Download PDF Rimbaud en Abyssinie Fiction Cie French Edition Alain Borer 9782020069915 Books

Product details Series Fiction & Cie Paperback 381 pages Publisher Seuil (1984) Language French ISBN-10 2020069911

Rimbaud en Abyssinie Fiction Cie French Edition Alain Borer 9782020069915 Books Reviews

• Arthur Rimbaud, one of the most famous, and tragic of French poets, was born and raised in Charleville, in the Ardennes region of northeastern France. His father deserted the family, and his mother raised him in a strict Catholic environment. When he decided to "cut loose," as others have under rigid home environments, he went to "extremes." He may have been involved in the Commune, during the siege of 1871, and he became a lover of another famous French poet, Paul Verlaine. It was a tumultuous affair, and eventually Verlaine shot and wounded Rimbaud. Ultimately, like a lot of governments, he decided to take his mind off his domestic problems, and sought a foreign adventure. And there too, he went to extremes, enlisting in the Dutch Army, deserting in Java, working his way to Aden, and eventually getting about as far away from "civilization" as possible, setting up as a businessman in Harar, in modern day Ethiopia, then known as Abyssinia.
  
  Almost all of Rimbaud's significant writing had already been accomplished, and little is known of his life there, no doubt, as Rimbaud intended. He lived almost 10 years in Harar. The strength of this book is the original research performed, in Harar, by Alain Borer, who arrived there 97 years after Rimbaud, and at the same age. He interviewed numerous individuals whose parents may have known Rimbaud. He determined that he was good friends with the father of Haile Selassie. Borer sums up the Ogeden region, in which Harar is located, by quoting Faulkner, though not attributing it to him, in saying "They lived in a suspended time; the past was not dead, it was not even the past." (p 71). Underscoring the significance of Rimbaud's work and life to a later generation, the author stated that Bob Dylan had fulfilled a 20 year wish by visiting the poet's grave in Charleville, and prefaces the chapter by quoting from Dylan's song, "Like a Rolling Stone," parts of which clearly describe Rimbaud's life.
  
  The author also followed Rimaud's trail into Egypt, going to Luxor, and discovering the word "Rimaud," etched high on a column. It remains unclear whether it was the poet's work, or that of an admirer. Rimaud died in a hospital in Marsailles, at the age of 37, struck down by cancer. Much of his life in Harar will always be unknown, and Borer indicates that in his conclusion, by stating that there is a single Rimbaud, but he is two times great as a poet, and by his silence.