Arthur Rimbaud

by Enid Starkie

Book Overview

Rimbaud--a mythic name--his life as extraordinary as his work was influential in redirecting the course, first of French, and then of world poetry. He is, indeed, the very symbol of what we now call... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0000CL6VK
• ISBN13: 9781127002924
• Release Date: January 1961
• Publisher: New Directions
• Length: 491 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Classic Literary Biography

Enid Starkie's biography of Rimbaud, published nearly forty years ago, still stands as both the definitive narrative of Rimbaud's life and a model of literary biography. Rimbaud was a rebellious, enigmatic, brilliant, and inscrutable poet who, in just four short years between the ages of sixteen and twenty, wrote the poetry which has made him a figure of mythic proportions, not only in French literature, but in the literature and history of Modernism. Starkie, in brilliantly lucid prose and with loving attention to every detail, tells Rimbaud's life story and connects that story to the writing of the poems and the evolution of Rimbaud's views on poetry and the task of the poet. Influenced by his studies of Kabbalah, alchemy and illuminism, and writing in the long shadow of Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal", Rimbaud precociously enunciated his attack on the then dominant Parnassian school of French poetry at the tender age of sixteen. Starkie examines Rimbaud's original aesthetic doctrine in great detail; in her words, the poet must discover a "new language . . . capable of expressing the ineffable, a new language not bound by logic, nor by grammar or syntax." In Rimbaud's words, the "Poet" must make himself a "seer" by a "long, immense and systematic derangement of all the senses." From this initial position, Starkie brilliantly details Rimbaud's turbulent relationship with Paul Verlaine and his descent into what one reviewer has aptly described as a "perpetual roister of absinthe, hashish and sodomy." Starkie painstakingly relates Rimbaud's poetry to his experiences with Verlaine in London and Paris. In particular, Starkie convincingly demonstrates, through careful exegesis of the poems and their correspondences with Rimbaud's letters and other biographical materials, that the "Illuminations" (perhaps Rimbaud's most brilliant poems) were written over several years preceding and following "Une Saison en Enfer". Starkie then goes on to demonstrate that the latter prose poems were hardly intended to be Rimbaud's "farewell to literature in general, but only to visionary literature." In other words, "Une Saison en Enfer" represents the rejection by Rimbaud of his original mind-bending iconoclasm--the liquidation "of all his previous dreams and aspirations"--in favor of a rational and materialist aesthetics. Of course, after completing "Une Saison en Enfer", Rimbaud's life moved in completely different directions and there is, unfortunately, no existing evidence that he continued his poetic endeavor after the age of twenty. Starkie's biography captures the details of the remainder of Rimbaud's life--he died at the age of thirty-seven--with fascinating and attentive detail. And the remainder of his life, as related by Starkie, is a biography in itself--vagabond in Europe, sailor to the East Indies, gun runner and (slave?) trader in Abyssinia, and mysterious cult hero of the emerging French symbolist movement. Indeed, in 1888, more than fourteen years af

Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die

By the time Arthur Rimbaud had reached the age of nineteen, he had already composed dozens of fiery, visionary poems and prose pieces that shattered French concepts of style and content and exerted a vast influence over the role of the artist in the popular imagination. At twenty, however, he had burned many of his poems and had vowed never to write another line. He began to wander Europe and Africa, becoming a gunrunner, a slavetrader, a construction foreman. He was a rebel in the truest sense of the world and his motto could well have been "too fast to live, too young to die."Rimbaud is a remembered for his outrageous behavior as much as for his amazing literary work. Drunk on absinthe, he would insult priests, other poets, casual passersby. He was both unkempt and anti-social, to say the least, but his influence on surrealism cannot be denied and such works as A Season in Hell have exerted tremendous influence over the literary community. Rimbaud's experimentation with language and with imagery is so astounding that the reader is left bewildered and amazed.Rimbaud, in fact, established a new approach to writing. In a letter to a friend, dated 1871, he wrote, "the Poet makes himself a seer by a long, immense and systematic derangement of all the senses." Rimbaud's systematic derangement released all future poets from the bourgeois bonds of the good and evil of conventional morality. For the first time, perhaps, poets felt free to explore the powerful, unarticulated, subconscious regions of the mind. As Rimbaud, himself, wrote in "Alchemy of the Word," "I boasted of inventing, with rhythm from within me, a kind of poetry that all the senses, sooner or later, would recognize. And I alone would be its translator...I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still." And so he did.Enid Starkie, who devoted much of her life to the study of this fascinating young rebel, tells us that Rimbaud was disgusted by those who approached poetry as a hobby or a social activity only. These writers, he said, had the soul of a banker or and accountant. "The soul must be made monstrous." Rimbaud believed this with all his heart and he stated it in no uncertain terms. "I say the Poet is therefore truly the thief of fire!" Rimbaud, truly a man possessed of Promethean prowess and stature, also suffered endless torment. He was an outcast, rejected by society, but, though seemingly frail at times, he was really possessed of superhuman strength. It was this emotional strength that allowed him to produce poetry that was both astounding and lasting.Starkie describes how Rimbaud, with his mentor and lover, the poet, Paul Verlaine, became the sensation of both Paris and London as he attacked and insulted poets of the day for, as he put it, murdering the language. He engaged in debauchery of the most astonishing kind, but it was a debauchery that led to a su

What a Literary Biography Should be!

