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Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud- two French poets who have made a huge contribution to world literature. Their relationship is called passionate, destructive, "wrong." Paul Verlaine was a man of fine mental organization, easily influenced by others, and Rimbaud was called a young villain of genius. Whatever it was, but their relationship gave rise to beautiful poems, which are still read by descendants.
Arthur Rimbaud was born in 1854. The father left the family when the son was still very young. The mother had a tough character and did not show any tenderness either to her son or to the other children. Studying was easy for Arthur, since childhood he showed success in rhyming, but he lacked zeal. The mother did not at all care about instilling elementary manners in her son, paying attention to appearance. Arthur grew up as an absolute slob. The unique talent of writing contrasted sharply with the casual appearance of Rimbaud.
The irrepressible energy of the young poet could not find an entrance to the provinces. When Arthur Rimbaud was 16 years old, he decided to write to Paul Verlaine, at that time already a well-known poet. The young man admired the work of Verlaine and attached his poems to the letter. To Rimbaud's great surprise, Paul Verlaine liked his poetry, and he even invited the young man to Paris, paying for the trip.
The conditions in which Paul Verlaine grew up were completely different from the life of his protégé. The mother, who suffered three miscarriages, considered her son a unique child and made every effort to give him the best. Paul grew up as an ugly boy, but in return for this, nature endowed him with talent.
Excessive guardianship of an enthusiastic mother led to the fact that Paul easily succumbed to someone else's influence. Already at a young age, he tasted the taste of alcohol and hashish. But what frightened the poet most of all was his attraction to men. Paul Verlaine thought it was unnatural. He tried to "cure himself from this disease" by tying the knot.
The poet's chosen one was Matilda Monet. As a 17-year-old girl, she read Verlaine's poems. They married in 1870, and Matilda soon became pregnant.
In 1871, Arthur Rimbaud appeared on the threshold of the poet's house. He looked terrible: disheveled unwashed hair, dirty clothes, cold eyes. When he was invited to the table, the provincial poet constantly burped, champed, spoke with his mouth open. Matilda was horrified, and Paul looked at the young talent as if spellbound. Rimbaud perceived the poet's wife as an enemy, and in conversations with Verlaine, he called her nothing more than a "rat".
Paul Verlaine introduced Arthur Rimbaud, who was 10 years his junior, into his entourage. Friends did not know how to treat the poet's protégé. Everyone recognized his talent, but Rimbaud's terrible behavior repelled people.
Matilda could not endure Rimbaud at home for a long time and, in the end, insisted that her husband escort him out the door. Paul Verlaine tried to attach the young poet to his acquaintances, but he was driven from everywhere. Then he rented a room for a "dear friend".
Arthur Rimbaud had a detrimental effect on Verlaine. If earlier he somehow restrained the “demons” inside himself, now they broke free. When Verlaine went over to the side of homosexual love, the images of Minerva and Venus immediately disappeared from his poems. Moreover, Verlaine began to drink himself unconscious every day. The poet preferred absinthe to wine.
The poet, in a state of intoxication, became very aggressive. Paul Verlaine began to beat his wife, but each time after the fights he begged for forgiveness from Matilda. Once he almost provoked a miscarriage. In the end, she could not stand it and filed for divorce.
Aggression was constantly present in the passionate relationship of the two poets. Once Arthur wounded Paul with a knife in the thigh and arm. He did not report to the police. After some time, Verlaine already shot at Rimbaud, and this ended for him with a 2-year prison sentence. However, Arthur Rimbaud was even delighted with this turn of events, he began to get bored with an adult, always drunk lover.
After their release from Verlaine prison, they met for the last time. Their conversation ended in a fight. Arthur Rimbaud found himself rich patrons and went to the colonies. As for Paul Verlaine, every year he fell lower and lower. The only "bright spot" in his life, he considered the connection with the "brilliant scoundrel."
Arthur Rimbaud has died at the age of 37. It is this age that is called critical for poets: “under this figure, Pushkin guessed a duel for himself, and Mayakovsky lay down with his temple on the barrel.”
Arthur Rimbaud(Jean Nicolas, Rimbaud) (1854-1891) - French poet. One of the earliest representatives of symbolism (ballad "The Drunken Ship", 1871). Dedicated to the Paris Commune in 1871 full of emotional animation poems "Paris is settled again", "Hands of Jeanne Marie" (both 1871). In the books of poetry and prose Through Hell (1873) and Illuminations (published in 1886), there is a “fragmentation” of thought, deliberate illogicality and anti-symbolist, pointedly prosaic concreteness of images, combined with demonstrative anti-bourgeoisness and prophetic pathos. Soon he moved away from literature, becoming a sales agent in Ethiopia.
Formation years
Arthur Rimbaud is born October 20, 1854, in Charleville (now Charleville-Mezieres). He was the second son of an infantry captain and a wealthy peasant woman. After the father left the family in 1860, their mother, an imperious and exorbitantly strict woman, took up the upbringing of four children: for the slightest violation of the order, the children were supposed to be imprisoned at home on bread and water. Arthur studied brilliantly, and his amazing talent manifested itself very early. Rebellious inclinations were revealed just as early: the boy hated his provincial town, the sanctimonious family structure and respectable inhabitants.
