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Arthur Rimbaud
Before he turned twenty-one, Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91) had upended the house of French poetry and left it in shambles. In this critical biography, Seth Whidden argues that what makes Rimbaud’s poetry important is part of what makes his life so rebellion, audacity, creativity, and exploration.
Almost all of Rimbaud’s poems were written between the ages of fifteen and twenty. Against the backdrop of the crumbling Second Empire and the tumultuous Paris Commune, he took centuries-old traditions of French versification and picked them apart with an unmatched knowledge of how they fitted together. Combining sensuality with the pastoral, parody, political satire, fable, eroticism, and mystery, his poems range from traditional verse forms to prose-poetry to the first two free-verse poems written in French. By situating Rimbaud’s later writing in Africa as part of a continuum that spanned his entire life, Whidden offers a corrective to the traditional split between Rimbaud’s life as a poet and his life afterwards. A remarkable portrait of the original damned poet, Arthur Rimbaud reinvents a figure who continues to captivate readers, artists, and writers across the world.
Almost all of Rimbaud’s poems were written between the ages of fifteen and twenty. Against the backdrop of the crumbling Second Empire and the tumultuous Paris Commune, he took centuries-old traditions of French versification and picked them apart with an unmatched knowledge of how they fitted together. Combining sensuality with the pastoral, parody, political satire, fable, eroticism, and mystery, his poems range from traditional verse forms to prose-poetry to the first two free-verse poems written in French. By situating Rimbaud’s later writing in Africa as part of a continuum that spanned his entire life, Whidden offers a corrective to the traditional split between Rimbaud’s life as a poet and his life afterwards. A remarkable portrait of the original damned poet, Arthur Rimbaud reinvents a figure who continues to captivate readers, artists, and writers across the world.
- GenresNonfiction
200 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 18, 2020
Terrific panorama of Rimbaud's life and work by an expert on him. Whidden does a fantastic job to balance biography with closer readings of Rimbaud's writing, which are astute and revealing but never over-technical. Whidden writes pacily, and manages to fit everything into a mere 190 pages!
July 14, 2022
Rimbaud’s Spiritual Battle
What becomes a legend most? Great talent, suffering, and mystery . . .
three ingredients that French poet Arthur Rimbaud possessed in spades.
General readers will be familiar with the broad lines of the Rimbaud legend:
child prodigy and enfant terrible who, between the ages of fifteen and twenty, revolutionized modern poetry, only to abruptly stop writing at twenty-one, disappear in Africa, and die at thirty-seven.
In Arthur Rimbaud (2018), part of Reaktion Books’ Critical Lives series presenting the work of leading cultural figures, Seth Whidden seeks to fill in the blanks of this enigmatic
life. Whidden, professor of French at the University of Oxford and co-editor
of a scholarly journal of Rimbaud studies for a decade, loves his subject and
knows well the milieu that produced him, demonstrating how the life and
poetry of our precocious protagonist inform one another.
The reader experiences the thrill of being granted a front-row seat to the precocious becoming and premature undoing of our young hero. In addition, we are treated to facsimiles of Rimbaud’s original manuscripts featuring his beautiful penmanship and the cast of characters whose influence he often quickly outgrew: family, teachers, artists, and friends. As a gifted teenager, Rimbaud does what many young poets do: writing to the poets he admires, introducing his work, and
announcing himself with supreme confidence.
In one of his two letters referred to as the Lettres du voyant (letters of
the seer), Rimbaud famously declares, at the tender age of sixteen:
. . . I am working to make myself a Seer . . . It’s a question of
reaching the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. The
sufferings are enormous, but one has to be strong, one has to be
born a poet, and I know that I am a poet. This is not all my fault.
It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought . . . I is
another. Too bad for the wood that finds itself a violin.
Despite his uncommon achievements, it is difficult not to regard the
life of Rimbaud as a kind of cautionary tale or moral fable. Claimed by the
surrealists, he was pronounced by their leader, André Breton, as “a god of
puberty.” Perhaps this blasphemous epitaph gets at the pitiable heart of it
all: that such an immense gift should have been entrusted to rebellious,
destructive adolescence and emotional immaturity—in short, one inadequately
suited to it.
As we see in his abbreviated life example, debauchery, eventually, ushers in virtue; but there are less vicious paths, such as patience. Also, might it be that the difference between diabolical and divine inspiration is the duration of pleasure afforded? Contemplating this almost mythological life leaves us meditating on larger questions, spiritual and existential. Who was Rimbaud? What is the
nature of inspiration? Were the sacrifices his vocation entailed worth it? (By this I mean the protracted torment inflicted upon Rimbaud and those in
his inner circle).
Could it be that, from the start, the thing he sought, this
demon-angel, was always just outside the page? That, after swimming the
length of the alphabet, with fine gills and deranging senses, he created an
opening for others but a trap for himself? If so, then slipping through those
watery bars was imperative, a chastened mysticism—and freedom to write
in the air, to be . . . human.
To his credit, Whidden offers no easy answers, honoring the fundamental mystery at the core of Rimbaud’s fate and suggesting that the answer to these riddles, and others raised by his extraordinary life, are to be found in his art.
What becomes a legend most? Great talent, suffering, and mystery . . .
three ingredients that French poet Arthur Rimbaud possessed in spades.
General readers will be familiar with the broad lines of the Rimbaud legend:
child prodigy and enfant terrible who, between the ages of fifteen and twenty, revolutionized modern poetry, only to abruptly stop writing at twenty-one, disappear in Africa, and die at thirty-seven.
