HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARTHUR RIMBAUD
born October 20, 1854
Arthur Rimbaud
by French artist Pauline Crest
Alchimie du verbe
(extrait)
Loin des oiseaux, des troupeaux, des villageoises,
Que buvais-je, à genoux dans cette bruyère
Entourée de tendres bois de noisetiers,
Dans un brouillard d'après-midi tiède et vert ?
Que pouvais-je boire dans cette jeune Oise,
- Ormeaux sans voix, gazon sans fleurs, ciel couvert ! -
Boire à ces gourdes jaunes, loin de ma case
Chérie? Quelque liqueur d'or qui fait suer.
Je faisais une louche enseigne d'auberge.
- Un orage vint chasser le ciel. Au soir
L'eau des bois se perdait sur les sables vierges,
Le vent de Dieu jetait des glaçons aux mares ;
Pleurant, je voyais de l'or - et ne pus boire. -
–Arthur Rimbaud, « Délire II, Alchimie du verbe », Une saison en Enfer, 1870
JEAN NICOLAS ARTHUR RIMBAUD, a poet of high ambitions, was born in Charleville-Mézières, a small town nested in the French Ardennes forests, stretching to Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg.
He walked in Baudelaire's footsteps and strove to create his own poetics. Rimbaud was a champion of symbolism, anti-romanticism and anti-realism, he returned to the mystical and to the evocation of ideas through analogies.
The young man and his poetics are difficult to define. He lived his life like a poem of his own; adventurous, rebel, intimate, anti-bourgeois, libertarian, but also subtle, brilliant, and sensitive.
Considered a Mozart of poetry in France, Rimbaud authored A Season in Hell and The Illuminations, two masterpieces of literature.
Like many art prodigies, his life was short, intense, unreal.
Happy birthday, little Brother. Your voice is silent in eternity. Are you a seer yet?
Bio by Nicolas Pavec
Translation: M. Mobengo