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
In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.
For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms.
...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.
one single true word: it is, COME BACK. I want to be with you, I love you. If you listen to this you will prove your courage and sincerity. Otherwise, I am sorry for you. But I love you. I kiss you and we'll see eachother again...
O witches, O misery, O hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted! I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope. On all joy, to strangle it, I pounced with the strength of a wild beast. I called to the plagues to smother me in blood, in sand, misfortune was my God.
True life is elsewhere
As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen.
The wolf howled under the leaves And spit out the prettiest feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself.
You will always be a hyena.
Eternity is the sun mixed with the sea
I'm intact, and I don't give a damn.
Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.
What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?
It began as research. I wrote of silences, of nights, I scribbled the indescribable. I tied down the vertigo.