Author's Note: This article was meant for MARSocial until I found out they were a bunch of phonies. The leaders, anyway. They promised me a place in the Las Vegas Guardian but the whole thing was a lie. I'm glad I figured it out when I did. Otherwise, ye gods, I'd be screwed. It's bad enough they have three articles I never saw a dime for.
A
man once asked me why Arthur Rimbaud is so important. I cannot answer that, not
for everyone. I can say he invented free-verse and had the strength not to
hide, as many of us do, his true nature as did many of his peers. It is fair to
say he was one of poetries’ first non-phonies and even today, especially today,
those are few and far between. That makes him important to me. What also makes
him important to me is that fact that he was raised by an overbearing,
Victorian-strict mother. Hence he is a kindred spirit. At a very young age he
decided not to put up with this nonsense any longer, and struck out on his own.
The sixteen year old vagabond was more than just that—he was a fountain of
brilliance.
Notice
brought him more that quick fame, it brought him into a society he found to be
stuffy and fake. Society found him to be talented yet pervasive and unstable.
When he was not writing or drinking he busied himself telling people just
exactly what he thought of them—that they were conformist cowards. Or, as he
much more eloquently noted in A Season in
Hell:
“One
night, I sat beauty in my lap—and I found her galling—And I roughed her up.
“I
armed myself against justice.”
Various
forms of these lines can be found in today’s rock music. Whether or not these
lyricists know it is incidental. But lines such as “You can’t see California
without Marlon Brando’s eyes” from Corey Taylor, (“Slipknot”, 1999) and “I’m
not crazy, you’re the one who’s crazy” from Mike Muir, of the eighties
post-punk band “Suicidal Tendencies” reflect the influence young, misunderstood
and explosive Rimbaud has had down the ages, a bullet wound in his hand or not.
This,
from Hellish Night:
“And that poison, that kiss a thousand times
damned! My weakness, the world's cruelty! My God, mercy, hide me, I always
misbehave!—I'm hidden and then again I'm not.“It's the fire flaring up again with its damned!”
I believe this young man spent more time tearing his hair out than he did writing. I find him incredibly important due to the fact that he did not mind spitting in one’s face with not saliva but the intoxicating, tear-jerking absinthe of words. All of his poetry paints a portrait of himself, a youth on the edge, full of loathing and worse, self-loathing, hating who he is because he cannot be one of the conforming normal and then channeling that self-loathing into hatred of society so he tossed books and wine glasses at the people saying, in a nut:
“Here I am! If you do not like it, you can suck my ink! Drown in it as I do, you cowards!”
So back to the original question: Why is Rimbaud so important?
He had more courage than the many, biting the butts of their rifles even in the face of certain ostracism, if not worse. He died at thirty-seven, having not written anything except letters for almost twenty years, and I do not blame him. He understood what I understand. His free-verse was a waste of time. No one understands anything free. They only fear it.
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