There is no doubt that Rimbaud presents a complex, almost contradictory metaphor for the life of the "Literary Voyant." He is embraced by various communities who identify with certain aspects or should I say phases of his life. I have read many essays, books, and bits and pieces on his life, poetry. As a lover of Rimbaud, I feel Starkie has captured the poet as no other. She looks into his mind and sees what others cannot see. This is the real Rimbaud, as real as we are ever going to know him. When I read this book, I always think of how Starkie closed her bio, with a little boat tossed drunkenly on the waves. Don't miss this book. It's what a literary biography should be, unbiased, thoughtful, and intelligent.

A Classic of Literary Biography!

Enid Starkie's biography of Rimbaud, published nearly forty years ago, still stands as both the definitive narrative of Rimbaud's life and a model of literary biography. Rimbaud was a rebellious, enigmatic, brilliant, and inscrutable poet who, in just four short years between the ages of sixteen and twenty, wrote the poetry which has made him a figure of mythic proportions, not only in French literature, but in the literature and history of Modernism. Starkie, in brilliantly lucid prose and with loving attention to every detail, tells Rimbaud's life story and connects that story to the writing of the poems and the evolution of Rimbaud's views on poetry and the task of the poet. Influenced by his studies of Kabbalah, alchemy and illuminism, and writing in the long shadow of Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal", Rimbaud precociously enunciated his attack on the then dominant Parnassian school of French poetry at the tender age of sixteen. Starkie examines Rimbaud's original aesthetic doctrine in great detail; in her words, the poet must discover a "new language . . . capable of expressing the ineffable, a new language not bound by logic, nor by grammar or syntax." In Rimbaud's words, the "Poet" must make himself a "seer" by a "long, immense and systematic derangement of all the senses." From this initial position, Starkie brilliantly details Rimbaud's turbulent relationship with Paul Verlaine and his descent into what one reviewer has aptly described as a "perpetual roister of absinthe, hashish and sodomy." Starkie painstakingly relates Rimbaud's poetry to his experiences with Verlaine in London and Paris. In particular, Starkie convincingly demonstrates, through careful exegesis of the poems and their correspondences with Rimbaud's letters and other biographical materials, that the "Illuminations" (perhaps Rimbaud's most brilliant poems) were written over several years preceding and following "Une Saison en Enfer". Starkie then goes on to demonstrate that the latter prose poems were hardly intended to be Rimbaud's "farewell to literature in general, but only to visionary literature." In other words, "Une Saison en Enfer" represents the rejection by Rimbaud of his original mind-bending iconoclasm--the liquidation "of all his previous dreams and aspirations"--in favor of a rational and materialist aesthetics. Of course, after completing "Une Saison en Enfer", Rimbaud's life moved in completely different directions and there is, unfortunately, no existing evidence that he continued his poetic endeavor after the age of twenty. Starkie's biography captures the details of the remainder of Rimbaud's life--he died at the age of thirty-seven--with fascinating and attentive detail. And the remainder of his life, as related by Starkie, is a biography in itself--vagabond in Europe, sailor to the East Indies, gun runner and (slave?) trader in Abyssinia, and mysterious cult hero of the emerging French symbolist movement. I

one of the standards of literary biography

I am a literary bio junkie and this is one of the books that turned me into one. Rimbaud is an excellent subject because he led such a fascinating and contradictory life. He went from being the archetypal enfant terrible and prototypical bohemian poet to an engineer in Egypt without any interest in the Parisian literary "scene" whatsoever. Along the way was his enigmatic relationship with Verlaine and Verlaine's wife. Starkie doesn't answer all the questions we are left with regarding this singular artist. Nobody can. It's not even clear what caused his relatively early death. What Starkie does provide is an intelligently illuminated portrait of Rimbaud and provides us with the background for the well of angst into which he dipped his vituperous pen. I can't believe that Starkie's equally compelling bio of Baudelaire is not listed ........ If this book is out of print, it's criminal. It's almost a companion piece to her Rimbaud. It should also be read by anyone interested in French poetry, literary history, or great literary biography.