Editing Arthur Rimbaud (section)

== Poetry ==
The first known poems of Arthur Rimbaud mostly emulated the style of the ''[[Parnassianism|Parnasse]]'' school and other famous contemporary poets like [[Victor Hugo]], although he quickly developed an original approach, both thematically and stylistically (in particular by mixing profane words and ideas with sophisticated verse, as in "''Vénus Anadyomène''", "''Oraison du soir''" or "''Les chercheuses de poux''"). Later on, Rimbaud was prominently inspired by the work of [[Charles Baudelaire]]. This inspiration would help him create a style of poetry later labeled as [[Symbolism (movement)|symbolist]].<ref>{{cite book|first1=Scott|last1=Haine|title=The History of France|publisher=[[Greenwood Press]]|location=Santa Barbara, California|isbn=0-313-30328-2|pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyoffrance00hain/page/112 112]|edition=1st|date=2000|url=https://archive.org/details/historyoffrance00hain/page/112}}</ref>

In May 1871, aged 16, Rimbaud wrote two letters explaining his poetic philosophy, commonly called the ''Lettres du voyant'' ("Letters of the Seer"). In the first, written 13 May to Izambard, Rimbaud explained:

{{blockquote|I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.{{sfn|Robb|2000|pp=79–80}}<ref>"[http://abardel.free.fr/petite_anthologie/lettre_du_voyant_panorama.htm#annexe Lettre à Georges Izambard du 13 mai 1871]". Abelard.free.fr. Retrieved on May 12, 2011.</ref>}}

The second letter, written on 15 May—before his first trip to Paris—to his friend Paul Demeny, expounded his revolutionary theories about poetry and life, while also denouncing some of the most famous poets that preceded him (reserving a particularly harsh criticism for [[Alfred de Musset]], while holding [[Charles Baudelaire]] in high regard, although, according to Rimbaud, his vision was hampered by a too conventional style). Wishing for new poetic forms and ideas, he wrote:

{{blockquote|I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable torture during which he needs all his faith and superhuman strength, and during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed—and the great learned one!—among men.—For he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his own soul—which was rich to begin with—more than any other man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die charging through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come; they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed!{{sfn|Kwasny|2004|p=147}}<ref>"[http://abardel.free.fr/tout_rimbaud/lettres_1871.htm#lettre_demeny_15_mai_1871 A Paul Demeny, 15 mai 1871] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110525172945/http://abardel.free.fr/tout_rimbaud/lettres_1871.htm#lettre_demeny_15_mai_1871 |date=25 May 2011 }}". Abelard.free.fr. Retrieved on 12 May 2011.</ref>}}

[[File:P1110482 Paris VI rue Ferou le bateau ivre rwk.JPG|thumb|The poem ''Le Bateau ivre'' on a wall in Paris]]

Rimbaud expounded the same ideas in his poem "''Le Bateau ivre''" ("[[Le Bateau ivre|The Drunken Boat]]"). This hundred-line poem tells the tale of a boat that breaks free of human society when its handlers are killed by "Redskins" (''Peaux-Rouges''). At first, thinking that it is drifting where it pleases, the boat soon realizes that it is being guided by and to the "poem of the sea". It sees visions both magnificent ("the awakening blue and yellow of singing phosphores", "''l'éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs''") and disgusting ("nets where in the reeds an entire Leviathan was rotting" "''nasses / Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan''"). It ends floating and washed clean, wishing only to sink and become one with the sea.

[[Archibald MacLeish]] has commented on this poem: "Anyone who doubts that poetry can say what prose cannot has only to read the so-called ''Lettres du Voyant'' and ''Bateau ivre'' together. What is pretentious and adolescent in the ''Lettres'' is true in the poem—''unanswerably'' true."{{sfn|MacLeish|1965|p=147}}

While "''Le Bateau ivre''" was still written in a mostly conventional style, despite its inventions, his later poems from 1872 (commonly called ''Derniers vers'' or ''Vers nouveaux et chansons'', although he did not give them a title) further deconstructed the French verse, introducing odd rhythms and loose rhyming schemes, with even more abstract and flimsy themes.<ref>Antoine Adam, « Notices, Notes et variantes », in ''Œuvres complètes'', Gallimard, coll. « Bibliothèque de la Pléiade », 1988, p. 924-926.</ref>

After ''Une saison en enfer'', his "prodigious psychological biography written in this diamond prose which is his exclusive property" (according to Paul Verlaine<ref>Quoted in Rodolphe Darzens' preface of the 1891 edition of Arthur Rimbaud's ''Poésies'', page XI (original source not provided). « Et alors, en mai 1886, une découverte inespérée, ma foi, presque incroyable; celle de l'unique plaquette publiée par Arthur Rimbaud de la ''Saison en Enfer'', « espèce de prodigieuse autobiographie psychologique écrite dans cette prose de diamant qui est sa propriété exclusive », s'exclame Paul Verlaine. »</ref>), a poetic prose in which he himself commented some of his verse poems from 1872, and the perceived failure of his own past endeavours ("''Alchimie du verbe''"), he went on to write the prose poems known as ''[[Illuminations (poetry collection)|Illuminations]]'',{{refn|Although it remains uncertain if he wrote at least parts of ''Illuminations'' before ''Une saison en enfer''. Albert Camus in ''L'homme révolté'' claims that this is irrelevant, for those two major works were "suffered in the same time", regardless of when they were each actually executed.|group=n}} forfeiting preconceived structures altogether to explore hitherto unused resources of poetic language, bestowing most of the pieces with a disjointed, hallucinatory, dreamlike quality.<ref>Arthur Rimbaud (1957). "Introduction". ''Illuminations'', and other prose poems. Translated by Louise Varèse. New York: New Directions Publishing. p. XII.</ref> Rimbaud died without the benefit of knowing that his manuscripts not only had been published but were lauded and studied, having finally gained the recognition for which he had striven.<ref>Peyre, Henri, Foreword, ''A Season in Hell'' and ''Illuminations'' by Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Enid Rhodes, New York: Oxford, 1973, p. 14-15, 19–21.</ref>

Then he stopped writing poetry altogether. His friend Ernest Delahaye, in a letter to Paul Verlaine around 1875, claimed that he had completely forgotten about his past self writing poetry.{{refn|« Des vers de lui ? Il y a beau temps que sa verve est à plat. Je crois même qu'il ne se souvient plus du tout d'en avoir fait. »|group=n}} French poet and scholar [[Gérard Macé]] wrote: "Rimbaud is, first and foremost, this silence that can't be forgotten, and which, for anyone attempting to write themselves, is there, haunting. He even forbids us to fall into silence; because he did, this, better than anyone."<ref>Alain Borer, ''Rimbaud en Abyssinie'', Seuil, 1984, p. 358. « Rimbaud, c'est surtout ce silence qu'on ne peut oublier et qui, quand on se mêle d'écrire soi-même, est là, obsédant. Il nous interdit même de nous taire; car il l'a fait, cela, mieux que personne. »</ref>

French poet [[Paul Valéry]] stated that "all known literature is written in the language of ''common sense''—except Rimbaud's".{{sfn|Robb|2000|p=xiv}} His poetry influenced the [[Symbolism (movement)|Symbolist]]s, [[Dadaist]]s, and [[Surrealist]]s, and later writers adopted not only some of his themes but also his inventive use of form and language.