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ARTHUR
RIMBAUD RELATED QUOTES
Quotes
by Arthur Rimbaud
Quotes
about Arthur Rimbaud
Quotes by Arthur
Rimbaud
„You have to pass an exam, and the jobs that you get are either
to shine shoes, or to herd cows, or to tend pigs. Thank God, I don’t
want any of that! Damn it! And besides that they smack you for a reward;
they call you an animal and it’s not true, a little kid, etc…
Oh! Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn!„
Arthur Rimbaud, 1854, at age ten.
„(…) I regret not being married and having a family. But now
I am condemned to wander, attached to a faraway company, and every
day I lose the taste for the climate and the manners of living, and
even the language of Europe. Alas! What is the use of these comings
and goings, and these tiredness and these adventures (…) if I must
not a day, after some years, be able to rest in a place that I like
more or less, and find a family, and have at least a son that I spend
the rest of my life to raise with my own idea, to enrich and to arm
of the more complete possible instruction that can be reached at that
time, and that I see become a famous engineer, a man powerful and
rich by the science? But who knows how long can last my days in these
mountains? (…)„
Arthur Rimbaud in a letter to his family, May 6, 1883.
„(…) But to always live at the same place, I will always find
that very unfortunate. Finally, the most probable is that we rather
go where we don’t want to, and that we rather do what we would not
like to do, and that we live and die quite differently than we would
not ever like it, without hope of any sort of compensation (…)„
Arthur Rimbaud in a letter to his family, January 15, 1885.
„(…) What a nuisance, what a fatigue what a sadness when I think
about all my ancient travels, and how active I was just 5 months ago!
Where are the runnings across mountains, the cavalcades, the walks,
the deserts, the rivers and the seas? (…)
And to think I precisely had decided to come back to France this summer
to get married! Goodbye to wedding, goodbye to family, goodbye to
future! My life is gone, I’m no more than an immobile trunk (…)„
Arthur Rimbaud sharing his feelings about the amputation of his his
right leg, in a letter to his sister Isabelle, 1891.
^
Quotes about Arthur Rimbaud
„Intelligent, as much as you want, but he has eyes and a smile
which I do not like. He will end badly: in any case, nothing banal
will germinate in this head: it will be the genius of good or evil!„
Monsieur Pérette – one of Arthur Rimbaud’s professors of the third
year in Charleville College, 1867 – about Rimbaud.
„First I only recognized his so extraordinarily beautiful eyes
– with a light blue iris surrounded by a darker ring of periwinkle
blue colour. Round in the past, his cheeks looked hollow, squared,
hardened. The fresh complexion of an English child that he kept a
long time had let place, in that interval of two years, to the dark
skin of a Kabyle, and on that tanned skin, new thing which amused
me, a fawn-blond beard curled tightly, that was a long time coming
– he was going on 25 (…) Another sign of complete physical masculinity,
his voice losing the nervous timbre, somewhat childish, that I had
known until now, had become low, deep, filled with calm energy (…).
In the evening, after dinner, I risked to ask him if he was still
thinking about literature. Shaking his head, he had a half-amused,
half-irritated smile, as if I had asked him: „Do you still play with
a hoop?“ and simply answered: „I do not mind about it anymore.„
Ernest Delahaye about his visit to Arthur Rimbaud in 1878, as Rimbaud
is treated for typhoid fever in Roche.
„The man was tall, well-built, almost athletic, with the perfectly
oval face of an angel in exile, with untidy light brown hair and eyes
of a disturbing pale blue.„
Paul Verlaine about Arthur Rimbaud in The Accursed Poets,1885.
To Arthur Rimbaud
MORTAL, angel AND demon, as to say Rimbaud,
You deserve the first place in this book of mine,
Despite of such smart scribbler called you a beardless ribaud*,
And a budding monster, and a drunken schoolboy.
The first place yet in the temple of Memory
All the spirals of incense, all the chords of lute!
And your radiant name will sing in the glory,
Because you loved me as it had to be.
The women will see you, tall young man very strong,
Very handsome of a rustic and wily beauty,
With an indolently daring attitude;
History sculptured you triumphing over death
Omnipotent Poet and victorious of life,
Your white feet put on Envy’s heads. ____________________________
*A ribaud is a debauched person.
Paul Verlaine, To Arthur Rimbaud
(Published for the first time in the review Le Chat Noir, August 24,
1899.)
Life is full of pain, I’m cruisin‘ through my brain
And I fill my nose with snow and go Rimbaud,
Go Rimbaud, go Rimbaud,…
Patti Smith, Land of a Thousand Dances
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Arthur Rimbaud in Harer.
Arthur Rimbaud’s sister Isabelle.
Ernest
Delahaye
Paul
Verlaine |
