Arthur Rimbaud (Outlines) [Paperback]

Benjamin Ivry (Author)

Book Description

Series: Outlines | Publication Date: October 1998

Consortium welcomes Outlines from Absolute Press, an impressive and mature series chronicling the lives of some of the most exceptional and influential gay and lesbian artists of our time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Arthur Rimbaud is one of the most remarkable figures in the history of poetry. A true prodigy, he had fully arrived as a poet and composed three acknowledged masterpieces--A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat and Illuminations--before the age of 20. He had also engaged in a two-year affair with another extremely talented French poet of the fin de si cle, Paul Verlaine. Although no one doubts that the affair took place, its meaning has remained almost as controversial in the 20th century as it was in the 19th. Some have hailed Rimbaud as a gay icon, while others have tried to cast doubt on whether his relationship with the older poet revealed his real preferences or was simply an experiment intended to further his project of "disordering the senses." Ivry's brief biography, the second title in the Outlines series dedicated to exploring the ways that homosexuality has affected the lives of artists, writers and other creative people, delves deeply into the relationship, and especially its sexual aspects, referring to the pair simply as "V&R." Ivry (Paradise for the Portuguese Queen) holds back no detail, whether it be possible dalliances with other men, misogynistic outbursts, graphically sexual poems, medical reports or the couple's well-documented public s&m games (which ended with Rimbaud in the hospital with a gunshot wound and Verlaine in jail). In the end, marshaling overwhelming evidence, Ivry ensures that his subject's story isn't set too straight, and demonstrates that Rimbaud was indeed self-consciously and gladly a lover of men.

Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

These short biographies belong to the "Outlines" series, which serves to introduce the lives and works of significant gay and lesbian writers, artists, singers, dancers, composers, and actors. Although compact, they are quite dense, and each includes a bibliography and a list of recommended readings. Donoghue (Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture, 1668-1801, HarperCollins, 1996) uses nearly 30 volumes of letters and journals to tell the story of the two Englishwomen who shared the pseudonym Michael Field: Katherine Bradley (1846-1914) and Edith Cooper (1862-1913). Donoghue sheds light on the obscure careers of these women, who collaborated to write 30 plays and 11 volumes of poetry. More than co-writers, the two women were aunt and niece as well as lovers. Donoghue provides an engaging, informal overview of their history, including family origins, their decision to use a male pseudonym, their rise to fame, their intimate relationship, and their colorful circle of friends. French scholar Ivry (he translated Todd Olivier's Albert Camus, LJ 11/15/97) has the Herculean task of condensing the life story of the poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91) into a handful of chapters, which he does admirably well. Rimbaud, considered one of France's greatest modern poets, created complex poems that used language in ways that had never been attempted in poetry. Ivry covers the evidence of Rimbaud's early genius as a schoolboy, his fateful meeting with the poet Paul Verlaine and their tempestuous love affair, the aftermath of their breakup, Rimbaud's phenomenal prowess as a poet (he reached the zenith of his career at 20), his travels, and his continuing influence on artists today. For more in-depth biographical information on Michael Field and Arthur Rimbaud, consult Mary C. Sturgeon's Michael Field (1922; Ayer, 1975. reprint) and Enid Starkie's Arthur Rimbaud (Norton, 1968. reprint). Recommended for larger collections of gay and lesbian materials.AKimberly L. Clarke, Univ. of Minnesota Lib. Minneapolis
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Absolute Press (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 189979171X
• ISBN-13: 978-1899791712
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,314,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PERSEPTIVE INFO-CRAMMED BIOGRAPHY OF CONTROVERSIAL RIMBAUD, April 5, 2000

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book trailer "booktrailersonline" (HOLLYWOOD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arthur Rimbaud (Outlines) (Paperback)

Benjamin Ivry's short, but informative tome is a refreshing outline on one of France's most controversial poets. Rimbaud (1854-1891) was a L'enfant terrible, writing all his major works before the age of 20! In Ivry's illuminating biography, the reader gets to understand the motivating factors behind his wrenching verse. Unlike many Rimbaud books, Ivry's book delves into the torrid, temultuous affair the young poet had with the older poet, Paul Verlaine. Their stormy affair is one of the most renowned in gay literary history. Ivry pulls no punches in his description of their near fatal relationship and through this understanding, we see where the pain and the power of his verse emanated from. He offers a fount of information on this rarely understood young artist and the demimonde of French literary society at the turn of the century. He also deconstructs many of Rimbaud's most infamous poems, so that even the novice can understand the power of his words. Stocked with rare photos and art, this wonderful little book also has an extensive bibliography!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rimbaud as a Saint of Gay Culture, August 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Arthur Rimbaud (Outlines) (Paperback)