In Arthur Rimbaud (2018), part of Reaktion Books’ Critical Lives series presenting the work of leading cultural figures, Seth Whidden seeks to fill in the blanks of this enigmatic
life. Whidden, professor of French at the University of Oxford and co-editor
of a scholarly journal of Rimbaud studies for a decade, loves his subject and
knows well the milieu that produced him, demonstrating how the life and
poetry of our precocious protagonist inform one another.
The reader experiences the thrill of being granted a front-row seat to the precocious becoming and premature undoing of our young hero. In addition, we are treated to facsimiles of Rimbaud’s original manuscripts featuring his beautiful penmanship and the cast of characters whose influence he often quickly outgrew: family, teachers, artists, and friends. As a gifted teenager, Rimbaud does what many young poets do: writing to the poets he admires, introducing his work, and
announcing himself with supreme confidence.
In one of his two letters referred to as the Lettres du voyant (letters of
the seer), Rimbaud famously declares, at the tender age of sixteen:
. . . I am working to make myself a Seer . . . It’s a question of
reaching the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. The
sufferings are enormous, but one has to be strong, one has to be
born a poet, and I know that I am a poet. This is not all my fault.
It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought . . . I is
another. Too bad for the wood that finds itself a violin.
Despite his uncommon achievements, it is difficult not to regard the
life of Rimbaud as a kind of cautionary tale or moral fable. Claimed by the
surrealists, he was pronounced by their leader, André Breton, as “a god of
puberty.” Perhaps this blasphemous epitaph gets at the pitiable heart of it
all: that such an immense gift should have been entrusted to rebellious,
destructive adolescence and emotional immaturity—in short, one inadequately
suited to it.
As we see in his abbreviated life example, debauchery, eventually, ushers in virtue; but there are less vicious paths, such as patience. Also, might it be that the difference between diabolical and divine inspiration is the duration of pleasure afforded? Contemplating this almost mythological life leaves us meditating on larger questions, spiritual and existential. Who was Rimbaud? What is the
nature of inspiration? Were the sacrifices his vocation entailed worth it? (By this I mean the protracted torment inflicted upon Rimbaud and those in
his inner circle).
Could it be that, from the start, the thing he sought, this
demon-angel, was always just outside the page? That, after swimming the
length of the alphabet, with fine gills and deranging senses, he created an
opening for others but a trap for himself? If so, then slipping through those
watery bars was imperative, a chastened mysticism—and freedom to write
in the air, to be . . . human.
To his credit, Whidden offers no easy answers, honoring the fundamental mystery at the core of Rimbaud’s fate and suggesting that the answer to these riddles, and others raised by his extraordinary life, are to be found in his art.
October 9, 2022
3.5 stars. I enjoyed this, especially Whidden's annotations and explorations of Rimbaud's poetry, which is often exceptional. The contradictions in his work evoke the contradictions in his life also. It treads the line between beauty and mal-taste, just as he did in his own abilities and relationships.
He was capable of almost transcendental understanding, but was just as reactionary and prone to both verbal and physical violence. If he was alive today he'd probably be a football ultra. There's plenty about identity (or lack thereof) in his work, and he was prone to verbal ransom-holding as much as he was to precocious threats and extortion. Although the book is a brief 200 pages, Whidden does a good job of emphasising his presumed outlook. After all, what makes Rimbaud so endlessly intriguing is the mystery, the 'unanswered questions' of his life. The fact that so little is known is what makes him so talismanic.
On the downside, the book isn't the easiest to follow. The way the poems are presented in both French and English yet crammed into a small space doesn't make them easy to follow. As a result, the impact of many of the poems - especially in the first half - is blunted. The book also makes no attempt to offer a portrait as in Graham Robb's famous biography, and it begs the question of whether some of those questions need to remain unanswered.
It's a good introductory read on Rimbaud, and Whidden's analytical nous is clear. But there are more extensive and powerful summations of his work, not least in the myriad songwriters and artists he's inspired.
He was capable of almost transcendental understanding, but was just as reactionary and prone to both verbal and physical violence. If he was alive today he'd probably be a football ultra. There's plenty about identity (or lack thereof) in his work, and he was prone to verbal ransom-holding as much as he was to precocious threats and extortion. Although the book is a brief 200 pages, Whidden does a good job of emphasising his presumed outlook. After all, what makes Rimbaud so endlessly intriguing is the mystery, the 'unanswered questions' of his life. The fact that so little is known is what makes him so talismanic.
On the downside, the book isn't the easiest to follow. The way the poems are presented in both French and English yet crammed into a small space doesn't make them easy to follow. As a result, the impact of many of the poems - especially in the first half - is blunted. The book also makes no attempt to offer a portrait as in Graham Robb's famous biography, and it begs the question of whether some of those questions need to remain unanswered.
It's a good introductory read on Rimbaud, and Whidden's analytical nous is clear. But there are more extensive and powerful summations of his work, not least in the myriad songwriters and artists he's inspired.
October 11, 2025
Merci beaucoup !
I read this book on a stay in Paris near Rue Férou, where Rimbaud's "Le Bateau Ivre" is transcribed in its entirety on a stone wall lining the street. Thank you for taking me from myth to understanding, with it's even deeper appreciation.
I read this book on a stay in Paris near Rue Férou, where Rimbaud's "Le Bateau Ivre" is transcribed in its entirety on a stone wall lining the street. Thank you for taking me from myth to understanding, with it's even deeper appreciation.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews