Enid starkie arthur rimbaud biography

That rapscallion fly in the ointment for the ever-so-polite French gentry. But was he - Really? Let me try to explain. They were both infamous substance abusers, and at at the time had probably been high on everything but the kitchen sink. Enid Starkie, famed Oxford francophile of the early twentieth century, had strong aversions to the widespread continental revulsion over a merely misled Boy Wonder, and believed Rimbaud had experienced a religious conversion.

He had seen his life flash before his eyes, certainly, a sort of satori… But here Starkie must play sentimental second fiddle to the dramatically REAL conversion experience of that then-esteemed member of the French entre-deux-guerres Catholic literary establishment, Paul Claudel… Claudel was an unabashed droitiste in a contentious and topsy-turvy age - the age of World Fascism.

His polite literary peers - such as W. Auden - damned him with faint praise, though when he joined the church, Wystan later bashfully recanted. But Claudel was converted to his faith by this mere 19th century wastrel! And what about this wastrel - Rimbaud's - OWN conversion experience, here strongly underscored by Ms. O chateaux! Quel ame est sans defauts?

O castles! What heart is free from sin?

Enid starkie arthur rimbaud biography: Enid Starkie's biography of Rimbaud, published

These lines were obviously the product of a deep experience of awakening. Those words are roughly Ms. And they compelled a young eighteen-year-old reader - namely me - to the conviction they inspired, like Claudel. In I too joined the Church. So how do we sum up Arthur Rimbaud? Arthur Rimbaud - failed saint. Lyrical Boy-toy of a corrupt literary giant.

African gun runner. Cursed and beloved poet of a hypocritical era… And a Stairway to Heaven for drowning swimmers like me. You told your little white lie like it is, Enid. Four Reverent Stars. Hypocrite lecture, mon Semblable! Author 26 books 29 followers. What is it about certain books that we buy and then leave untouched on the shelf? Or books we open now and then, sample a few paragraphs, then close and reshelve, temporizing: "Not in the mood"; "Too serious for summer"; "I need to read more about the period before trying this one"; "I need to learn French first.

And yet finally—many years after buying the book—a strategem comes to mind, and a few days later you've read it, enjoyed it, been somehow awakened by it. For years, every time I'd looked into it, the fact that Starkie quotes Rimbaud's poems only in the original French made me put it off. My solution worked, and I could scarcely put the book down.

This isn't to say that Starkie's biography is all that powerful. Rimbaud is powerful, and when Starkie allows the poet to speak for himself and delivers the facts of his life with a minimum of interpretation, the book is compelling. But like many scholars who write about poets and their poetry, she devotes a lot of speculation to the sources of the poems, much of it offered in the spirit of explaining the poems away.

Starkie again and again portrays Rimbaud as "childish," his ideas derived from various books known to have been in his hometown library and many known not to have been there—and yet he "must have read" them ; other poems simply reflect incidents from his daily life as filtered through a deranged and deranging sensibility.

Enid starkie arthur rimbaud biography: Starkie's biography captures the details of

Starkie mysteriously defends Rimbaud's mother, who withheld affection from her children in the most nakedly manipulative ways, while condemning Rimbaud for his weakness in dealing with the emotional blackmail of Verlaine—a pattern of rebellion and capitulation that was clearly cultivated at his mother's knee. What's more, and this will sound arrogant coming from a reader with no French, Starkie seems not to understand Rimbaud's work.

I don't mean the verbal surfaces, of course, or the patterns of image and symbol that pulsate throughout his poetry; I mean the intellectual and emotional compulsions that express themselves through his writing. She repeatedly compares Rimbaud's "childish," "uncontrollable" genius with Baudelaire's "perfection" of form, but fails to see that Baudelaire's genius was backward-looking, a long goodbye in the failing twilight of a classical ideal, while Rimbaud's embraced both the collapsing now of his historical moment and the nascent future to whose radical potential for spiritual renewal he gave such tortured voice.

Because Starkie doesn't grasp Rimbaud's intentions, she views his abandonment of poetry as a tragedy—a failure resulting from inordinate pride and obstinate immaturity. But it was no tragedy for Rimbaud; it was not even an abandonment of poetry per sebut of the kind of poetry he had taught himself to enid starkie arthur rimbaud biography.

There is good evidence, after all, that he meant to return to some kind of literary life. But death intervened, and Starkie seems to hold that against Rimbaud. In fact, underlying much of Starkie's narration is the idea that Rimbaud's abandonment of poetry—in her mind a childish, prideful act—actually produced his death, so that his turning away from poetry becomes a kind of suicide.

But nothing could be further from the spirit of Rimbaud's work and life, for both of which he continued to have high hopes until his end was manifestly upon him. All that said, Starkie does provide many moments of insight, not through interpretation but through description. Here, for example, she gives us an affecting scene from Rimbaud's last days.

He has returned from his decade-long sojourn in Abyssinia as a trader ivory, musk, guns and more to his mother's farm in Roche, where he expects to recover from what will turn out to be terminal cancer. His doctor, Beaudier, and his sister Isabelle have concluded that he will almost surely die, but that he should be encouraged to believe otherwise.

For a time Rimbaud allowed himself to trust them: The pain was [ Then the doctor ordered for him a soporific, to be taken at night, so that he could snatch some sleep. But Arthur preferred to the doctor's prescription a tea made from the poppy seeds which Isabelle used to gather in the garden. When he had drunk a cup of this beverage he used to reach a state of half dreaming in which his faculties seemed to loosen and all his reserves seemed to break down.

Then he felt, what he never experience otherwise, a desire for confidence,s a longing to open his heart. When he was in this condition, he used to close the shutters and doors of his room, even in broad daylight, light lamps and candles, and in that close, mysterious atmosphere, while he gently turned a little barrel-organ or plucked an Abyssinian harp, he used to relate the story of his life, tell of his dreams of the past and of his secret hopes for the future.

His slow, sad voice then seemed to take on beautiful modulations and the language in which he spoke was very different from his everyday speech, full of Oriental turns of phrase and Oriental images. At such moments he was living in a wakeful dream and returning to the visions of his childhood, to all that he had buried deep in himself for twenty years and which now burst through the heard crust in a burning stream.

Yet once, when Beaudier [the doctor:] spoke to him of his poetry and literature, he made a gesture of disgust and answered coldly, "Il s'agit bien de tout cela. Seller Inventory Contact seller. Condition: good. Book is in good condition and may include underlining highlighting and minimal wear. The book can also include "From the library of" labels.

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Enid starkie arthur rimbaud biography: First published in ,

No Jacket. Spine may show signs of wear. Condition: Fair. Readable copy. This is the fullest and fairest of the half-dozen books on Rimbaud in English. Sign up Log in. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art. Internet Arcade Console Living Room. Open Library American Libraries. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass.