Rimbaud
By: Graham Robb.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: W.W. Norton; W W Norton & Co Inc
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 551
Subjects: Rimbaud, Arthur, 1854-1891.; Poets, French -- 19th century -- Biography.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "The poet's life was stranger than any fiction: explorer, mercenary, gun runner, and companion to slave traders. Unknown beyond the avant-garde at the time of his death, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) has been one of the most destructive and liberating influences on twentieth-century culture. During his lifetime he was a bourgeois-baiting visionary, a reinventor of language and perception, a breaker of all taboos. The list of his known crimes is longer than the list of his published poems.

But his posthumous career is even more astonishing: saint to Symbolists and Surrealists; poster-child for anarchy and drug-use; gay pioneer; a major influence on such artists as Picasso, Bob Dylan, and Jim Morrison.".

"At the age of twenty-one, Rimbaud turned his back on poetry and on his own artistic achievement. For his remaining sixteen years he lived in exile, ending up as a major explorer and arms trader in Abyssinia. The genius of Graham Robb's account is to join the two "halves" of this life, to show the wild and unsettling poetry as a blueprint for the exotic adventures to come. This is the story of Rimbaud the explorer, in mind and matter."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 511-529) and index.