La Constellation Rimbaud by Jean Rouaud

 La Constellation Rimbaud

by Jean Rouaud, published by Editions Grasset is a tribute to one of the most beloved poets of all the times: Arthur Rimbaud and the people who gravitated around him during his brief passage in this world. 

The book analyzes several cities Arthur touched or lived in, and in each city-chapter there is the punctual reconstruction for the joy of the readers of the people with which Arthur Rimbaud interacted with like also the experiences made in the while; the poetic experience was just a little part of an itinerant existence; at the end he was in grade of speaking something like 13-14 languages, including old latin and greek! Amazing mind.

He was a genius! there is nothing else to add; one of his teachers understanding the enormous potentialities of this still little boy added that nothing, but only good stuff would have been written by him. 

And it was true. Born in Charleville, his father was in the army but he was in love for writing, although what composed was mainly military stuff. 

It is supposed that this passion for writing was inherited by this vacant father, who had impregnanted the wife five times but that later neglected completely his family. Once separated he won't return anymore at Charleville. 

The mother, La Mother, as Arthur called her, was pretty ambitious regarding his son but also tender or firm, experiencing for three times the departure of a child: the last time with Arthur, when he tragically died.

Charleville like Stratford-Upon-Avon is a city, thanks to Rimbaud, world patrimony of poetry and it is in the college of this city that Arthur started his studies with his sibling Frederic. Ernest Delahaye will soon become close friend of him remaining bewitched by this boy like also Georges Izambard a pretty young teacher of rethoric; later Georges lived the misadventure of becoming deaf and was constricted to abandoning the school.

The first prize won by Rimbaud because of poetry is precocious; Arthur started to compose when in his teen-age age in fact. Then he would have wanted to launch himself in the journalism but this time without great luck.

He thought that journalism could be a good path; the wrinkled reality "la realité rugueuse"called this activity (he was right!) and confessed to his close friend Izabard that his idea would have been the one to afford to Paris for becoming a journalist. 

Oh, you musn't think that his first "meeting" with this big city and capital of France has been brilliant, for many reasons; he was put in jail because discovered ticketless in the train he had catched the first time; then bypassing his second trip, Verlaine requested him to Paris; at the arrival the first person Arthur noticed to the train station waiting for him was Mathilda, the wife of Verlaine; Mathilda noticed immediately that Rimbaud appeared like a miserable boy, dirty, pretty disordinated and didn't like this way of living and being; at home as well. Then, of course when she understood the real relationship that there was between his man and that boy, tried all her best for not losing Paul Verlaine; but, in vain. Later, Mathilde Mauté moved on and re-built her existence with other people.

Verlaine brought Rimbaud to London where it was possible to breath an international atmosphere. If Paris was the center of culture and literature, London was vice-versa projected in business, policy. Rimbaud was tendentially a communist, an anarchist, someone who wanted a different world. 

He thought that the modernity had precipitated the world in a state where the absence of poetry would have been a natural consequence. Marx emigrated in London, but also Engels,  Tissot, Pissarro and many more.

In Paris apart Verlaine with which he will live the love-story till at 1873, a connection never ended (when Rimbaud died Verlaine was one of the biggest divulgators of the poems written by his beloved Arthur) Rimbaud met inventors, but also people like Cabaner, bohemienne character with a high percentage of alcohol in his body.

Cabaner was well introduced: he knew well Renoir, Manet, Cezanne, Degat, Monet. Original man he pretended of learning music with the method he had invented: associating notes with...colors. 

Etienne Carjat had an atelier of photography. 

In Bruxelles the big drama of this sad, disastrous love-story; discovering that Rimbaud wanted to leave him Verlaine one day found a gun and tried to kill him. He was put in jail for two years. In the while Rimbaud decided that the best thing to do, after all, was to return to London; alone; but... look at the destiny, close to l'Odeon he met Germain Nouveau, a young boy, great admirer of his poems; he wanted to join him. The story of Germain is interesting.

Poet and painter, he studied at a seminary, but later decided to move on; he walked all alone for the entire European Continent learning many languages. Germain loved to study and understood very well old latin and greek.

The existence with this boy will bring him a lot of changes. Rimbaud at some point will cut completely all his long hair! 

Rimbaud tired of his existence after a while decides of joining the french army; once abandoned it, wrote to the American Consulate asking to join the American navy, but being a diserter, he specified it, no one wrote him back. 

 

I asked to myself why this drastic decision, why this radical change: maybe he felt that he wanted to live an existence thinking less and experiencing more; maybe he was simply tired; geniality brings with it these characteristics. 

Rimbaud after his first existence as poet, lived in exotic places, was in the army as said before as also his father (and he was a pacifist) lost his right leg and, after several terribe months of agony in Marseille, his existence. He was  still in his late thirties.

An existence the one of Arthur, exotic, fascinating, plenty of distant lands and adventures, with many sounds, words, perfumes, visions, faces, cultural enrichments. 

A book for all that people intrigued by the poet and what happened to this iconic symbol of french and world poetry. Very good for students in search of a good text for a thesys.

Highly recommended.

I thank Editions Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori