Rimbaud: A Biography [Paperback]

Graham Robb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2001

"Superb...the single best work to read about this haunting and haunted poet."—Richard Howard, New York Times Book Review

Unknown beyond the avant-garde at the time of his death, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) has been one of the most destructive and liberating influences on twentieth-century culture. During his lifetime he was a bourgeois-baiting visionary, and the list of his known crimes is longer than the list of his published poems. But his posthumous career is even more astonishing: saint to symbolists and surrealists; poster child for anarchy and drug use; gay pioneer; a major influence on artists from Picasso to Bob Dylan. 16 pages of b/w illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When he was not yet 17, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91) electrified Paris's literary society with the incendiary poems that later made him the guiding saint of 20th-century rebels, from Pablo Picasso to Jim Morrison. "A Season in Hell," "The Drunken Boat," and the prose poems of Illuminations were epochal works that changed the nature of an art form--and yet their author abandoned poetry at age 21 and spent the rest of his short life as a colonial adventurer in Arabia and Africa. "He was writing in a void," explains British scholar Graham Robb. "In 1876, most of Rimbaud's admirers either were still in the nursery or had yet to be conceived." Hardly surprising, since the poet was a difficult and frequently unpleasant person to actually know. The Parisian poets who took him under their wing soon discovered that Rimbaud was ungrateful, crude, and as scornful of their precious verse as he was of the Catholic Church, bourgeois proprieties, and everything else his disapproving mother held dear. Rimbaud's stormy affair with Paul Verlaine estranged the older poet from his wife and, eventually, from most of his artistic friends as well. In Robb's depiction, the poet possessed from his earliest youth a restless, searching intellect that permitted no compromise with convention nor tenderness for others' weaknesses. The author doesn't soften Rimbaud's "savage cynicism" or gloss over his frequently obnoxious behavior, yet Robb arouses our admiration for "one of the great Romantic imaginations, festering in damp, provincial rooms like an intelligent disease." Like Robb's excellent biographies of Hugo and Balzac, this sharp, subtle, unsentimental portrait is both erudite and beautifully written. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In this robust biography, Robb (Balzac; Victor Hugo) contemplates the life of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) as if the French poet/ vagabond's deeds were those of a mythic hero. Rimbaud's every impulse is viewed as the expression of a coherent, wildly innovative vision of the world; his artistic accomplishments are assumed to have redeemed his devious and destructive tendencies. Thus, when the academically gifted Rimbaud produced other students' homework for a price, the burgeoning genius was operating "a parasitic service industry feeding on the education system," which Robb posits as a "splendid achievement for a child of fifteen." When Rimbaud spread his own excrement on the table of a Parisian caf? as if it were plaster for a fresco, he was making the critical point that "flat canvas and oils could not compete with the three-dimensional kaleidoscope of reality." And when discussing the poet's use of blackmail to secure the attentions of his lover, poet Paul Verlaine, Robb dryly notes that Rimbaud "never allowed conventional morality to ruin a practical arrangement." The author seldom admits ambiguity. He is most effective in his effort to blend Rimbaud's early life as a bohemian social deviant with his subsequent 16-year career in Africa as a fledgling anthropologist and explorer. Rimbaud's childhood wanderings through the French countryside matured into caravans across the deserts. His youthful willingness to venture the unmapped lifestyle of the homosexual prepared him to encounter the exotic cultures of Abyssinia. His literary works, from "Le B?teau ivre" to "Voyelles" and "Une Saison en enfer," invariably focused on fluctuation, on moments of departure. According to Robb, these poems were crowbars that pried Rimbaud loose from family, tradition and society. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (December 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039332267X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393322675
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #773,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Graham Robb, whose recent books include "The Discovery of France" and "Parisians," has published widely in French literature and history. His biographies of Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Rimbaud have won critical acclaim and were selected as New York Times Editor's Choices for best books of the year. Robb lives in Oxford, England.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vivid Monstres Sacres, December 1, 2000

By 

J. McFarland "jbmcfar" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rimbaud: A Biography (Hardcover)

As Robb did in stellar biographies of Balzac and Victor Hugo, he paints a vivid picture of the immediate environment in which the genius in question grows, rebels, creates and explodes. Much has been written about Rimbaud and his short period of productivity as a brilliant poet and prose-poet, but too much until this biography repeated the same facts, the same received opinions and the same conclusions. Robb digs deeper to provide the fascinating and detailed world of Rimbaud's family, his provincial origins and his rage to create new forms. With that detail, Rimbaud comes spectacularly alive in context. And what a context! Most famously, poet Paul Verlaine stepped into Rimbaud's line of fire and literary history was made, with the young man/boy wreaking havoc in every direction. As Robb shows, Verlaine, Rimbaud's mentor, lover and punching bag, was merely one of those the wild child went after. Robb's prodigious knowledge of the poet, his time and his place in literary history makes this the definitive biography of Arthur Rimbaud. And although hard work, thoroughness and engaged insights are three of Robb's supreme qualities as a biographer, his glorious writing style, which provides every paragraph with exploding epiphanies that illuminate and delight in equal measure, remains a rare treasure among contemporary biographers.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Bio of Rimbaud, June 8, 2001

By 

Michael Gunther (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rimbaud: A Biography (Hardcover)

This bio completely turned my head around. Everything that I thought I knew about Rimbaud, was wrong! Robb's scholarship is impeccable, and his writing is so interesting that - like a novel - I kept turning the pages to find out what happened next. This is a book for everyone who loves Rimbaud, French poetry, biography, and beautiful writing.

Thank you, Graham Robb, for giving us the true Rimbaud - the man himself. You opened my mind to his life, and my heart to his poetry.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Examining the Rimbaud myth., March 19, 2004

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Rimbaud: A Biography (Paperback)

An enjoyable book-- well-written and apparently well-researched, if occasionally a little snarky in tone.

Robb has a rare talent (Mitford-esque, if I dare say so) for injecting his point of view in a way that is visible but not overly intrusive. I was glad to have him as a narrative presence throughout the book.

I haven't thought about Rimbaud in years. I read _A Season in Hell_ as a high school student, as you do, but wasn't converted. I never really made a serious effort to engage his poetry or his life. I was motivated to pick this book up after reading a review, and was not disappointed. If you would like to read beyond the tortured artist and into the life of a fascinating and important literary figure, then this is the book for you.

What interested me in reading the biography is how much Rimbaud myth I had unintentionally absorbed over the years. Robb tells the reader a lot about the Rimbaud myth, and I think that many readers are going to find that much of what they thought they knew was not true. He spends a lot of time on the and unwraps the layers for the reader. In that sense, the book also becomes a look at how narrative fictions develop about literary figures. In any case, the facts about Rimbaud are happily much more interesting than the fiction.

The book has inspired me to go back to A Season in Hell and maybe pick up the collected letters. Rimbaud becomes a great deal more interesting if you look at his entire career and not just the period before he turned 19.

Generally: A good read & worth the time.