In the early 1950s, Rene Etiemble published a doctoral dissertation of monumental proportions, "Le Mythe de Rimbaud", which enumerated the numerous, variegated and, ultimately, misleading and false mythologies which had been propogated about Rimbaud in the decades following his death in 1891. Etiemble devoted more than twenty years to researching and refuting these myths, including the myths of Rimbaud the seer, the Catholic, the Communard, the homosexual, the scoundrel, and the martyr. As Enid Starkie suggested in her definitive biography, Etiemble's work had a salutary effect on modern approaches to Rimbaud by showing that "no single one of these descriptions accurately fits him." The result, among other things, was to shift the focus of Rimbaud studies from hagiography, on the one hand, and demonization, on the other, to an exploration of Rimbaud's revolutionary poetic language and expression.

More than fifty years after Etiemble's watershed dissertation, Benjamin Ivry has written "Arthur Rimbaud", a brief, fascinating, but ultimately somewhat disingenuous biographical gloss on Rimbaud's life. Ivry's book is the first in a series of books to be published by Absolute Press, books intended "to explore and portray the various and often unexpected ways in which homosexuality has informed the life and creative work of the influential gay and lesbian artists, writers, singers, dancers, composers, and actors of our time." It is, in other words, a book which has an agenda--an agenda which once again seeks to fit the enigmatic nature of Rimbaud's biography into a mythology, this time a mythology of Rimbaud as a founding saint of modern gay culture. Thus, Rimbaud's brilliant, complex and poetically difficult masterpieces, "Une Saison en Enfer" and "Illuminations", works which are laden with symbol and mystery, with a radically innovative poetic vitality, are reduced by Ivry to the product of Rimbaud's erstwhile homoerotic relationship with Paul Verlaine. Every aspect of Rimbaud's brief life as a poet, in Ivry's depiction, is driven by Rimbaud's "gayness", by his love for Verlaine, by his presumed disinterest in women. Never mind other aspects of Rimbaud's biography--his severe mother, his absent father, his religious upbringing, his revolutionary poetic work itself! Moreover, while the book contains a useful bibliography, it is devoid of footnotes, so it is impossible to ascertain the veracity of the speculations which permeate Ivry's text.

Having said all of this, I also must say that Ivry is an outstanding writer--his prose sparkles--and this little book is definitely worth reading if you have an interest in Rimbaud because it provides fascinating details on Rimbaud's relationship with Verlaine and others. In particular, the book extensively discusses the gay aspects of Rimbaud's life and poetry and Rimbaud's influence on subsequent writers from Cocteau to Kerouac to Jim Morrison. These are aspects of Rimbaud's life which are not explored very closely by Starkie's definitive biography and, if you read Ivry's book with some degree of skepticism, it provides a fascinating and provocative complement to the standard treatment of Rimbaud's life

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Flawed summary of the life of a revolutionary poet, September 20, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Arthur Rimbaud (Outlines) (Paperback)

I wanted to like this book, dealing as it does with a poet who more than anyone else discovered the boundaries of language, and then redefined it in a way which has since been much imitated, but never equaled. This book is beautifully produced and written in a chatty and engaging, if a little defensive, style - Benjamin Ivry does seem too intent at times at forcing Rimbaud into the role of militant gay icon when this was only one aspect of his life - and the photos and bibliography are excellent.

However, there are several unforgivable errors, ranging from the glaring (Rimbaud had his right leg amputated, not the left) to the merely annoying (quotes from a couple of poems are misattributed). Also, Ivry seems at times so carried away with his subject that he relies too much on supposition to prove a point: for example, there is absolutely no evidence that Verlaine commissioned Rosman's famous painting of a bed-ridden, gunshot-wounded Rimbaud.

What I did like about this book was the final chapter, a fascinating collection of quotes from gay artists, poets, writers and film-makers through the years, proving that, as Eugene Borza once said about Alexander the Great, there are as many Rimbauds as there are those who profess a serious interest in him.