Book Review-- Rimbaud: The Double Life Of A Rebel

Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
Author: Edmund White
Publisher: Atlas & Co., 2008
Print Price: $14.00
E-book Price: $8.96

Edmund White, by virtue of being a gay writer, seems to think he has some special bond with gay writers from the past. In addition to this short Rimbaud biography, he has also written books about Jean Genet and Marcel Proust. I don't really get the rationale behind Atlas and Harper Collins giving him these assignments. Is a homosexual author going to have more insight or be a better researcher than a heterosexual one? I guess it's neither here nor there. Rimbaud seems to have practiced a form of Freddie Mercury bisexuality anyway, so White isn't entirely in his self-appointed element in The Double Life. And while I'm thinking of that title, what did White mean exactly by "The Double Life" part of his title? Was he addressing Rimbaud's bi-polar sexuality, or Rimbaud's aspirations to be a deranged poet and a rich businessman in a self-defeating parallelogram thesis of living that ultimately destroyed him? Or was it the combination of a whining child in the body of a gawky teenager with the poetic talent of Shakespeare? White never really makes it clear. Pretty much everyone in Rimbaud's social sphere knew he was playing "hide the sausage" with Verlaine so you can't say the double life refers to his secret homosexuality like you could of so many celebs today.

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) seems to have always had a keen intelligence and a restless heart. Maybe he got some of this from his dad, a military officer never really suited to family life,  who left the household when Arthur was six years old and never came back. The more Rimbaud learned at school, with tutors, and books, the more he yearned to leave home and go to the bustling metropolis of Paris.

His wish finally came true when he wrote a letter to a quite famous poet of the time, Paul Verlaine, along with some of his poems. Verlaine, intrigued by the poems, invited Rimbaud to come stay with him and his young wife in Paris. It would change the lives of both poets.

Rimbaud is seated second from the left. The balding dude to his left is Verlaine

Much to the shock and dismay of  Verlaine's young and very pregnant wife, Verlaine's friendship with Rimbaud fast becomes a more carnal one. Rimbaud's "philosophy" of poetry was to derange all the senses, to experience all the extremes of life in order to become a "seer. He dragged Verlaine into it as well. The two went on epic drinking and drug binges that alienated their other friends and Verlaine even started to abuse his wife. But during this debauchery, they were also writing poems. Great poems. It's a pattern that repeated itself during Rimbaud's poetry writing years, which were essentially over by the time he was 21. At that point, he gave up writing for good, and decided that he wanted a job where he could make money. Rimbaud spent the rest of his brief life working in the Middle East and Africa until he died at the age of 37 from cancer. In all that time, he never wanted to talk about his years in Paris, and only scoffed if someone brought up his literary efforts. It's sad really, that one of the greatest of French poets ended up grading and sorting coffee beans, and totally poo pooing his own poems as the work of a child.

The copy on the back of this book states in a rather sensationalistic style that "Edmund White dares to decipher the elusive themes of sexual taboo that haunt Rimbaud's works...". Are you serious? He "DARES"? Is being gay really still such a big thing in our society? Well, I guess it is for old people like Edmund White. DARES? Come on. Is anybody still shocked that Rimbaud and Verlaine were lovers, almost 150 years later? Like this is news to anyone not familiar with either man? The real taboo to me is the AGES of the two men. Verlaine would have been 27 and Rimbaud 17 when things got sexual between them. That would be prosecuted as rape in our country.

The saddest thing about Rimbaud's life was how many poets and other artistic types have killed themselves trying to live up to his ideal of "deranging" all the senses. Rimbaud was to me at least the first writer that set up this whole romantic idea of hard drinking, hard sex, hard living, and drugs out the wazoo being necessities for artistic creativity. Jim Morrison of the Doors was a big fan of Rimbaud and we all know how HE ended up. How many creative college students are out there right now reading Rimbaud's poems and thinking "oh, so I have to drink this or take this drug in order to create"?  I will say this about Rimbaud. At some point, he knew when to stop. I think he just got bored of the dress-up game that being an artist was to him. In another life, he would have been a rockstar that retired at the height of his fame. It's a shame that arty types don't look at the fact that he only lived the wild life for a couple of years before leaving it all behind for a steady job.

My Grade: B+