The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud [Paperback]

Henry Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1962

This study is not literary criticism but a fascinating chapter in Miller's own spiritual autobiography.

The social function of the creative personality is a recurrent theme with Henry Miller, and this book is perhaps his most poignant and concentrated analysis of the artist's dilemma.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Henry Miller (1891-1980) was an American writer and painter infamous for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of "novel" that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and Black Spring. His books were banned in the United States for their lewd content until 1964 when a court ruling overturned this order, acknowledging Miller’s work as literature in what became one of the most celebrated victories of the sexual revolution.

Product Details

• Paperback: 163 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (January 17, 1962)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811201155
• ISBN-13: 978-0811201155
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #409,335 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just a boy from Charleville, April 25, 2000

By 

George Schaefer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud (Paperback)

This is one of my all time favorite books. I have had a Rimbaud fixation for about 20 years. I came to Rimbaud as a teen beginning what I would like to believe is a poetic journey. Then I discovered Henry Miller. Miller is my favorite American writer. Miller writing a book on Rimbaud is a dream come true. I could not ask for a better match. I have read this book straight through 10-12 times. I refer to it often. Even though--as has been noted numerous times--this is more about Miller than Rimbaud, it remains an extraordinary work. Miller writes at a lucid peak in this book. I find myself turning to it again and again. The thin volume is chockful of Henry Miller wisdom. A poor boy from Brooklyn providing a glorious study of a poor boy from Charleville. If you are interested in Miller or Rimbaud (or preferably both) this is a fine book to read. It will provide great insight into two of THE true giants of subversive, apocalyptic literature. The Dean places the Prince on a much deserved pedestal. This is poetic prose at its height--a stunning masterpiece.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Original, Penetrating and Brilliant, June 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud (Paperback)

Henry Miller did not hear Rimbaud's name until he was thirty-six years old; he did not glance at his work until six or seven years later, around the age of forty-three; and it was not until he was fifty-two years old that Miller learned the details of Rimbaud's remarkable life, for in that year Miller read both Jean-Marie Carre's "A Season in Hell" and Enid Starkie's "Rimbaud". Yet, once he discovered Rimbaud, Miller became obsessed with the poet's life and writing. "I . . . could talk of nothing but Rimbaud. Everybody who came to [my] house had to listen to the song of Rimbaud . . . " The result of this obsession was "The Time of the Assassins", a complex, brilliant and imaginative reading of the connection between Rimbaud's poetry and the engima of his life. Rimbaud is one of literature's most fascinating figures. In less than four short years, before reaching the age of twenty, he articulated a radical new view of the role of the poet, wrote poems of startling imagination (including "Le Bateau Ivre", "Une Saison en Enfer" and "Illuminations") and lived a life of archetypal bohemian rebellion. Rimbaud, in these few years, became the precursor of both French symbolism and other literary modernisms. For Miller, Rimbaud "is the father of many schools and the parent of none. It is his unique use of the symbol................" Miller, in brilliant style and with penetrating imagination, explores the foundational importance of the symbol in Rimbaud's poetry and the way in which Rimbaud, by turning his back on the writing of poetry after completing "Une Saison en Enfer", made his own life a symbol. In effect, Rimbaud's renunciation of the life of the poet made him a "living suicide". Miller links this act to a broader poetic theory which he draws from Rimbaud--that poetry no longer has efficacy in the modern world: "At the very beginning of his career he understood what others understand at the end, if at all, ............. " Rimbaud, rather than allow the purity of his poetic vision to be compromised, chose "a new form of madness--the desire for total adaptation, total conformity." By doing so, Miller suggests, Rimbaud lives the purity of a vision which can no longer be written: the poetic work becomes the poet's life; "Une Saison en Enfer" becomes Rimbaud's living hell. Miller's book is an original, penetrating and brilliant interpretation of Rimbaud's life and a wonderful complement to Enid Starkie's biography.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on Rimbaud in the english language, March 19, 2006

By 

Matthew L. Norman (Houghton, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud (Paperback)

It's true, Henry Miller was no Rimbaud, but maybe for that very reason he spent much of his life grappling with Rimbaud. This book, written later in Miller's life, has something forced about it, as if Miller realized this was a book he had to write but still didn't feel up to doing Rimbaud justice. Still, at times it reaches a pitch of passionate appreciation that transcends criticism or explanation, and shows that, though he couldn't quite put it in words, Miller's soul felt a deep and abiding debt to the great Rimbaud. Miller was no Rimbaud, but he's as close in spirit and intensity as this nation has produced.