Last fall Edmund White published a biography of Arthur Rimbaud entitled Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel, and the poet's story seems a natural fit for the author of such moving stories of homosexual awakening as A Boy's Own Story and The Beautiful Room Is Empty. White distilled a snippet of Rimbaud's famous relationship with the older poet Paul Verlaine into a piece for the Guardian earlier this month, and anyone with overly romantic notions of the young Rimbaud need only read the following pull quote:
Rimbaud was an impossible guest. He took to nude sunbathing just
outside the house. He turned his room into a squalid den. He mutilated
an heirloom crucifix. He was proud of the lice infesting his long mane
and even pretended he was encouraging the vermin to jump on to
passers-by. Verlaine was delighted with Rimbaud's antisocial antics,
which recalled to him his own younger excesses before his marriage.
Verlaine introduced Rimbaud to his friends in the cafés where they
congregated regularly. After the first encounter, one of Verlaine's
friends, Léon Valade, wrote the next day to an absent member, "You
missed a great deal by not being there. A most daring poet not yet 18
was introduced by Paul Verlaine, his inventor and in fact his John the
Baptist. Big hands, big feet, a wholly babyish face like a child of 13,
deep blue eyes! Such is this boy, whose character is more antisocial
than timid and whose imagination combines great powers with unheard-of
corruption and who has fascinated and terrified all our friends."
Good thing the boy could write. White is a such a great storyteller that even though I have already read Graham Robb's excellent (and comprehensive) biography of Rimbaud I'll probably give this new one a shot too. And I need to hit up Moe's for some volumes of gently-used poetry while I'm at it.
