I’ve preached before about the importance of reading outside your comfort zone. While usually that advice was directed at new writers, it’s a good idea for all of us not to turn too quickly away from the less familiar shelves in the bookstore.
One of my own literary blind spots is poetry. While I appreciate and enjoy “poetic prose” (and there’s a vague term for you), and have a great fondness for a well-turned phrase, straight verse has always been something of a mystery to me. I don’t read it, write it, or edit it. So, while it’s not technically poetry itself, Edmund White‘s Rimbaud: Double Life of a Rebel, published earlier this year by Atlantic Books, looked like a good opportunity for me to place at least a toe outside of my own prosaic comfort zone, and start to read around the genre a little.
Rimbaud is a brief biography, around two hundred pages. In fact, it was originally published in the US as part of the Atlas & Co series of author biographies—think the Hesperus Brief Lives, but written by established writers in their own right, told from a slightly more personal angle. Here, for example, Edmund White draws parallels between Rimbaud’s early rebelious nature and sexuality, and his own, tracing the impact of the French poet on his own personal development. This might leave the book open to accusations of subjectivity, but it’s actually what gives it value: we already have biographies of Rimbaud, which are quoted and recommended in White’s text. Here, at the same time as reading the key facts of Rimbaud’s life, we also witness the impact he had on Edmund White a century later.
Rimbaud himself seems to have been a thoroughly unpleasant type, abusive to everybody around him to a pathological degree—he was cruel in his relationship with Verlaine, and frequently attacked those who tried to help him (he was thrown out of one house after using a magazine that had just printed his host’s work as toilet paper). It might have been good to have more investigation of the reasons behind Rimbaud’s more extreme personality traits, but Edmund White is a writer rather than a psychologist, and the role of this book is therefore to examine the relationship between the writer and his work, which he does very well.
I’d be curious to see some more titles from this series, which seems to be a split-off from the HarperCollins Eminent Lives series, so let’s hope that Atlantic bring more titles over to the UK. In the meantime, Edmund White’s Rimbaud provides a good solid background to the poet’s work, which is just what I need if I’m to delve further… or maybe I’ll stick to the poet biographies, and leave the stuff itself to the poets.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
I read a biography of Rimbaud by Graham Robb several years ago which was quite good. I love to read poetry. I have even published some of my own locally and won an honorable mention in a national contest. Poetry is lovely but without a classical education, which you don’t find in the U.S., it can be pretty obscure.
As for Rimbaud he was quite a character. I have his poetry and letters as well.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Hi Candy,
Yes – I think the Robb biography is the one that White talks about in this book. There are some quotes from it as well, and it looks like interesting reading.
I do understand the concepts behind poetry, and I can even appreciate a well written poem, but I’m suspicious of the genre somehow. Perhaps I’m over-thinking it, or maybe it really just isn’t to my taste. Still, I’ll keep approaching it from time to time, and from different angles, to see if something clicks.
Congratulations on the honorable mention, by the way.
April 3rd, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Rob, this is a totally silly question but don’t you think he looks like Ben Affleck?
April 3rd, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Now you mention it, there is something familiar about the little face / long head combination…
April 6th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Well, if White’s bio of Proust is anything to go by this will be a good read. Thanks for your review.
My attention was first drawn to Rimbaud during a visit to his home town, Charleville Mezzieres in the Ardennes where there are various memorials – I suspect the good citizens of that town do not major on his private life!
April 6th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Hi Tom,
Yes, it’s certainly a good read. I’m curious about the Proust biography now too…
April 6th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
A Proust bio – must get on that.
April 28th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Hee hee – he does look like Affleck! Now that Candy has mentioned it, I can see I’ve been thinking that for a long time without ever managing to articulate it, even to myself.
How fortunate that Affleck did not die at Rimbaud’s young age and survived to give us such treats as Gigli and … well, OK, he’s been in a couple of good things lately.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:06 am
I think the most recent thing I’ve seen him in was Chasing Amy… Oh, wait, there was, um, Paycheck.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I was thinking of State of Play – apparently OK, though not a patch probably on the BBC series – and didn’t he direct a film recently which was supposed to be good?
Anyway, in the absence of any knowledge of Rimbaud or his work, let me share an anecdote which I hope is apocryphal. Eric Cantona, the great, ahum, philosopher-footballer manqué, was once asked in an interview what people he admired. One of the people he named was Rimbaud. At his next match, some fans turned up in ripped vests and headbands. Dressed, in other words, as Rambo.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
A cursory google suggests that this indeed apocryphal. Apparently what happened was that a Sun reporter asked Cantona who his influences were and he replied, “Rimbaud.” Next day the paper had a photoshopped image of Cantona, oiled up and stripped to the waist.
I hope that one’s not apocryphal too.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Wonderful story!
I looked Affleck up on IMDb. I had no idea he’d been so… busy.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I don’t know about Cantona but I have heard the Rimbaud-Rambo mix-up before, in an interview with William S. Burroughs.
There’s a brilliant biography (of Rimbaud, not the other one) by Enid Starkie. Written sixty years ago, but still powerful stuff.