On August 29, 1870, he left home for the first time, reaching by train to Paris, where he was arrested for underpayment of the railway company of thirteen francs and sent to Mazas prison. His beloved teacher Izambard came for him and took him to Douai to his unmarried aunts, and then to Charleville.
The last thing I care about is whether I get published or not. Only the creative process matters. Everything else is just literature.
Rimbaud Arthur
Rimbaud made his second escape on October 7, 1870 - ten days after his return. This time he went to Belgium and made an unsuccessful attempt to become a newspaper reporter in Charleroi. His mother put him on the wanted list, and on November 1 he was brought home by the police.
For the third time, Rimbaud fled from home on February 25, 1871, and after spending about twelve days in Paris, he returned on foot to Charleville.
Being an ardent young man, Rimbaud responded to socially significant events in the history of France. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 was reflected in the poem "You brave fighters ..." (literally: "Dead men of 92"). On March 18, 1871, the Commune was proclaimed in Paris, which the young poet met with joy: he rushed to Paris in order to enroll in the people's guard, but very quickly returned to Charleville, where he wrote several poems imbued with a revolutionary spirit (“The Blacksmith”, “War Song Parisians”, “Hands of Jeanne-Marie”, “Paris Orgy, or the Capital is repopulated”).
Three years of Rembov's creativity
I chose you for a very good reason. You see, I always knew what to say. But you... you know how to say it.
Rimbaud Arthur
The swiftness and brevity of the literary career of Arthur Rimbaud made significant almost every month of his development. In 1869 he received the first prize for the Latin poem "Jugurtha" and in the same year wrote the first, still largely imitative poem in his native language, "New Year's Gifts for Orphans", which appeared in January 1870 in the pages of the Revue pur tus magazine. On May 24, 1870, Rimbaud sent the first letter to the Parnassian poet Theodore de Banville, enclosing three poems - "Sensation", "Ophelia", "Credo in Unam" ("I believe in One") - in the naive hope that they would be published in the second issue "Modern Parnassus". On May 13 and May 15, 1871, Rimbaud created the so-called Clairvoyant Letters, in which he outlined his life and aesthetic program. The theory of "clairvoyance" was an open rebellion against religion, morality and all social institutions. Rimbaud ranked Paul Verlaine, partly Lecomte de Lisle and Banville, but above all Baudelaire - "the first clairvoyant, the king of poets, the true God" as "clairvoyants".
On June 10, 1871, A. Rimbaud sent the latest poems - “Seven-year-old poets”, “Poor people in the church”, “Heart of a buffoon” (later called “The Stolen Heart”) - to the young poet Paul Demeny.
On August 15, Rimbaud again wrote to Banville and sent him the poem "What they say to the poet about flowers." At the end of August, he sent an unpreserved letter to Verlaine with the attachment of poems, in particular the famous "Vowels", where each sound corresponds to a certain color. Shocked by the beauty of this unusual poetry, Verlaine responded immediately and invited Rimbaud to come to Paris. Before leaving, Rimbaud, in a fit of enthusiasm, wrote "The Drunken Ship" - the most "phantasmagoric" of his poems, which was to impress the Parisian writers.
Even before the quarrel with Verlaine, Rimbaud began to write stories in prose - "The Pagan Book", or "The Negro Book". Having experienced a crisis of despair after the Brussels drama, he again took up The Pagan Book, gave it the title One Summer in Hell (A Season in Hell) and published it in Belgium in the autumn of 1873. This is the only lifetime publication that the poet himself watched: he felt a burning need to tell the "history of madness", ridicule the "alchemy of the word" and glorify worldly sobriety. In 1874, Arthur Rimbaud either created or completed (on this issue the opinions of literary critics differ) poems in the prose of Illumination. Having met in February 1875 with Verlaine, who was released from prison, Rimbaud gave the Illuminations to his former friend, whom he was not destined to see again. Illuminations (1873-1875) were not published until 1886. Rimbaud's first collected works were published posthumously in 1898.
I thought that everything I do is very important and will change the world. I thought that nothing would ever be the same again. But it's not. The world is too old, there is nothing new in it. Everything has already been said.
Rimbaud Arthur
Rimbaud made a revolution in the field of French versification: his poetic technique violated the usual traditions of French poetry. He himself believed that the destruction of habitual forms leads to the creation of a new, unprecedented reality - the poet became a creator, equal to God, and the hidden meaning of being was revealed to him. Rimbaud was one of the first to prove the possibility of the appearance of "dark" poetry, which refuses descriptions and reasoning, striving to reveal images brought to life by ecstatic vision and imagination. Along with Verlaine and Mallarmé, Rimbaud is the "holy trinity" of French symbolism.
Years of Rimbaud's wanderings
Rimbaud ceased being a poet at the age of twenty. In 1874-1879, he traveled around Europe, studied foreign languages and tried to find a use for his abilities: he taught French, worked as an interpreter for a traveling circus, worked as a building contractor, and even volunteered for the Dutch colonial troops, from which he deserted a few months later. He was increasingly attracted to the East, and in 1880 he joined a firm that traded leather and coffee. The owners sent him to their branch in Harare (Zimbabwe).
In 1882, Arthur Rimbaud explored areas not yet known to Europeans, wrote a report about it and sent it to the Paris Geographical Society. In the years 1888-1890 he headed the trading post in Harare. Terrible pains in his right knee forced him to sail to Aden, and then to his homeland. On May 22, 1891, his injured leg was amputated in a Marseille hospital. Rimbaud undertook a trip home, but was forced to return to Marseille, accompanied by his sister Isabella, in whose arms he died. In the hospital book of the hospital there is the following entry about this: “November 10, 1891, at the age of 37, the merchant Rimbaud died.”
I want you to make the original choice. Choice between my body and my soul.
Rimbaud Arthur
Arthur Rimbaud grew up in a bourgeois environment. He studied at the Lyceum until 1871, but did not graduate from it. As a poet, he was influenced by Theodore de Banville, the romantic writer Victor Hugo, especially Charles Baudelaire. Arthur sarcastically attacked philistinism (“Assessors”), the Second Empire (“The Fury of Caesar” and others), religion (“Punishment of Tartuffe”, “Evil”), linking hopes for the restructuring of society (“Blacksmith”) with the Republic. Disappointment in the government of "national treason" caused him a crisis at the beginning of 1871: bouts of despair and ostentatious cynicism were replaced by dreams of the supernatural power of a clairvoyant poet, able to show mankind the way to a harmonious world order. The Paris Commune of 1871 restored Rambo's faith in social progress. He sought to take a personal part in the struggle, created masterpieces of French revolutionary poetry - "The War Hymn of Paris", "Paris is repopulated", "The Hands of Jeanne-Marie" (1871). Realistic figurativeness, psychologism, satire developed in the poet’s poetry (“Seven-year-old poets”, “Poor people in the church”, “Sisters of mercy”, satirical poems of the so-called “Zutist album”). The onset of the reaction had a serious effect on the state of mind and his further creative path.
The transition to symbolism was indicated in The Drunken Ship, in the sonnet Vowels. During the symbolist period, the poet created the so-called "Last Poems" (1872) and poems in prose, the so-called. "Illuminations" (written in 1872 - 1873, and published in 1886). The book "Through Hell" (1873), combining the tragic fragmentation of style with a murderous critique of symbolism, prepared the poetic realism of the 20th century. trading company in Ethiopia. In the 20th century, a struggle between realism and modernism unfolded around his legacy. His best poetic traditions were adopted by the French poets Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Eluard and the poets of the Resistance.
Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur (1854–1891), French poet.
Born October 20, 1854 in Charleville, Ardennes department in northeastern France. Second Captain Frederic Rimbaud and his wife Maria Catherine Vitali (née Cuif), who came from a simple peasant family. The father abandoned his wife and five children when the boy was four years old. From early childhood, he experienced need and deprivation. Attended classes at the local elementary school; in the spring of 1856 he entered Charleville College. In a year, he mastered a two-year curriculum. He showed an interest in poetry. At the age of 15 he received a prize for an essay in Latin. He wrote his first poem ("Les Étrennes des orphelins") in 1869. From 1870 he studied poetic skill with his Georges Izambard. By the age of 16, he created more than twenty poetic works, some of which were published in the journal Modern Parnassus.
In his youth, Rimbaud repeatedly ran away from home, wandering around northern France and Belgium. He fought on the barricades of the Paris Commune of 1871. There he became addicted to alcohol.
And relatives sharply condemned Rimbaud for open disregard for the norms of bourgeois morality. Childhood friend Ernest Delae claimed: "he was despised for money shamefully earned, for disgusting deeds described in great detail."
In early September 1871, Rimbaud sent samples of his poetic works to P. Verlaine for review. After reading the ballad "The Drunken Ship" ("Le bateau ivre"), P. Verlaine was so delighted that he immediately invited the young man to Paris. Their first meeting took place on September 10, 1871 and marked the beginning of a stormy three-year romance, full of boiling "cruel passions."
Rimbaud settled in P. Verlaine's family apartment at 14 rue Nicolet. Living together immediately led to conflict. Paul Verlaine's wife Mathilde Mote expelled Rimbaud for not wanting to obey the internal order. For some time he wandered with the familiar poets T. Banville, C. Cros, the artist J. Forain and others. Soon Paul Verlaine rented a room for Rimbaud at 14 Campagne Premier Street.
Friends arranged noisy gatherings, spent time drinking and smoking hashish. During a mock scuffle, Rimbaud wounded Verlaine with a knife. Their reputation among the respectable bourgeoisie was seriously damaged. The members of the Paris Literary Circle shamefully expelled Verlaine and Rimbaud from their ranks; newspaper reporters called "bad boys" ("vilains bonshommes").
