Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet who is known for his influence on modern literature and arts, which prefigured surrealism. Born in Charleville-Mézières, he started writing at a very young age and was a prodigious student, but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away from home amidst the Franco-Prussian War. After running away, during his late adolescence and early adulthood, he began the bulk of his literary...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth20 October 1854
CountryFrance
-But I've just noticed that my mind is asleep.
...these poets here, you see, they are not of this world:let them live their strange life; let them be cold and hungry, let them run, love and sing: they are as rich as Jacques Coeur, all these silly children, for they have their souls full of rhymes, rhymes which laugh and cry, which make us laugh or cry: Let them live: God blesses all the merciful: and the world blesses the poets.
The poet makes himself a voyant through a long, immense reasoned deranging of all his senses. All the forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he tries to find himself, he exhausts in himself all the poisons, to keep only their quintessences.
I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.
Faith assuages, guides, restores.
What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.
And again: No more gods! no more gods! Man is King, Man is God! - But the great Faith is Love!
...as for me, I am intact; and I don't care.
The northern lights rise like a kiss to the sea
Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep in exile?
But the problem is to make the soul into a monster
To whom shall I hire myself out? What beast should I adore? What holy image is attacked? What hearts shall I break? What lies shall I uphold? In what blood tread?
You feel on your lips a kiss Fluttering, a tiny scrap of life ...
Then you'll feel your cheek scratched... A little kiss, like a crazy spider, Will run round your neck... And you'll say to me : "Find it !" bending your head - And we'll take a long time to find that creature - Which travels a lot...