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If Rimbaud wrote an autobiography, it would send the writers of makjang dramas out of business. The 19th century poet and prodigy led a startlingly short, yet startlingly eventful and accomplished life. Edmund White, in his book Rimbaud: The Dual Life of a Rebel relates the poet’s action-packed life in a nutshell—for better or for worse.

It all started when the 17-year-old Rimbaud sent a letter along with a few of his poems to Paul Verlaine, an eminent symbolist poet at the time. Verlaine was intrigued by Rimbaud’s work and immediately invited the teen to join him in Paris.

Shockingly enough, Verlaine ended up being intrigued not only by Rimbaud’s poetry, but also by his young, fresh physique. So the respectably established poet Verlaine began a homosexual relationship with the 10-year younger Rimbaud, abandoning his wife, infant son, and comfortable middle-class-life in the process.

Rimbaud’s philosophy when it came to writing poetry was to experience all the extremes of life—with Verlaine right behind him. The two led a wild, debaucherous life on absinthe and hashish, scandalizing their fellow poets. Rimbaud, with all his rebellious contempt for conventions and manners, was particularly infamous. When he was not selling the furniture in his guest-room, he was using printed sheets of his host’s poetry as toilet paper, or urinating on the bourgeois members of the Parisian literary society.

And yet the enfant terrible produced ingenious, visionary poetry. His works prefigured surrealism and influenced the works of artists for centuries to come, such as Pablo Picasso, Bob Dylan, and Jim Morrison. That he completely renounced all creative writing at age 20 and spent the rest of his life scoffing at his youth’s work is a great shame. When he finally returned to France to die of cancer in his late thirties, the former poet was all but forgotten. It was only posthumously that his work achieved recognition and fame.

White does a great job in providing an overview of such life as Rimbaud’s. He bluntly comments on his childhood idol’s boorish ways, as well as his charms. He also succeeds in providing his English readers with a clearer understanding of the French poet’s real intent by not directly translating, but explaining the nuances of the original choice of words. White’s fluency in both languages seems to make him a great guide to understanding Rimbaud.

It is concerning, however, that the so-called biography puts an inordinate amount of focus on but one specific period of Rimbaud’s life—his time with Verlaine. Admittedly, it is most probably the period that first-timers to Rimbaud would consider the most fascinating, not to mention the time when Rimbaud was the most prolific as a poet. White probably also simply had a lot to say about the relationship of the gay couple, considering the fact that he himself is a homosexual.

However, he only touches upon the latter part of Rimbaud’s life in Africa as a gunrunner, heavily referencing Graham Robb’s more extensive biography of Rimbaud. The slanted focus makes White’s book seem not to portray “the double life of a rebel,” but rather only a part of it. Another regret about the book lies in the fact that it fails to provide its readers with any full-length poems. Thus, no matter how the enamored White gushes on about Rimbaud’s fresh creativity, his youthful perceptiveness, and his literary style, readers unfamiliar with Rimbaud’s works have no means by which to share White’s enthusiasm.

On the whole, the book is a good match for novices to Rimbaud, who have an interest in, but know nothing about, the life or works of the French poet. For those Rimbaud fans already well acquainted with the poet’s life, however, White’s book will provide nothing new. For such readers, the aforementioned Robb’s more thorough version would probably be more appropriate—and White himself would probably agree.

   
▲ Caricature of Rimbaud, as drawn by Verlaine. Provided by datalounge.com

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