Why did rimbaud stop writing

Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (October 20, – November 10, ) was one of the most notable symbolist poets of mid-to-late nineteenth century France.

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Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud October 20, — November 10, was one of the most notable symbolist poets of mid-to-late nineteenth century France. Rimbaud was a literary prodigy , who devoured massive amounts of literature at a very early age, and by the time he was sixteen, was already writing poems of extremely high quality that are still well regarded by literary critics today. Rimbaud's poetry is notable for its highly experimental, revolutionary style. At the age of seventeen, Rimbaud had a series of visionary experiences that led to increasingly mystical and surreal poetry, eschewing the traditional forms of rhyme and meter which he had already mastered. These almost hallucinatory poems would be a major inspiration for the French Symbolist poets of Rimbaud's time, including Paul Valery and Stephane Mallarme.

Rimbaud was a literary prodigy, who devoured massive amounts of literature at a very early age, and by the time he was sixteen, was already writing poems of extremely high quality that are still well regarded by literary critics today.

Rimbaud's poetry is notable for its highly experimental, revolutionary style. At the age of seventeen, Rimbaud had a series of visionary experiences that led to increasingly mystical and surreal poetry, eschewing the traditional forms of rhyme and meter which he had already mastered.

These almost hallucinatory poems would be a major inspiration for the French Symbolist poets of Rimbaud's time, including Paul Valery and Stephane Mallarme.

Rimbaud is often credited with bringing free verse into the foreground of European poetry. Although he was considered shocking and even scandalous for his flagrant homosexual affairs, notably as a teenager with the married poet Paul Verlaine, Rimbaud's precocious talent and body of works have been a major and lasting influence on French literature for over a century.

Rimbaud's rejection of bourgeois values and notions of morality in art also anticipated much modernist literature. Later writers, from Jean Genet to Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Henry Miller, as well as lesser writers, have used literature to depict and often effectively celebrate degraded aspects of human behavior. "Morality is the weakness of the brain," Rimbaud had once written.

Rejecting his Catholic upbringing, Rimbaud had urged, "No more gods!

Mouvement arthur rimbaud biography His childhood was marred by a 'cantankerous and vindictive' mother and by the discipline of the local school, but his poetic virtuosity was extraordinary. By the age of fifteen he had written verse in imitation of the Romanticists Vers de College, , and one of his teachers, Izambard, introduced him to contemporary poetry. He was fiercely revolutionary, and wrote the words 'Down with God' on the public benches of Charleville. He ran away from his native town, twice to Paris and once into Belgium, and once he spent 10 days in prison for travelling by train without a ticket. During these escapades, he wrote such poems as Ma Boheme and Le Cabaret vert.

no more gods! Man is King, Man is God!"

Adding to his mystique, Rimbaud abandoned poetry by the age of 21 and traveled widely before settling in Ethiopia, far beyond the artistic and social horizons of the European intelligentsia.

Life

Arthur Rimbaud was born into the rural middle class of Charleville (now part of Charleville-Mézières), in the Ardennes département, in northeastern France.

As a boy, Rimbaud was a restless but brilliant student. By the age of fifteen, he had won many prizes and composed original verses and dialogues in Latin.

When Rimbaud was six years old, his father left to join his military regiment in Cambrai and never returned, perhaps irritated by domestic life and parental obligations.

Mouvement arthur rimbaud biography book Until later, Rimbaud remained almost unknown to his contemporaries. Jean-Nicolas-Arthur Rimbaud was born on the 20th of October, in the town Charleville in Ardennes, the north-east of France in the bourgeois family. Since childhood Arthur was God-fearing and obedient. He studied brilliantly. He read a lot, liked the works of F.

Rimbaud was then raised by his Catholic mother, in a strict religious household.

Early education

Fearing that her children were spending too much time with and were therefore being influenced by neighbouring children of the poor, Mme Rimbaud moved her family to the Cours d'Orléans in This location was quite improved from their previous home and whereas the boys were previously taught at home by their mother, they were then sent, at the ages of nine and eight, to the Pension Rossatr.

For the five years that they attended school, however, their formidable mother imposed her will upon them, pushing for scholastic success. She would punish her sons by making them learn a hundred lines of Latin verse by heart and if they gave an inaccurate recitation, she would deprive them of meals. He disliked schoolwork and his mother's continued control and constant supervision; the children were not allowed to leave their mother's sight, and, until the boys were sixteen and fifteen respectively, she would walk them home from the school grounds.

When he was eleven, Rimbaud had his First Communion; then an ardent Catholic like his mother, his reading was confined almost entirely to the Bible, but he also enjoyed fairy tales and stories of adventure such as the novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Gustave Aimard.

He became a highly successful student and was head of his class in all subjects but sciences and mathematics. Many of his schoolmasters remarked upon the young student's ability to absorb great quantities of material. In , he won eight first prizes in the school, including the prize for Religious Education, and in , he won seven firsts.

When he had reached the third class, Mme Rimbaud hired a tutor, Father Ariste Lhéritier, for private lessons. Lhéritier succeeded in sparking the young scholar's love of Greek and Latin as well as French classical literature. He also encouraged the boy to write original verse in both French and Latin.

Rimbaud's first poem to appear in print was "Les Etrennes des orphelines" ("The Orphans' New Year's Gift"), which was published in the Revue pour tous's January 2, issue.

Poetry of "derangement"

In , his new teacher, Georges Izambard, became Rimbaud's first literary mentor, and his original verses in French began to improve rapidly.

He frequently ran away from home and may have briefly joined the Paris Commune of , which he portrayed in his poem, L'Orgie parisienne ou Paris se repeuple(The Parisian Orgy or Paris Repopulates). Shortly afterward, he became an anarchist, started drinking, and amused himself by shocking the local bourgeois with his shabby dress and long hair.

At the same time, he wrote to Izambard and Paul Démeny about his method for attaining poetical transcendence or visionary power through a "long, immense and rational derangement of all the senses" (Les lettres du Voyant).

Rimbaud sent the eminent French poet Paul Verlaine a letter containing several samples of his work.

Rimbaud returned to Paris on Verlaine's invitation in late September , residing briefly in Verlaine's home. Verlaine promptly became infatuated with the sullen, blue-eyed, precociously brilliant adolescent. They became lovers and led a dissolute, vagabond-like life rocked by absinthe and hashish.

Arthur rimbaud poems Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud , the marvelous boy-poet of French literature , established in a few short years his reputation for hallucinative verbal creation, only to give up poetry at the age of The tempestuous life of Arthur Rimbaud his relations with Paul Verlaine , his idea of the poet as seer and of the derangement of the senses are all part of the legend. His literary fame depends primarily upon the poem Le Bateau ivre and the remarkable volumes called Les Illuminations and Une Saison en Enfer. His abandonment of art and "the ancient parapets of Europe" has made Rimbaud a symptomatic and fascinating figure of alienation in the modern world. On May 15, , Rimbaud wrote his famous Lettre du voyantto a friend, Paul Demeny: "I say that one must be a seer, make himself a seer.

They scandalized the Parisian literary elite by their outrageous behavior, and for many years Rimbaud was as famous for his debauchery as he was for his poetry. Throughout this period, he continued to write strikingly visionary, modern verses, the most notable of which is most likely the poem "Le Bateau ivre," considered by many to be Rimbaud's finest poem in his surreal, visionary style.

The poem begins as follows:

As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers: Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets Nailing them naked to coloured stakes. I cared nothing for all my crews, Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons. When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.

Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles, Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs : Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles Les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs. J'étais insoucieux de tous les équipages, Porteur de blés flamands ou de cotons anglais. Quand avec mes haleurs ont fini ces tapages Les Fleuves m'ont laissé descendre où je voulais.

Rimbaud's and Verlaine's stormy homosexual relationship took them to London in , after Verlaine left his wife and infant son.

In July , Rimbaud, feeling increasingly guilty and fearing Verlaine's rages, committed himself to flee to Paris. Infuriated, Verlaine shot Rimbaud, one of the two shots striking him in the left wrist. Rimbaud considered the wound superficial, at first not pressing charges against Verlaine. After this violent attack Verlaine and his mother accompanied Rimbaud to a Brussels train station, where "Verlaine behaved as if he were mad," and Rimbaud had him arrested.

Rimbaud eventually withdrew the complaint, but the judge sentenced Verlaine to two years in prison. Rimbaud returned home to Charleville and completed his Une Saison en Enfer(A Season in Hell), a lengthy prose-poem inspired by his experiences, and widely regarded both as one of the pioneering instances of modern Symbolism and a description of his life with Verlaine, whom he called his "pitoyable frère" ("pitiful brother").

In , he returned to London with the poet Germain Nouveau and assembled his controversial Illuminations, which includes the first two French poems in free verse.

Later life ()

Rimbaud and Verlaine met for the last time in March , in Stuttgart, Germany, after Verlaine's release from prison and his conversion to devout Catholicism.

By then Rimbaud had given up writing and decided on a steady, working life; some speculate he was feeling contrition over his former wild living, while others suggest he sought to become rich and independent to afford living one day as a carefree poet and man of letters.

He continued to travel extensively in Europe, mostly on foot. In the summer of , he enlisted as a soldier in the Dutch Army to travel free of charge to Indonesia where he promptly deserted, returning to France by ship.

He traveled to Cyprus and in , finally settled in Aden as a main employee in the Bardey agency. In , he quit the job at Bardey's and became a merchant on his own in Harar, Ethiopia. He made a small fortune as a gun-runner.

Rimbaud developed right knee synovitis which degenerated into a carcinoma, and the state of his health forced him to return to France on May 9, , where his leg was amputated on May Rimbaud died in Marseille on November 10, , at age

Works

• Poésies
• Le bateau ivre ()
• Une Saison en Enfer ()
• Illuminations ()
• Lettres

English translations

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Forestier, Louis (ed.).

  Œuvres complètes, correspondance, d'Arthur Rimbaud. ISBN

• Hackett, Cecil Arthur. Rimbaud: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN
• Ivry, Benjamin.

  Arthur rimbaud a season in hell: Arthur Rimbaud (born October 20, , Charleville, France—died November 10, , Marseille) was a French poet and adventurer who won renown in the Symbolist movement and markedly influenced modern poetry. Rimbaud grew up at Charleville in the Ardennes region of northeastern France.

  Arthur Rimbaud. Bath, Somerset: Absolute Press. ISBN

• Nicholl, Charles. Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa . University of Chicago Press. ISBN
• Rickword, Edgell. Rimbaud: The Boy and the Poet. New York: Haskell House Publishers.

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ISBN

• Robb, Graham. Rimbaud. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN
• Schmidt, Paul. Rimbaud, Complete Works. Perennial (HarperCollins).

• Arthur rimbaud a season in hell
• Mouvement arthur rimbaud biography pdf
• Arthur rimbaud

ISBN

• Starkie, Enid. Arthur Rimbaud. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN
• Steinmetz, Jean-Luc (ed.). Arthur Rimbaud. Tallandier. ISBN

External links

All links retrieved August 16,