POETRY AND M. MARITAIN
409
Consciously continuing the work of Poe and Baudelaire in
revolutionizing the making of poetry through the translation of
divine into human powers, Rimbaud carries the process into the
inevitable problem of the identity of the poet- and halts his specu–
lation at the exact point where the searching and testing intellect
can go no farther: the scientific limit. The metaphysician leaps for–
ward to "things," that is, to
words
such as those mentioned by Poe.
But to Rimbaud the other "I" is indefinable,
though
it
can
be
affected in precise ways.
And once again in Rimbaud's "alchemy of the word," modern
poetry seeks to link individual inspiration with the creative fer–
ment of the collective mind-its language is to be made of "vieil–
lerie poetique," the folks' own dreaming, unconscious objective
poetry, "poetry made by everybody," in the meaning of Lautre–
amont, that other evil angel of Maritain's dark night.
Rimbaud forsook poetry, Maritain maintains, he "revenged
himself" upon it, because of the disparity between its humble
capacities as art and its monstrous demands as spirit. The anti–
angelic doctor here reaches the crux of his argument: the neces–
sary rejection of art by soul. But how can this be proved by means
of a biographical event? What we know of Rimbaud shows that
he gave up poetry with unequalled finality, as a scientific prag–
matist might reject an aim because the means of realizing it are
too _costly. It is remarkable how clearly his life in Africa shows
that this poet was
not
pursued by poetry, like those to whom it is a
spirit, that is, an indefinite urge. It is as if Rimbaud were to such
a degree capable of absorbing himself in objective disciplines that
he could satisfy himself with, or completely abominate, one prac–
tice as another. "I have a horror of all callings," he declares in
the opening pages of
Une Saison en Enfers,
returning to his old
theme of work. "The hand with the pen is worth as much as the
hand with the plough." Poetry, magic sacraments-or money–
making, politics, the trades: each to him is a technique. From the
East he writes home impatiently for manuals on this or that
mechanical process. Like his contemporaries the Russian Nihilist
students, who made bombs in their kitchen sinks by following step
by
step some treatise on explosives, Rimbaud's faith in the effi–
ciency of intellect is unlimited. Theorists who, like Maritain,
interpret his career solely as the flight and plunge of a soul neglect
