Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Rimbaud: A Biography by Graham Robb ISBN: 0-393-04955-8 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.76 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "I am in Hell, therefore I am."
Comment: The road to Hell has been well-travelled by many poets, including Rimbaud (1854-91), who wrote about his season there in Une Saison en Enfer (1873). Abandoned by his father when he was six (pp. 12, 156), and "marooned in a seedy neighorhood" in Charleville (p. 12), Rimbaud's biography tells the story of a tortured soul imprisoned in the ever-changing persona of a "grim-faced urchin" (p. 128), "rebel," "pagan" (p. 81), poet, "seer," "genius" (p. 126), "marriage-wrecker" (p. 156), "shabby young man" (p. 237), factory worker (p. 244), tutor (p. 262), beggar, docker (p. 269), mercenary (pp. 277-78), sailor (p. 285), explorer (p. 289), "angel in exile" (p. 289), trader (p. 315), gun runner (p. 341, Chapters 33-34), and money changer (p. 409). Rimbaud wonders, "O seasons, O castles, What soul is without fault?" (p. 158).
"I came to find my mind's disorder sacred," Rimbaud tells us (p. 154). In this 445-page "reconstruction of Rimbaud's life" (p. xviii), Graham Robb insightfully reveals how his subject's life--and stormy relationship with Paul Verlaine--provided Rimbaud "with some splendid material for his poetry" (p. 211) before he took an "agile leap into silence" (p. 240), and abandoned poetry when he was 21. For Rimbaud, the "idea was 'to see everything up close, to describe modern life with fearless precision, the way in which it warps the human being'" (p. 55).
In Robb's superb biography, it is never easy to connect with Rimbaud, the person, but as a rebel poet he is mesmerizing, even as a silent poet "disappearing over the horizon of the page" (p. 281). Although the journey may be difficult for many of Rimbaud's admirers, Robb follows Rimbaud "into the badlands of his post-poetic career" (p. 289), and to the poet's funeral no one attended in Charleville (p. 441). You will probably not find the Rimbaud you expect in Parts Three and Four of this book. It was only posthumously that Rimbaud became a Symbolist, Surrealist, Beat, revolutionary, avant-gardes poet (p. xiv).
"For now, I am damned," Rimbaud writes near the end of his raison d'etre as a poet. "I detest the fatherland. The best thing would be a good drunken sleep on the beach" (p. 231). "Rimbaud gave up writing poetry," Robb notes, "but few people, having acquired the taste, ever give up reading it" (p. xviii). And with fascinating biographies such as this, it is unlikely readers will ever lose interest in Rimbaud.
G. Merritt
Rating: 5
Summary: Finally, a biography that Rimbaud deserves
Comment: Rimbaud's life has been subjected to more myth-making and sentimental drivel than any other 19th century poet, probably because his life is such a great story. Teenage visionary turns thirtysomething gun-runner - what a headline! The great virtue of Graham Robb's biography is that he pays such close attention to the details of Rimbaud's life as it was actually lived, and doesn't allow the work, or indeed the correspondence, to dictate to him the meaning of it all.
The last great English-language Rimbaud biography was Enid Starkie's, now over forty years old, and while Starkie did massive valuable research (she later claimed, in classic biographer-rebel style, that she paid for her research by granting sexual favours to wealthy Frenchmen), her tone and approach were flawed by the temptation to rewrite Rimbaud's entire life in terms of his glittering adolescence, which was after all the time when he produced his poetry. Graham Robb combines an alert and vivid appreciation of Rimbaud's genius with a scepticism about Rimbaud's published statements about himself. This is a portrait of the artist as lifelong liar and shyster, and while Robb's Rimbaud is one of the least attractive heroes ever depicted, it seems all too true in the light of Rimbaud's withering, laser-like intelligence.
While Robb is exceptionally good at showing us the young, anti-social, utterly selfish teenage genius, you can tell from his crisp prose style and sardonic wit that while he admires the poetry, he finds the boy hard to like. This seems eminently fair in view of Rimbaud's youthful lack of any sense of gratitude, morality or decent behaviour. The older Rimbaud was more inclined to honour his obligations, but Robb convincingly demonstrates how the African Rimbaud's repeated complaints of having no money don't square up to his actual dealings with banks. It seems that Rimbaud the arms dealer was not the bungling innocent of legend, but a shrewd operator who made a considerable amount of money.
Robb's Rimbaud is a more modern figure, even a more (gulp) postmodern figure than we're used to in Rimbaud studies. This is no romantic dreamer (despite a dubious epilogue, the only false note in the book, I thought); Rimbaud seems to have dreamed the worst excesses of the 20th century before they happened, and reinvented himself as a man who could feel at home in them. It's a bracing, witty, scrupulous and searching biography of an exemplary figure - the brilliant boy who helped to create our idea of modern literature, and the brutally cynical man who regarded his early achievements as a drastically stupid dead end. The Rimbaud story will always be a fascinating and chilling cautionary tale; exactly what we're being cautioned against is only beginning to become apparent.
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent, but not as good as Starkie bio.
Comment: This was the fourth biography on Rimbaud I'd read, and I found it the most accessible. However, the very best biography for my money, warts and all (she perpetuates a couple false myths about R.), is the Enid Starkie biography from 1961. Unlike Robb, she gives an analysis of many of his poems in the context of his life and times, while capably commenting on other personalities and poets of the era in which he lived. Still, even Robb in this biography, despite insisting on dismantling the so-called Rimbaud myths, perpetuates the "bad-boy genius" image here and there. If one reads his letters (see "I Promise to Be Good", Wyatt Mason, 2003) they will see that "...it is not generally appreciated how methodical a student of poetry Rimbaud was . . . Rimbaud made himself a poet by a long, involved, and sober study of the history of poetry."
But this is a review of Robb's book, and I do recommend it because it's the most up-to-date version of Rimbaud (as of 2003) and probably includes the most accurate chronology of all bios to date, as well as more details of his time with Verlaine, and in Africa (for which, Charles Nicholl's book, "Somebody Else: Rimbaud in Africa", 1997 is the best).
Overall, I think Robb's biography is the best modern introduction to Rimbaud (besides his poems, of course) for someone unfamiliar with him at all. His writing syle is less pedantic, and more journalistically captivating than Starkie, and others (I suppose it's a matter of taste, background, and direction, but it's probably impossible to find any dull biographies about Rimbaud anyway). Rimbaud continues to seduce and attract modern poets, wanderers, and seekers alike, and this biography is one more key to the fullest portrait possible of Rimbaud we'll ever get.
"Or, tout dernierement m'etant sur le point de faire le dernier couac! j'ai songe a rechercher la clef du festin ancien, ou je reprendrais peut-etre appetit."
But just lately, finding myself on the point of uttering the last croak, I thought of looking for the key to the old feast, where perhaps I might find my appetite again.
 |
Title: Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library) by Arthur Rimbaud, Wyatt Mason ISBN: 0679642307 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 19 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
 |
Title: Rimbaud Complete Works: Selected Letters by Fowlie Wallace ISBN: 0226719731 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1966 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
 |
Title: Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (Perennial Classics) by Paul Schmidt ISBN: 0060955503 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 04 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb ISBN: 039302038X Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
 |
Title: I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (Modern Library) by Arthur Rimbaud, Wyatt Mason, Wyatt Alexander Mason ISBN: 067964301X Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 04 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
