tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post6662878780043045199..comments2024-03-27T13:13:25.164-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: Rimbaud by Edmund Whitejohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-1361629099600964462009-07-12T12:39:48.181-04:002009-07-12T12:39:48.181-04:00Rimbaud; The Double Life of a Rebel by Edmund Whit...Rimbaud; The Double Life of a Rebel by Edmund White; Atlas and Company. N.Y., 2008<br /><br />"As an unhappy gay adolescent, stifled by boredom and sexual frustration and paralyzed by self-hatred, I longed to run away to New York and make my mark as a writer; I identified completely with Rimbaud's desire to be free, to be published, to be sexual, to go to Paris. All I lacked was his courage. And genius.<br /><br />I crammed all my homework into the afternoons, when most of the other boys were playing sports. That way I was free during the two- hour compulsory study hall in the evening to work on my novel. I wrote one novel, then a second. My mother, ever indulgent, asked her secretary to type them up from my neat handwritten pages. My idea was that I would send them off to a New York publishers, have them accepted and make a fortune- and flee. I'd cast aside both my parental households, liberate myself from their money, quit my school and move to New York! I imagined an older man would fall in love with me and do everything for me.<br /><br />For some reason I never sent off my manuscripts. Maybe I didn't know where to mail them; after all, I'd never met a published writer, nor did such a fabulous creature seem to inhabit our Midwestern world, anymore than a unicorn might suddenly gallop past my dorm window. Or maybe I was afraid that my book would be accepted, that it would be published, that I would have to live out my fantasies- and the notion of answered prayers I found even more alarming than a continuation of my dependence and frustration. <br /><br />After all, in Rimbaud's nineteenth century Catholic village, a homosexual might have been a sinner or a criminal, but in the Freudian 1950's in America, he was sick and in urgent need of treatment. As sinner might insist he wanted to be a Prodigal Son, a criminal might want to be irredeemable, but no one could fight for the right to be sick.... <br /><br />I found the Rimbaud myth to be at once puzzling and exciting."johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-77231531090934263622009-07-12T12:37:26.549-04:002009-07-12T12:37:26.549-04:00Soon almost every cause and school and movement, s...Soon almost every cause and school and movement, serious or frivolous, popular or classical, was embracing Rimbaud. At one extreme were the Catholics, led by Isabelle Rimbaud and Paul Claudel, the great religious poet and playwright ( "The Annunciation Made to Mary"). At the other extreme were the Surrealists who, starting in the 1920's, declared Rimbaud one of their formative influences and precursors. <br /><br />By 1961 a two-volume work in French was published called "The Myth of Rimbaud" ( Le mythe de Rimbaud). Just a glance at the index reveals that a virtual library of thesis and scholarly articles and critical books had already been devoted to Rimbaud the Symbolist, Rimbaud the Decadent, Rimbaud the Surrealist, Rimbaud the Cabbalist, Rimbaud the Magician, Rimbaud the Saint, Rimbaud the Fascist, Rimbaud the French Patriiot, Rimbaud the Communard, Rimbaud the Bolshevist, Rimbaud the Honest Bourgeois, Rimbaud the Voice of the Ardennes, Rimbaud the Man of Action, Rimbaud the Adventurer, Rimbaud the Thug and Rimbaud the Pervert!<br /><br />Every important thinker and artist of the last hundred years has had an opinion about Rimbaud, who continues to elude us as he streaks just ahead of our grasp on his "soles of wind" (semelles de vent).<br /><br />They say you're dead- you! May the devil<br />Take him, whoever is spreading<br />This irreparable rumor<br />Clamoring at my door!<br /><br />I don't want to believe it. Dead, you,<br />My little one, full god among the half-gods!<br />Those who are saying it are crazy-<br />Why, dead, my great radiant sin,<br /><br />You, the miracle working poem<br />And my all knowing philosophy<br />And my homeland and my bohemia,<br />All dead? Well, then. live my life!<br /><br />-Verlaine-johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com