Rimbaud : A Biography

by Robb, Graham

• ISBN13: 9780393049558
• ISBN10: 0393049558
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

Summary

Unknown Beyond the avant-garde at the time of his death, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) has been one of the most destructive and liberating influences on twentieth-century culture. During his lifetime he was a bourgeois-baiting visionary, a reinventor of language and perception, a breaker of taboos. The list of his known crimes is longer than the list of his published poems. But his posthumous career is even more astonishing: saint to symbolists and surrealists; poster child for anarchy and drug use: gay pioneer; and a major influence on such artists as Picasso, Bob Dylan, and Jim Morrison.

At the age of twenty-one, Rimbaud turned his back on his artistic achievement. For his remaining sixteen years he lived in exile, ending up as a major explorer and arms trader in Abyssinia. The genius of Graham Robb's account is to join the two halves of this life, to show Rimbaud's wild and unsettling poetry as a blueprint for the exotic adventures to come. This is the story of Rimbaud the explorer, in mind and in matter.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Introduction	xi
PART ONE (1854--1871)
Bad Blood	3	(12)
Filth	15	(11)
`Perfect Little Monster'	26	(7)
`Mad Ambition'	33	(13)
Convictions	46	(10)
Tour de France	56	(8)
Needful Destruction	64	(17)
The Seer	81	(15)
Departure	96	(13)
PART TWO (1871--1874)
`Nasty Fellows'	109	(11)
Savage of the Latin Quarter	120	(11)
`Mlle Rimbaut'	131	(14)
Dogs	145	(9)
Songs of Innocence	154	(9)
`The Good Disciple'	163	(9)
Fugitives	172	(11)
Underworld	183	(12)
Pagan	195	(12)
Household in Hell	207	(7)
`No Serious Motive'?	214	(13)
Harvest	227	(10)
`Metropolitain'	237	(16)
PART THREE (1874--1880)
Pigeons	253	(9)
Philomath	262	(14)
Mr Holmes	276	(11)
John Arthur Rimbaud	287	(11)
Explosive	298	(11)
PART FOUR (1880--1891)
Empires	309	(9)
The Unknown	318	(12)
`Poor Arthur'	330	(8)
Paradise	338	(14)
Abdo Rinbo	352	(10)
Guns for Africa	362	(9)
Horror	371	(12)
Profit	383	(10)
At Home	393	(11)
`Odious Tyranny'	404	(10)
Opportunities	414	(11)
`Ferocious Invalid'	425	(10)
Maritime	435	(38)
Epilogue	441	(7)
APPENDICES
I. Family Tree	448	(2)
II. Poems by Rimbaud Published in his lifetime	450	(2)
III. Historical Events	452	(2)
IV. Maps	454	(2)
V. French Texts	456	(17)
Notes	473	(38)
Select Bibliography	511	(20)
Index	531