On January 20, 1872, Rimbaud left for his homeland, but on May 18, at the request of Paul Verlaine, he returned to Paris. July 7, 1872 friends went to Belgium. A month later they moved to London, where they settled in a cheap hotel at 34–35 Howland Street. They made a living by teaching French. marred by drunken quarrels and mutual jealousy. Friends broke up several times and again converged. The dramatic denouement came on July 10, 1873. Drunk Paul Verlaine shot Rimbaud twice with a revolver and wounded him in the wrist. On August 8, 1873, he was sentenced by a Belgian court to two years for attempted murder and sodomy.
Rimbaud returned to his mother in Charleville. In July 1873 he published a collection of poems in prose "One Summer in Hell" ("Une saison en enfer"), dedicated to Paul Verlaine. In the spring of 1874, together with the poet Germain Nouveau, Rimbaud again visited London. Completed the poetic cycle "Illuminations" ("Les Illuminations", 1875). The last time Rimbaud met Paul Verlaine was in March 1875 in Stuttgart, Germany. The meeting ended in a final break, as Rimbaud persisted in his convictions and did not want to repent of his sins.
The final period of Rimbaud's life was spent in constant wanderings. He practically did not engage in poetic creativity. In May 1876 he enlisted in the Dutch colonial army. He served in the small town of Salatiga on the island of Java in Indonesia, where a memorial plaque is now installed in his memory. Rimbaud returned to France two years later. In December 1878 he got a job as a dispatcher of a stone quarry in Larnaca, Cyprus. He got sick with typhoid fever. In 1880 he went to Yemen as an agent for the trading firm Bardei. From 1884 he was engaged in the trade of coffee, spices, porcelain, etc. In all likelihood, he participated in the illegal supply of weapons and mercenaries for the Ethiopian King Shoa Menelik II. One of the first Europeans entered the previously inaccessible province of Ethiopia, Ogaden.
Meanwhile, Rimbaud's name became widely known in France. In 1884, Paul Verlaine published Les poètes maudits, Les poètes maudits, one of whose essays was dedicated to Rimbaud. The poetic cycle "Illumination" (1886) firmly established Rimbaud's reputation as a genius and "terrible child" ("un enfant terrible") of French literature.
According to eyewitnesses, Rimbaud was completely indifferent to the news of his literary fame. He continued to lead a hectic life, despite the deterioration. In February 1891, Rimbaud developed pain in his right knee. On May 9, 1891, he arrived in France for treatment. Doctors at a hospital in Marseille diagnosed Rimbaud with bone cancer. On May 27 of the same year, the leg had to be amputated. After the operation, Rimbaud intended to return to Africa, but died on November 10, 1891 in Marseille. The body is interred in the family cemetery in Charleville.
RIMBAUD, JEAN-NICOLA-ARTHUR(Rimbaud, Jean-Nicolas-Arthur) (1854-1891), French poet of the 19th century.
Born October 20, 1854 in Charleville, a provincial town in northeastern France (Ardennes department). Father, Frederic Rimbaud, infantry captain, left the family early; mother, Vitali Cuif, from a family of wealthy peasants, conservative and despotic, was forced to raise four children alone. He received his primary education at the local Ross School (1862–1863); was repeatedly awarded for success in Latin, Greek, history, geography; his first literary experience dates back to this time - a childhood fantasy about ideal parents and about his own future, already testifying to his talent and spirit of independence. In 1865 he entered the College of Charleville; was one of the best students. In 1868, secretly from everyone, he wrote a letter in Latin to the heir to the French throne, Napoleon Victor Joseph, on the occasion of his first communion. In 1869 in the local magazine "Secondary Education" Three of his poems were published in Latin - It was spring(Ver erat), Angel and child(L "Ange et l" enfant), yogurt(Jugurtha); the latter won first prize in a competition organized by the Academy in Douai. In 1870 "Magazine for all" placed on its pages the first poems by A. Rimbaud in French - Gifts for orphans for the new year(Les Étrennes des orphelins). He made friends with Georges Izambard, a young teacher of rhetoric, who introduced him to the work of F. Rabelais, V. Hugo and Parnassian poets (T. Gauthier, T. de Banville, etc.). In May 1870 he sent his poems to T. de Banville Feeling(sensation), Ophelia(Ophelie), I believe in one(Credo in unam) in the hope of being published in Modern Parnassus. In July, after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, he composed a poem Fallen in 1992(Morts de Quatre-vingt-douze). August 29, 1870 ran away from home; having no money, he tried to get to Paris without a ticket; arrested and put in jail; released through the efforts of J. Izambara and returned home. On October 7 he fled again; left for Charleroi (Belgium), where he tried in vain to find a job as a journalist. In November, the police returned him home at his mother's request. February 25, 1871 fled for the third time. He arrived in Paris, but, left without money, returned home on foot in March.
