Arthur Rimbaud

Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet whose work, marked by transgressive and surreal themes, helped shape modern literature and art and anticipated surrealism. He was born in Charleville, showed early talent as a writer, and was an outstanding student, but he left school in his teens to flee to Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Most of his literary work was produced in his late adolescence and early adulthood. At age twenty, after completing his final major work, *Illuminations*, he stopped writing entirely.

Rimbaud was a libertine and restless spirit, involved in a turbulent, sometimes violent romantic relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine that lasted nearly two years. After giving up writing, he spent years traveling across three continents as a merchant and explorer. He died of cancer just after his thirty-seventh birthday. As a poet, he is noted for his role in symbolism and for works like *A Season in Hell*, a forerunner of modernist literature.

**Life**

**Family and childhood (1854–1861)** Arthur Rimbaud was born in Charleville (now part of Charleville-Mézières) in the Ardennes department of northeastern France, the second child of Frédéric Rimbaud and Marie Catherine Vitalie Rimbaud (née Cuif). His father, a Burgundian of Provençal background, was an infantry captain who had risen through the ranks and spent much of his career abroad, including participating in the conquest of Algeria from 1844 to 1850. In 1854 he received the Legion of Honor by imperial decree. Described as good-tempered, easy-going, and generous, he had the long moustache and goatee of a Chasseur officer.

In October 1852, Captain Rimbaud, then 38, was transferred to Mézières, where he met Vitalie Cuif, eleven years his junior, during a Sunday walk. She came from a well-established Ardennais family that included some bohemian members—two of her brothers were alcoholics. Her personality was the opposite of her husband’s: she was reportedly narrow-minded, stingy, and completely lacking a sense of humor. Early biographer Charles Houin found her withdrawn, stubborn, and taciturn. Arthur Rimbaud privately called her “Mouth of Darkness” and the anglicism “La Mother.”

The couple married on 8 February 1853. Their first child, Jean Nicolas Frédéric, was born nine months later on 2 November. Arthur followed on 20 October 1854. Three more children were born: Victorine-Pauline-Vitalie (4 June 1857, died a few weeks later), Jeanne-Rosalie-Vitalie (15 June 1858), and Frédérique Marie Isabelle (1 June 1860). Although the marriage lasted seven years, Captain Rimbaud lived in the family home for less than three months total, from February to May 1853. His military postings—including active service in the Crimean War and the Sardinian Campaign, for which he earned medals—kept him away, and he returned to Charleville only on leave. He was absent for his children’s births and baptisms. After Isabelle’s birth in 1860, he stopped returning home on leave altogether. The couple never divorced, but the separation was complete; Madame Rimbaud thereafter called herself “widow Rimbaud,” and the captain described himself as a widower. Neither he nor his children made any effort to reconnect.

**Schooling and teen years (1861–1871)** Worried that her children were being overly influenced by poor neighborhood children, Madame Rimbaud moved the family to the Cours d’Orléans in 1862, a better area. The boys, now nine and eight, who had been taught at home by their mother, were sent to the Pension Rossat, an old but respected school. During their five years there, their mother continued to push them toward scholastic success, punishing them by making them memorize a hundred lines of Latin verse and depriving them of meals for mistakes. At age nine, Arthur wrote a 700-word essay objecting to learning Latin, condemning classical education as merely a path to a salaried job, and repeatedly wrote, “I will be a rentier.” He disliked schoolwork and resented his mother’s constant supervision; the children were not allowed out of her sight, and she walked them home from school until they were fifteen and sixteen.

As a boy, Rimbaud was small and pale with light brown hair. His lifelong best friend, Ernest Delahaye, described his eyes as “pale blue irradiated with dark blue—the loveliest eyes I’ve seen.” An ardent Catholic like his mother, he made his First Communion at eleven, earning the schoolyard nickname “sale petit Cagot.” That year, he and his brother entered the Collège de Charleville. Until then, his reading had been mostly the Bible, along with fairy tales and adventure stories by James Fenimore Cooper and Gustave Aimard. At the Collège, he became a top student, leading his class in all subjects except math and sciences; his teachers noted his ability to absorb large amounts of material. In 1869, he won eight first prizes in French academic competitions, including Religious Education, and the following year won seven first prizes. Hoping for a bri...