Born into a middle-class family in Charleville, France, Arthur Rimbaud wrote all of his poems between the ages of 16 and 21. Despite the short time frame, his work--as part of the Decadents movement in France--has had a pervasive impact on literature, art and music, even into contemporary times. Rimbaud was considered a prodigy as a child, displaying behavior beyond his years, which included his facility with language. His father left the family when Rimbaud was only 6 and he was left to be raised by his strict Catholic mother. As a teen his behavior changed drastically--he grew his hair long, began drinking heavily, and wrote scatological poems. He had a short affair with poet Paul Verlaine who ultimately shot Rimbaud and went to prison for the crime. After a period of travel to three continents, Rimbaud came back to France where he died in a Marseille hospital after a leg amputation.
L'Aube
J'ai embrassé l'aube d'été.
Rien ne bougeait encore au front des palais. L'eau était morte. Les camps d'ombre ne quittaient pas la route du bois. J'ai marché, réveillant les haleines vives et tièdes, et les pierreries regardèrent, et les ailes se levèrent sans bruit.
La première entreprise fut, dans le sentier déjà empli de frais et blêmes éclats, une fleur qui me dit son nom.
Je ris au wasserfall blond qui s'échevela à travers les sapins : à las cime argentée je reconnus la déesse.
Alors je levai un à un les voiles. Dans l'allée, en agitant les bras. Par la plaine, où je l'ai dénoncé au coq.
À la grand'ville elle fuyait parmi les clochers et les dômes, et courant comme un mendiant sur les quais de marbre, je la chassais.
En haut de la route, près d'un bois de lauriers, je l'ai entourée avec ses voiles amassés, et j'ai senti un peu son immense corps. L'aube et l'enfant tombèrent au bas du bois.
Au réveil il était midi.
Voyelles
A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,
Golfes d`ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers, rois blancs, frissons d`ombelles;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;
U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d`animaux,
paix des rides Que l`alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;
O, suprême clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges:
- O, l`Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux!
Rimbaud wrote all of his poems between 15 and 21. From an early age he mastered the art of mimicry and could copy the poetic stylings of the great French poets. He also studied Greek and Latin. After the start of the Franco-Prussian war, Rimbaud became a "vagabond," leaving home with no money, and his rebellion took an artistic direction as he searched for radically different forms of expression. Rimbaud believed that poetry could change life even when politics failed, and his work shows an attempt to revolutionize poetry and the public. Not everyone was receptive, however, and when Rimbaud's work brought sex and the street to poetry the result was that some of his work was banned. Part of his aesthetic was to attain newness of language through "a deliberate derangement of the senses" through alcohol, drugs, solitude, sickness, sleep deprivation and sexual experience. Rimbaud's poem "Voyelles" demonstrates Rimbaud's genius because it is perhaps the only Western poem that presents vowels as individual parts for the readers' consideration. The poem uses literary synesthesia to create a magical and mystical tone.
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