Enthusiastically greeted the Paris Commune; dedicated several poems to her Paris war song(Chant de guerre parisien), Jeanne Marie's hands(Les Mains de Jeanne-Marie), Paris repopulates(Paris se repeuple). There is evidence that in late April - early May, he again left for Paris and joined the ranks of the Communards. In May 1871, in letters to J. Izambard and the young poet Paul Demeny, he outlined his view of poetry and his method of clairvoyance (voyance); added some new verses to the letters. June wrote a poem Seven Year Poets(Les Poetes de sept ans), The poor in the church(Les Pauvres à l'église) and stolen heart(Le coeur volé). In August he sent a poem to T. de Banville What does the poet say about flowers(Ce qu "on dit au poète a propos de fleurs). At the end of August, he sent a letter with poems to P. Verlaine, who immediately saw in him an extraordinary talent. In mid-September, at his invitation, he came to Paris and brought his main work drunken ship(Le Bateau ivre). In Paris he met Charles Cros, T. de Banville and other poets. Collaborated in the publications of zyutists. In 1872–1873 he led a bohemian life together with P. Verlaine; traveled in his company in England and Belgium; their relationship was accompanied by constant scandals. On July 10, 1873, in Brussels, during another quarrel, he was wounded by P. Verlaine, who shot him with a revolver. After the arrest of P. Verlaine, he returned to Charleville; in a state of spiritual crisis wrote a poem in prose Stay in hell(Une saison en enfer), in which he renounced all his former poetry; he managed to publish it in an edition of five hundred copies, but not one of them was sold. In 1874 he became close to Germain Nouveau and lived with him for several months in England, earning his living by French lessons. Then he wrote a series of poems in prose Insights(Illuminations), which completed his work; he was then in his twentieth year.
Since 1875, a new period in the life of A. Rimbaud began - the period of wandering. In February 1875 he went to Germany to study German; settled in Stuttgart. In May, left without a livelihood, he went on foot to Italy. When he reached Milan, he fell seriously ill. Repatriated to France. In April 1876 he left for Vienna, but was soon expelled from Austria. On May 19, 1876, having arrived in Holland, he joined the Dutch colonial troops. In July, he arrived in Batavia (Indonesia) with his regiment. Deserted three weeks later. On an English sailboat he sailed to Europe and ended up in Charleville at the end of December. In 1877 he went to Bremen and Hamburg; hired as an interpreter at the Luasse circus, with whom he traveled all over Sweden and Denmark. In September 1877 he made an unsuccessful attempt to leave for Alexandria. In the spring of 1878 he went to Hamburg, where he tried in vain to enter the service of a company that provided food for the German colonies in the East. After spending some time in France, in October 1878 he crossed the Vosges on foot, then through Switzerland and Genoa reached Alexandria. From December 1878 he worked in Cyprus as a manager of a quarry owned by a French company. In June 1879 he returned to his homeland and worked for some time on his mother's farm near Charleville. He told a friend who visited him that he was no longer thinking about literature. In the spring of 1880 he again ended up in Cyprus, then left for Egypt. In August he reached Aden, where he worked in a leather and coffee firm; later sent to Harer (Eastern Ethiopia). In 1882-1883 he traveled around the unexplored areas of the Ogaden; his description was published by the Geographical Society. In 1886 he was engaged in the sale of weapons to the ruler of the Ethiopian region Shoa Menelik. Didn't know that in the same year Fashion magazine published a number of his poems and part insight. In 1887–1891 he was in charge of a trading post in Harare; was a representative of the trading company S. Tiana in Aden. In February 1891, he fell seriously ill (sarcoma of the knee joint) and on May 9 was sent from Aden to his homeland. Upon arrival in Marseille, he was admitted to the hospital, where his leg was amputated at the end of May. November 10, 1891 died in a Marseille hospital at the age of thirty-seven; in the hospital card was written: "merchant Rimbaud." When he was dying, a collection of his poems was already being published in Paris - a new life for the poet began.
Until that time, A. Rimbaud remained practically unknown to his contemporaries. True, P. Verlaine in 1884 named his name among the "damned poets" and introduced the public to some of his poems, and when in 1886 they saw the light Insights, the Symbolists began to consider him, along with Charles Baudelaire, their forerunner. However, real fame came to him only after his death. In the 1890s, in the context of the growing popularity of A. Rimbaud among the Symbolists, publications of his poems, poems in prose and letters followed. A new explosion of interest occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, when he became the banner of the Surrealists. The complete works of A. Rimbaud with rich comments were published in 1946 in the series Pleiades Library(reissued in 1954). The number of studies of his work both in France and in other countries is huge and continues to grow.
Despite the brevity of the creative path (1870–1873) of A. Rimbaud, three different stages can be traced in it: the first poems (1870–1871), the last poems (1872) and two poems in prose (1873). Having absorbed the rich poetic culture of the past, he immediately began to destroy all canons and traditions: “Give freedom to the newcomers (aux nouveaux) to hate their ancestors,” he wrote in 1871. In the era of the rule of the Parnassians, who professed “pure art”, he made the main theme of his first youthful poems is "cruel reality". With poignant shrillness, he spoke of the fate of the destitute: Gifts for orphans for the new year, frightened (Les Effares), or about those who fell in the war of 1870–1871: Evil(Le Mal)Sleeping in a hollow(Le Dormeur du Val), Ravens(Les Corbeaux); violently protested against all social foundations, especially against religion: The poor in the church(Les Pauvres à l'église), Righteous(L "Homme juste),First Communions(Les Premieres Communions); sang a hymn to the people capable of a revolutionary feat (verses dedicated to the Paris Commune). The young rebel poet, like no one else, was able to express a person's desire for true freedom ( la liberte libre), the image of which he gave in poems Feeling, My bohemian(Ma Boheme) and especially in drunken ship(a poem about a ship left without a team, freely and uncontrollably rushing across the ocean).
