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beautyistruth's review
4.0
(This review specifically refers to the Penguin edition.)
The poems are amazing - 5-star worthy - and it's dazzling to think of how the wild and precocious French youth-genius that was Rimbaud completely stopped creating any art from the age of twenty one.
The prose-poems 'A Season in Hell' and 'Illuminations' I did not like so much or I didn't 'get' them so much - I wished for there to be more coherence or more story. Rimbaud was on drugs when he wrote much of them and I think it shows.
Then there are the letters that showcase Rimbaud's second career as a trader in Africa. It is impressive that he set on such a path at those times - there were almost no Europeans in the areas he ventured into - and it's remarkable the change of completely leaving off his scandalous former life that included a tempestuous relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine that culminated in Verlaine shooting Rimbaud and being sentenced to prison for it.
In the letters there is a lot of rabbity concern with money and Rimbaud speaks some of local conditions in Africa. Rimbaud's fear of military service stood out to me - his mother and sister are often urged to confirm that he would not have to serve it. Then there is the ending of Rimbaud's leg having to be amputated, and his death from cancer at the age of thirty seven, which I found to be so sad.
The poems are amazing - 5-star worthy - and it's dazzling to think of how the wild and precocious French youth-genius that was Rimbaud completely stopped creating any art from the age of twenty one.
The prose-poems 'A Season in Hell' and 'Illuminations' I did not like so much or I didn't 'get' them so much - I wished for there to be more coherence or more story. Rimbaud was on drugs when he wrote much of them and I think it shows.
Then there are the letters that showcase Rimbaud's second career as a trader in Africa. It is impressive that he set on such a path at those times - there were almost no Europeans in the areas he ventured into - and it's remarkable the change of completely leaving off his scandalous former life that included a tempestuous relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine that culminated in Verlaine shooting Rimbaud and being sentenced to prison for it.
In the letters there is a lot of rabbity concern with money and Rimbaud speaks some of local conditions in Africa. Rimbaud's fear of military service stood out to me - his mother and sister are often urged to confirm that he would not have to serve it. Then there is the ending of Rimbaud's leg having to be amputated, and his death from cancer at the age of thirty seven, which I found to be so sad.
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