RIMBAUD IN THE SORBONNE
731
Etiemble's style than from the 'evidence' he has accumulated, one feels
he
is
put out by any kind of attention given to Rimbaud.
On
the one hand are the facts of Rimbaud's life: his precociousness
as a poet at fourteen; the revolt he waged against his family, his city
and all bourgeois standards; his study of occult sciences; his flair for
shocking; his vagabond life with Verlaine; his denunciation of ration–
alism; his poetic work with its important innovations in the art of the
prose poem; his flight from Europe and existence of adventurer mer–
chant in Mrica; his agonized return to France and death in the Mar–
seille hospital. It would be difficult to find a poet's life more susceptible
than Rimbaud's of varying interpretations, more capable of engendering
an entire body of legend. The contribution of Etiemble to Rimbaud
scholarship is to confirm what already seems truthful concerning Rim–
baud and to complete, as far as possible, the work of extirpating the
false from the true. Already, for example, the precociousness of Rim–
baud as poet had been confirmed, but the originality of the early poems
had been seriously questioned. The struggle he waged with his mother
and immediate surroundings is certainly a fact, but there is nothing so
vastly extraordinary about his revolt. Most boys would have behaved in
the same way, given the same conditions. The extent of his readings in
occultism was radically modified once the list of books in the public
library of Charleville was established. His sullenness and unbearable be–
havior in literary groups in Paris might easily have masked the typical
timidity and gaucherie of a young fellow from the provinces. The only
real documents existing on Rimbaud's life with Verlaine are the writ–
ings of the two poets themselves. What remains of Rimbaud after all
the errors have been rectified and the disguises removed, is the poet–
creator of a new work and the twenty-year-old poet who renounced
all
literary activity and who held to his word to the end.
M. Etiemble knows the writings of Rimbaud as well as any living
critic. The value of his thesis, once it is published (the first volume is
due in December 1952) will be not so much the denunciation of the
errors concerning Rimbaud as the study of the genesis of those errors and
the particular ways in which they were propagated. At the poet's death,
his sister and brother-in-law were largely instrumental in disseminating
an account of Rimbaud's death and of his conversion
in extremis.
The
~
BLOMSHIELD
....
Private Instruction
*
Painting
*
Drawing
Small evening groups
for beginners
*
340 E.
63 STREET, N. Y. 21
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TE 8-4149