1872 - a period of experimentation. A. Rimbaud is no longer interested in the real, visible world, but in the ability of poetry to express what is hidden behind it. Words can no longer convey the "inexpressible", because they have long since become dilapidated and worn out. The poet sets himself the task of moving from "rational" thought to "musical" thought (E. Dujardin). Although each of his poems is strophically ordered, their clear graphics are blurred in a continuous sound stream, the creation of which involves an unusual rhythm, an abundance of assonances and alliterations, words with an elusive meaning, their strange juxtaposition. These "foggy" songs are close to Romance without words P. Verlaine and symbolist poems.
1873 - the culmination of the work of A. Rimbaud. He refuses the poetic form and, following the experience of C. Baudelaire, writes poetic prose - Stay in hell and Insights. These enacian works, in which his theory of clairvoyance was embodied, will become programmatic for subsequent generations of poets (symbolists and especially surrealists).
A. Rimbaud outlined his views on poetry and the poet in the May letters of 1871. He considered the poet a magician, a clairvoyant, able to understand the unknown (arriver a l "inconnu). He also proposed a mechanism for penetrating the mystery: "The poet becomes a clairvoyant through a long, total and thoughtful disorder of all senses "(Le poete se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens). At the same time, he saw in the poet a demiurge called to create a new world, and in the Word - a creative force: "Poetry will no longer sing of action She will precede him "(La Poesie ne rythmera plus l" action. Elle sera en avant).
The work of A. Rimbaud is a significant milestone in the development of French poetry. He not only foresaw her future path, but also opened up new areas of the poetic. He enriched the poetic vocabulary with colloquial phrases, vulgarisms, dialectisms, which easily coexist with high vocabulary, scientific terms and Latinisms created by him. His images are unexpected, they have the novelty of a discoverer, a “barbarian”, who evaluates the world with a clear eye. He also decisively transformed the prosodic component. Continuing to use Alexandrian verse, precise strophic construction, traditional genres (sonnet), he shook them from the inside - he varied the order of stresses and pauses, diversified rhyme, was generous with alliteration and transfers from one line to another. Symbolists and subsequent generations owe him the discovery of vers libre (free verse).
The fate of A. Rimbaud is amazing. A romantic "crack" went through his life and split it in two. If in his poetic existence he was a furious overthrower of everything bourgeois and petty-bourgeois, then, having become silent, he became part of the society that he had previously sought to destroy. The poet-rebel turned into a philistine. Until now, his departure from poetry remains a mystery. Was it fatigue, bitterness from misunderstanding of others? Or the realization that he, as a poet, is incapable of finding an adequate explanation of the world? Or is poetry itself meaningless? In his drafts Stay in hell It is written: "Art is stupidity." Or did this genius-child fulfill his duty on earth so swiftly and with such exhaustive fullness that, devastated, he could only leave and disappear into the crowd?
The latest editions in Russian: Rimbaud Arthur. Poems; Recent Poems; Insights; One summer in hell M., 1982; Insights. SPb., 1994; Drunken ship: Poems. M., 2000
Evgenia Krivushina
ARTHUR RIMBAUD
(1854-1891)
Arthur Rimbaud was born in 1854 in Charleville and lived a small life - only 37 years old. But Rimbaud - died long before the official date of his own death: the last of his recognizable works - "Time in Hell" - was completed in the summer of 1873, when the poet was only nineteen. In other words, this brilliant man managed to live for almost two more decades, forever excluding poetry from his own life.
Charleville is a small town in northeastern France. There, at the age of seven, Rimbaud began to write prose, and then poetry, where he received a school education. Already as a child, Arthur amazed his teachers not only with extraordinary successes in studies, but also with a phenomenal maturity of mind.
In August 1870, Rimbaud left Charleville, reached Paris, and then went to Belgium, where he tried journalism. With the help of the police, the mother returned the minor offspring home. So from now on it will always be, until the very death - as if aimed at some mysterious goal, Rambo tries to constantly move around, looking for something. Constant renewal of the pathos of his poetic thinking.
The fate of this poet reflected the turning points of the modern history of France. The actions of the Paris Commune helped the rebellious "pull out the roots", to leave the past, from the bourgeois Charleville. The first protest of the poet was romantic, romanticism also inspired his lyrics. Rambo began with student devotion to the then authorities: V. Hugo, the poets of Parnassus, C. Baudelaire - in other words, the French romantics. Indicative of the beginning of Rimbaud's work is a huge poem "The Blacksmith". Everything in it recalls Hugo's poetry: the historical plot of the Great French Revolution, epic content and epic form, republican thought and monumental style.
Mastering the experience of romanticism, Rambo in a short time seemed to repeat in his creative path the stages of development of this literary movement. This came out in the very first phase of the poet's creative biography, which lasted 18 months - from January 2, 1870, the date of publication of Rimbaud's first poem, until May 1871, the date of the defeat of the Commune. Each step of the poet's poetic growth was indicated by a strange desire at first glance - to get rid of what he himself had already created.
