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
There shall be poets! When woman's unmeasured bondage shall be broken, when she shall live for and through herself, man--hitherto detestable--having let her go, she, too, will be poet! Woman will find the unknown! Will her ideational worlds be different from ours? She will come upon strange, unfathomable, repellent, delightful things; we shall take them, we shall comprehend them.
A man who wants to mutilate himself is certainly damned, isn't he?
All day long he was docile, intelligent, good, Though sometimes changing to a darker mood. He seemed hypocritical, could tell better lies, in the dark he saw dots of colors behind closed eyes, clenched fists, put his tongue out at his elder brother.
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.
I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.
It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. I is someone else.
A thousand Dreams within me softly burn: From time to time my heart is like some oak Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.
O seasons, O castles, What soul is without flaws? All its lore is known to me, Felicity, it enchants us all.
Unhappiness was my god.
No one's serious at seventeen.
Whose hearts must I break? What lies must I maintain? - Through whose blood am I to wade ?
What an old maid I'm getting to be. lacking the courage to be in love with death!
Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.
I shed more tears than God could ever have required.