September 1871 Rimbaud took the train to Paris to meet Verlaine. The older poet described him as,
tall, well built, almost athletic, with the perfectly oval face of an angel in exile, with unruly light chestnut hair and eyes of a disquieting blue…He had a real baby’s head, plump and fresh on top of a big bony body with the awkwardness of an adolescent who has grown too quickly.
Verlaine
For a time, Rimbaud lived with Verlaine and his wife, and was introduced to Parisian literary society. His behaviour was appalling – he has been described as the prototype of an enfant terrible, ill-mannered and shocking. He was covered in lice, of which he was proud, and was known for selling the furniture of his hosts. He practised public nudity, damaged his hosts’ houses and used their poetry as toilet paper…they quickly tired of him. For a while, he was seen as delightfully shocking, but soon literary society had had enough of him. Verlaine, though, didn’t tire of the young man. They became lovers, and made no secret of the fact, despite the social disapprobation of homosexuality. They even wrote a poem together, the ‘Sonnet du Trou du Cul‘ in praise of the anus. Both of them drank large quantities of absinthe, smoked hashish, and spent enormous sums of money.
Verlaine
In September 1872 Verlaine abandoned his wife and their baby, and travelled with Rimbaud to London. There they lived in poverty, their relationship deteriorating into arguments and vitriol. By June 1873 Verlaine had had enough, and returned to Paris – alone. He couldn’t keep away from the 18 year-old Rimbaud for long, though, and telegraphed to him, asking him to meet him at the Hotel Liège in Brussels. Their relationship grew even more tempestuous, and on the morning of the 10th July Verlaine purchased a revolver and ammunition. At 4pm he shot at Rimbaud twice in a drunken haze, hitting him once, in the wrist.
Rimbaud had his wound dressed at the St-Jean hospital and then decided to get out of town, but Verlaine and his mother accompanied him to the train station. Rimbaud apparently became alarmed at Verlaine’s manner, saying he “behaved as if he were insane”, and begged a passing policeman to arrest him for attempted murder. Rimbaud withdrew his charge the next day, and Verlaine was charged and convicted of the lesser offence of wounding with a firearm on the 8th August 1873. He spent 555 days in prison, and was released on January 16th, 1875. The erstwhile lovers met again only once, after Verlaine had been released, and had converted to Catholicism. Rimbaud had finished some of his greatest work during the time Verlaine was imprisoned, and never wrote again after their last meeting.
This was the end of Rimbaud’s first life, the life of the poet.
Second Life: Merchant
In May, 1876 Rimbaud enlisted as a soldier in the Dutch Colonial Army, not from a taste for soldiering, but because this would give him free passage to Java, in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He deserted four months in, fleeing into the jungle and later surreptitiously making his way back to France to avoid the punishment for desertion (which was the death penalty.) He travelled to Lornaca, Cyprus in December 1878, to work as a foreman in a quarry, but became ill with typhoid and again returned to France.
Rimbaud in Harar
Finally, Rimbaud found a job that suited him. He became a merchant. He took a job supervising the selection of coffee for Bardey’s Import-Export Company in Aden, Yemen. After a few months, he was transferred to Harar, Abyssinia (Ethiopia). He would spend ten years moving between the two cities, Bardey’s went bankrupt, and Rimbaud struck out on his own in 1884, selling arms to Melelik II of Ethiopia and becoming friends with the Governor of Harar, Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael (father of Haile Selassie). He explored the area, and his findings were published by the Société de Géographie.
By all accounts, Rimbaud was quiet and withdrawn in Africa, scrupulous and methodical in business, and kind to the poor. He was also known to be grumpy, and complained of boredom quite frequently. He was quite pioneering as a businessman, seeking goods in places Europeans rarely went, and selling goods in those places, too.
He was the first European to oversee the export of the celebrated coffee of Harar from the country where coffee was born. He was only the third European ever to set foot in the city, and the first to do business there.
In February 1891, Rimbaud was in Aden when he developed pain in his right knee. He thought it was arthritis, but by March had decided to return to France for treatment. A British doctor whom he saw before leaving misdiagnosed him with tubercular synovitis, and recommended immediate amputation. One of his sisters had died of such a synovitis, and another would succumb to it too. Rimbaud spent time settling his affairs in Africa and closing his business there, before setting off for France on 9th May 1891. He arrived at Marseilles and was admitted to the Hôpital de la Conception, where his right leg was
amputated on the 27th May.
He was nursed by his sister at the family farm in Roche until the 23rd August, when he decided to travel back to Marseilles. He had hoped, it seems, to return to Africa, but the cancer with which he was suffering was too advanced, and he died in the Hôpital de la Conception on the 10th November 1891. He was 37. He now lies buried in his home town of Charleville.
Rimbaud had two, quite different, lives. In one, he was a wild young poet, upender of social convention, a shock to society. In another, he was a respectable merchant, a man of whom it was said by the priest who gave him the Last Rites that “I have never seen such strong faith.” Two different lives, and one, very early ending. My life is very boring compared to Rimbaud’s, but I’m not so sure that is a bad thing, for those who lead interesting lives often live short ones, too.
Further Reading
- From the Poet to the Adventurer; Biography Part 1 & Part 2
- “Teenage Dirtbag” – Edmund White at The Guardian
- “Rebel Rebel” – The New Yorker
- The Rimbaud & Verlaine Foundation
- “How 555 nights in jail helped to make Paul Verlaine a ‘prince of poets’” – The Guardian
- “Une saison en Camden: Rimbaud and Verlaine in Victorian London” – The Great Wen
- The Gun Verlaine Used to Shoot Rimbaud – The History Blog
- “Paul Verlaine: The Mentor, Creator & Destroyer of Rimbaud” – CultureTrip
- “Arthur Rimbaud” – The Poetry Foundation (includes poems)
- Poetry by Arthur Rimbaud – Poem Hunter
- “Arthur Rimbaud” – Wikipedia
Inkyn de Worde 