By the dawn of 1870, Rimbaud had made more than 10 poems in which the dependence on the romantic tradition is more tangible. Almost all of them are written in Alexandrian verse, which embodied the inveterate norms of the "correct" French versification. During the transition to the next phase of creativity, the tone and style of Rimbaud's poetry practically do not change. Patheticism gives way to sarcasm - from the admirable in the past, the poet runs to the unworthy of the real. The majestic and sublime images change into useless and caricatured ones. Hard, sharp, defiant intonations are approved.
The stages of the path of Rimbaud as a poet are measured from time to time by a few verses. So, assimilating the experience of romanticism, Rambo became interested in Baudelaire. "Flowers of Evil" comes to mind when reading his sonnet "Venus Anadyomene". This sonnet is already a new step in the development of his aesthetics. The poet seems to eradicate the "literary" idea of beauty. The embodiment of love - a lady and a sign of love - Venus is humiliated to the caricature of a prostitute. Rambo encroaches on specifically love, approaching solid disbelief.
In the summer of 1870, the poet leaves Charleville, which embodied for him public order, religion, family. At this time, Rimbaud was already a perfect satirical poet, who had a secured arsenal of ironic, mocking, grotesque colors.
The Franco-Prussian war was gaining momentum, and the poet meets his sixteenth birthday with poems about the war. This, namely, the sonnet "Sleeping in the log." But, unlike ordinary sonnets, for which restraint and strictness in the selection of topics were considered indispensable, Rimbaud's sonnet is characterized by a fierce, mocking tone, fast rhythm, close to colloquial poetic speech, lexical freedom, introduction and abrupt changes in style. This is an almost grotesque combination of sonnet form and an "earthly" satirical plot, full of anarchic challenge. All these definitions correspond to the sonnet "My cyganeria" - a real hymn to bohemia, a person who has cut himself off from society and is left alone with the sky and the stars. In the poem "Assessors" triumphs, there is a tendency towards lignification, petrification in "people-functions". Any hint of life and action disappears. A person is pressed by a function, and then the function is replaced by its outer shell, an objective feature. This is how the satirical image of the “chair man” is created.
Only four or five poems belong to the period of the Commune - the newest phase in the work of Rimbaud, but this is really a new era in the development of the poet. All these verses amaze with wisdom and depth, despite the fact that Rimbaud was barely sixteen years old! Only he mocked the poor, mocked the ladies - and it seemed that the poet's nihilism knew no bounds - and now he is making a real hymn to the female worker - "The Hands of Jeanne-Marie" - a sign similar to Delacroix's "Freedom on the Barricades". Suddenly disappear cynicism, feigned rudeness,
The defeat of the Paris Commune, the victory of the Versaillese people are perceived by the poet as a profound catastrophe. The poems written by Rimbaud in the days of the Commune demonstrate how little it meant to him. The defeat of the uprising meant for Rimbaud the victory of the "Assessors" - "those who sit."
After the death of the Commune, Rimbaud will invest all his hopes only in art. He stops studying despite impressive progress, and generally avoids any kind of invariable activity. This was at first a demonstration of the poet's rebellious mood, since he did not belong to the lazy.
A new cycle of wanderings begins. In August 1871, Rimbaud sends his poems to Verlaine, and he, carried away by them, invites the poet to Paris. There, Rimbaud becomes close to Verlaine, to other poets and resorts to the lifestyle of a true bohemian. In February 1872, Rimbaud returned home, but in May he again went to Paris. Then he makes several trips to Belgium, Great Britain, again to France and then returns to Belgium. In July 1873, Verlaine, during another fierce argument between two poets, shoots Rimbaud, wounds him, and ends up in jail himself. First, in 1874, Rambo is in Great Britain, then in Germany, Italy; for some time he lives in Charleville, from where he leaves for Austria and Holland. This endless "journey" stretches right up to 1880, when the poet completely leaves Europe. This is a decade of poverty, odd jobs, weird tests. The poet lives without even being bound by the fact of his geographical presence in one place.
On May thirteenth, 1871, he writes a letter in which he declares his own intention to create the latest poetry: “I want to be a poet, I try to reincarnate as a clairvoyant ... It is a question of reaching the unknown by the method of upsetting all emotions ... ". The zeal for "clairvoyance" is directly associated with Rambo's rebellion, and "disorder of emotions" is opposed to "ordinary" social life.
In the sonnet "Vowels" Rambo proposes a new principle of formation of the view, which is based on the free association between sound and color, visual impressions. In the Vowels, the "clairvoyant poet" subordinates everything to his own consciousness and is able to create nature and the universe devoid of impartial laws; causal relationships. Like most of Rimbaud's poems, "The Vowels" have a huge number of interpretations. For example, one of them proposes to consider the poem as a symbolic picture of human existence: from darkness (dark color) to light (snow-white color E), through violent passions (reddish color) to wisdom (greenish color) and knowledge of the hidden universe (blue color A) . An important role in "Vowels" is played by the Principle of contrast: dark - snow-white, death - life; disgusting - beautiful, fleeting - accidental. Rimbaud uses the form of a sonnet, which usually consists of a thesis, an antithesis and their synthesis, in other words, a contradiction is embedded in its very structure, and this allows us to consider the "Vowels" as a standard for the symbolist search for "correspondences" between different beginnings of life, as a panoramic picture of the Universe.
Assimilation of the vowel sound of color meant neglect of the word as a semantic unit, as a carrier of a certain meaning. The sound, isolated from the semantic context, acquires the function of "suggestion", a direct impact on feelings, "suggestibility", with the help of which the "unknown" is found. Such a literary technique was already predicted by Verlaine's principle of "music first" (which, of course, directly influenced Rambo), but Verlaine's impressionism kept both the image of a given soul and a certain natural image, and in Rambo everything ordinary and tangible becomes unknown.
In the period of "clairvoyance" Rambo really introduces the poem "The Drunken Ship", made in the summer of 1871. "The Intoxicated Ship" is a story about the trip that the "clairvoyant" poet wants to make. A certain ship that begins sailing on a restless sea, rapidly loses both the crew and the rudder, and in the end is ready to go to the bottom. A double image of a “ship-man”, a double fate appears in the poem - both a broken ship and a broken heart of the poet. Rimbaud not only depicts his journey through the "unknown" in the form of a "drunk ship". He foresees the imminent death of the ship, began a terrible journey, and his own poetic fate. The "drunk ship" is also a typical myth about the world, the poet's confession in the form of a "little odyssey", a journey in search of himself. The poet identifies himself with the ship, which, having lost the command, “having lost its own cargo”, surrenders to the elements in ecstasy. And in the external, narrative plan of "The Intoxicated Ship", and in the hidden lyrical, the opposite feelings are intertwined: perseverance and anxiety, admiration for the boundless will and the horror of being lost forever. The images of poetry lose their clarity, deform, and it is difficult to find the boundary between the real and the imaginary.
The “substitution” that took place in The Intoxicated Ship marked the formation of a new poetic system based on a symbolic reflection of reality.
Directly behind the "Intoxicated Ship" appeared a series of poems written in the summer of 1872 during the poet's wanderings. These are the last verses of Rimbaud, and they again constitute a special step in his work. The poet became "clairvoyant". The image of society almost completely disappears from his works. It may seem that the last poetry of Rimbaud is like itinerant sketches made by a very observant poet during his wanderings. In general, in Rambo's "Last Poems" very real, certain memories are abstracted to the level of a sign, which means either "landscape of the soul", or the landscape of the Universe. The aesthetic effect of these works is determined by the phenomenal fusion of the most ordinary and the most complex. "Clairvoyance" led the poet to shake the foundations of the classical system of versification - although impartially it was a process of enrichment, expansion of the abilities of French verse. But, even freeing himself from the rules, Rambo still continued to write poetry - in other words, he obeyed the conventions of poetic language.
The ripening of prosaicness in the last works of the poet made supposed that fatal liberation from art itself, which ended the path of Rimbaud. "Insights" (1872-1873, published in 1886) - this is the name of the cycle of "poems in prose" made during the period of "clairvoyance".
None of the fragments that make up the cycle can be properly explained. The poetic “I” makes its own Universe, and in this space it has its own time, its own measurements of things that unite all human experience at the moment of its mysterious experiences by a person. In Rimbaud's Illuminations, memories are torn off from their own prototypes, they live their own lives, and therefore the meaning is very meaningful. Such a verse is already very close to poetic prose, where the rhythm is created by a general sensual intonation, then lengthens, then reduces phrases, repetitions, inversions, division into stanzas of a free type, a meaningful sound system.
In the summer of 1873, the work Through Hell appeared, an act of bloodthirsty self-criticism. "Through Hell" presents an extraordinary person, a phenomenal person who is able to firmly and impartially evaluate his own experience, his own path - and resolutely condemn him. Rambo at this time is only nineteen years old, but his farewell creation is the creation of the wisest adult. The poet's lifestyle by this time was a typical "test" that he stops. In the last work, he becomes a sinner, to whom repentance has come. "Through Hell" is something like a trial, during which a monologue is delivered by the accused, who takes on the role of the prosecutor.
Continuing his wanderings, Rambo again and again found himself. He never returned to poetry and soon left Europe. In 1880, Rimbaud reached Cyprus, then to Egypt, later to Aden, until he eventually ended up in the town of Harare, in Ethiopia, where he remained almost until the end of his life. The last, African step of his path was at once the last act of renunciation of poetry and himself. Being engaged in trade in Harare, Rambo never told anyone about his own past life. He never returned to poetry, and what he wrote during his boundless wanderings was devoid of any poetry. The letters that were received from him in Europe are striking in their unusual dryness and efficiency, the absolute absence of fantasy, imagination and even any lyricism.
At the beginning of 1891, the poet began to experience unbearable pain in his right leg. Rambo was transported to Marseille, his leg was cut off in the clinic, and he returned to his mother. In November of the same year, Rimbaud died of a sarcoma.
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