724
PARTISAN REVIEW
The thesis bears not on the works of Rimbaud, but on his com–
mentators who are legion.
In
a fragment of
his
thesis, published in
Temps Modernes
for January 1952, Etiemble calls the genre he is at–
tacking "mythistory." What characterizes the literary myths of Rimbaud
is the fact that each is based on some error of interpretation of a
very
limited number of texts. For the symbolists it was particularly
Bateau
lure.
For the surrealists it was the prose work,
Un coeur sous une sou–
tane.
The Catholic myth of Rimbaud's death-bed conversion was prom–
ulgated by his sister Isabelle, but Etiemble points out that another wit–
ness, Ries, claims the poet died with blasphemy on his lips. More im–
portant than these contradictory stories, is the large myth of Rimbaud
which Etiemble sees as a completely organized religion, with its forms
of worship, its ceremonies, its sacred books, its sacred interpretations.
The use of the scholastic term
aseity,
meaning the quality of belonging
to what is by itself (God), in a poem on Rimbaud by Louis de Gon–
zague-Frick, is a convincing proof to Etiemble that a new religion has
been formed around Rimbaud. He calls the eye-witnesses of the poet's
life the "evangelists": Verlaine, Isabelle the sister, her husband Paterne
Berrichon, a school friend Ernest Delahaye. They were responsible for
the first lies, for the method by which each school in turn has appro–
priated Rimbaud; symbolists, surrealists, Fascists, Communists, existen–
tialists.
The interpretations of the "sacred" texts have played an important
part in the development of such myths. The meaning of the word,
illumination,
for example, and of the phrase,
Ie est un autre.
Finally,
when Rimbaud has been treated as demon, angel, magician, prophet,
nothing human remains. Rimbaud is a god. This is the result, for
Etiemble, of the curious combination of hagiography and scandal char–
acterizing the works of Rimbaud. He insists that a new religion has
been
born which is one manifestation of the mysticism impairing the intelli–
gence of our period, and which equates the name of Rimbaud with that
of Hitler, Stalin, Father Divine. Etiemble's inquisition spares no one.
He disapproves especially of the Catholic interpretation, the writings of
such men as Daniel-Rops and Claude!.
On the whole, the members of the jury manifested a profound
re–
spect for Etiemble and for the extent of his knowledge, for his powers
of destruction. At one moment, M. Levaillant, realizing the candidate's
passion for truth, quoted;
Amicus Plato, sed magis amica ueritas.
M.
Dedeyan, the Sorbonne professor of comparative literature, reminded
Etiemble that he had claimed the birth today of other literary myths:
Lorca, T. E. Lawrence, Genet, Artaud, and asked whether Lautreamont
