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
In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.
As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen.
What an old maid I'm getting to be. lacking the courage to be in love with death!
What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.
The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.
The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!
In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.
one single true word: it is, COME BACK. I want to be with you, I love you. If you listen to this you will prove your courage and sincerity. Otherwise, I am sorry for you. But I love you. I kiss you and we'll see eachother again...
A thousand Dreams within me softly burn
Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.
I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.
Now I am an outcast. I loathe my country. The best thing for me is a drunken sleep on the beach.
He would say, "How funny it will all seem, all you've gone through, when I'm not here anymore, when you no longer feel my arms around your shoulders, nor my heart beneath you, nor this mouth on your eyes, because I will have to go away some day, far away..." And in that instant I could feel myself with him gone, dizzy with fear, sinking down into the most horrible blackness: into death.