Little is known of those months, until April 1874. Rimbaud devoted himself to reading—and perhaps writing—in the reading room of the British Museum. The libraries of the world are the hospices of poor poets; it is where they find warmth and nourishment. There is speculation that he had a girlfriend, Henrika. He mentions her in the poem “Workers,” in the Illuminations. But it is just a hypothesis. The truth is that he felt alone and soon asked his mother for help. And so Vitalie, with her eldest daughter—also called Vitalie—decided to pay her son a visit. Arthur went to greet them at Charing Cross Station and took them around London, showed them the city, and felt proud when they noticed his good English. The diaries of young Vitalie II describe this visit and the care and attention her brother lavished on them. She emphasizes that, in spite of spending a lot of time with them, he went every day to the reading room of the British Museum.
What was he reading?
It is highly likely that he paid particular attention to First Footsteps in East Africa or, An Exploration of Harar, published in 1856, by the explorer Richard F. Burton, which contains a description of the Abyssinian city of Harar. Burton points out that it is a place forbidden to Europeans. He himself was able to enter in a caravan disguised as an Afghan sheikh, named hayi Abdullah, and remained long enough for the emir of the city to beg to be taken by him as a disciple.
That region of East Africa clearly attracted young Arthur, since one of the things he showed his mother and sister was the collection of Emperor Theodor of Abyssinia in the British Museum, a visit that Vitalie II recorded enthusiastically in her diary, fascinated by the tunics, the diamonds, and the silver utensils.
Travel, the desire to leave.
The young man was on the verge of spreading his wings.
One of the elder Vitalie’s tasks was to help her son in his search for a job, which had become a real obsession. They sent letters, presented themselves for many interviews, and finally, on July 29, Arthur announced that he had found something.
He left London on July 31 at 4:30 A.M.
For where?
Many biographers say he went to Scotland, but Starkie states that he traveled to Reading, halfway between London and Oxford, and worked in a school, perhaps as a French teacher. Twenty years later that city’s prison would house another writer and poet, Oscar Wilde, born just four days before Rimbaud, on October 16, 1854. A curious proximity between two people so different, but both geniuses.
It is from this period that “Democracy,” one of the last of the Illuminations, must date. In it, he announces his imminent departure:
Goodbye to here, anywhere will do. Conscripts of good will, we will have a fierce philosophy; ignorant of science, cunning for comfort. Let the world go hang. This is the true way. Forward march!
And at the beginning of 1875 he begins his wanderings around the world. A pilgrimage that would take him about five years.
The first port of call was Stuttgart, Germany, where he came with the aim of learning German. He lived in a pension, worked on his physical strength, and spent hours in libraries. His German period was marked by a reunion with his old friend and lover Verlaine, who in January 1875 had left prison a fervent Catholic. Verlaine’s faith had exploded like lava from a volcano, forcing him to his knees. He renounced his irresponsible past, the mistakes he had made through his lack of character, such as losing his family. His first impulse was to seek out not Rimbaud, but Mathilde, and beg her to forgive him. An incredible wish in someone who had systematically destroyed every one of the opportunities she had given him, including waiting for him naked and perfumed in a Brussels hotel.
Of course, Mathilde did not even allow him to come near. In his desperation, Verlaine turned to Rimbaud’s loyal friend Delahaye and begged him for the younger poet’s new address. Oh, illustrious Verlaine: we can see the problems coming a mile off! Apparently, faith and religion were not so definitive as to put a lid on what really mattered.
One day, in Stuttgart, Rimbaud was surprised to receive in the mail a letter from Verlaine in which he asked to meet with him and begged him to convert to religion. Young Arthur, who was no longer so young—he was already twenty—must have been both amused and curious. He replied, telling Paul to come see him, he was waiting.
Verlaine arrived the next day.
How was that rash encounter?
A letter from Rimbaud, quoted by Starkie, gives us a rough idea: “Verlaine arrived in Stuttgart with a rosary in his paws, but within three hours had rejected his God and made the ninety-six wounds of our Lord bleed again.”
Far from converting him, he was again, for the umpteenth time, converted by the Satan of Charleville. The scene, as usual, was a pathetic one.
Already very drunk, walking by the banks of the Neckar, they came to blows and Verlaine was knocked out. Rimbaud was strong. The next day, Arthur persuaded him to go, for the good of their friendship and to avoid more violence. Verlaine returned to Paris.
This was the last time the two great poets of France saw each other.
Rimbaud’s wanderings continued: he walked across the Alps and reached Milan. From there he went to Brindisi, also on foot, with the idea of sailing to the Greek island of Paros, but he got heatstroke and had to be hospitalized immediately. Once he had recovered, the French consulate repatriated him to Marseilles. He spent the summer in Paris and at the end of August walked back to Charleville.
Decidedly, Rimbaud’s feet were his best and safest means of transport!
In October 1875 he contacted Verlaine again and asked him for a loan to study the piano. But Verlaine, filled with resentment, refused, and wrote in a humorous manner that “the goose that laid the golden eggs has died” for young Arthur, referring to the fact that he was no longer writing poetry. “Where would my money go?” he asks him. “Into the hands of innkeepers and ladies of easy virtue! Piano lessons? Who would ever believe that?” Now he had to look to his son’s economic security, which had been jeopardized by “the gaps opened in my small capital by our absurd and shameful life of three years ago.”
Rimbaud did not reply.
By the end of 1875, still in Charleville, the young genius is said to have learned three more languages: Arabic, Hindi, and Russian. If we add German and English, Greek and Latin, that makes seven by the time he was twenty. And what’s more, offended perhaps by Verlaine’s letter, he began studying music and piano. It is said that he drew a keyboard on the table of the house and practiced there, in silence, while he corrected his language pupils’ homework.
But very soon young Arthur again had itchy feet. He had “wind in his soles,” as Verlaine said. He hoped to go to Russia with the money he had saved, but ran into problems when someone stole his money and baggage in Vienna and he had to beg in order to eat. Back at the starting point, he was more ambitious when next he looked for a way out of Europe.
The answer came from Holland, which had colonies in Indonesia: far-off Batavia, the land of tobacco and spices. Young Arthur had not the slightest problem in enlisting in the Dutch army in order to go to the island of Java, committing himself to remain in the army for a period of six years.
He set sail on June 10, 1876.
He landed in Batavia on July 23.
The Dutch colonies in the Far East were known as the East Indies, a place of tropical temperatures and dense jungles. A new world for someone desirous of fleeing Europe. That was what young Arthur wanted, but the rigors of military life soon bored him. What was he doing here, surrounded by soldiers? He wanted to go and discover the jungles and the little towns and imbibe the smells of those colossal trees!
Three weeks after his arrival, he deserted. He had the money he was given when he was recruited and, we assume, some more pay. That was sufficient for him to spend a month in the jungles and towns. But the East did not seduce him. He wrote nothing about what he saw, nor did he try to stay; before long, he was looking for a
ship to take him back to Europe.
I like to imagine that in the exotic port of Samarang, from where he set sail for France on August 30—there are various hypotheses—he discovered a boat with a French flag loading spices and tobacco, the Mont-Blanc. Arthur watched it for a long time, sitting near the quay. Attentively, he followed the work of the sailors preparing the stowage and the crew moving with agility on the bridge. Perhaps he thought he could sail on her.
As darkness fell, one of the sailors approached the tavern where he was sitting. He was even younger than Arthur! That struck him as a good omen, so he tried to talk to him. He greeted him in English, but the sailor, although he understood, could not express himself fluently. Rimbaud recognized a Slavic accent and spoke to him in Russian, which improved things. In the end they managed to understand each other in French.
The sailor turned out to be Polish. His name was Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, a name that Arthur made him repeat several times. They drank together. Rimbaud asked about the crew of the Mont-Blanc, the pay, and the conditions on board. Józef told him that from Batavia they were going to the north of the Malay peninsula and then to Formosa, before returning to France. The Mont-Blanc had originally been due to go to Martinique, which was the destination he had chosen, but at the last minute the company sent her east, because another cargo ship had sunk.
The conditions on board were normal. A sailor had died crossing the Arabian Sea, although not because of a contagious disease. The shifts had been hard, but fair. They were leaving the following day, it was his last night in Batavia.
Rimbaud asked why he had gone to sea so young and Józef told him, in brief, that he was an orphan: his mother had died of tuberculosis and his father, arrested for some mysterious crime, died in prison. That had forced him to live with his aunt and uncle, from the age of twelve. When he had finished his studies, at seventeen, he had decided to go to Italy and then to Marseilles, where he’d signed on as a sailor on the Mont-Blanc.
Rimbaud told him that he had been in Italy not so long before. They talked about the Alps and the tranquil roads and the unexpected corners of Italian cities. Józef talked about Venice and Trieste. Rimbaud mentioned his intention to reach Rhodes, and his unrealized wish to get as far as Russia. The Pole heard the word Russia and went on the alert. Are you interested in Russia? For him, Russia was the embodiment of evil and danger. Then Józef suggested he try the rice liquor from China that was sold in another local tavern, so they moved on.
Young Konrad was a good drinker, and Rimbaud was not far behind.
The young men kept talking about journeys and adventures. Then the spirit of Rimbaud, swayed by the liquor, started to emerge; he told him about his decadent bourgeois life in Paris, the incredible docks in London, and his adventures during the war with Prussia, exaggerating the number of dead German soldiers he had encountered in the fields.
Konrad talked about his escapades in Munich, Vienna, and Lucerne. Rimbaud told him that a wicked coachman had stolen his money and baggage in Vienna, which was why he was here now instead of Moscow. They continued drinking until the hour when the young Pole had to go back to his berth. Day was already breaking. Before parting, he said to Rimbaud:
“You should sign onto a boat that will take you to America, to the Caribbean islands. It’s a new world. That’s where I’ll be.”
“My hope for now is in Africa,” Rimbaud replied.
“Then I’ll look for you in Africa. Good luck, Frenchman.”
Saying this, Józef Konrad paid the check and headed for his boat. A serving girl came running after Arthur, holding in her hand a polished wooden pipe. His Polish friend had left it on the table. Arthur took it, shrugged, and put it in his pocket.
I’ll give it back to him in Africa, he thought.
The return to Europe was on a British ship, the Wandering Chief, which set off from Batavia with a cargo of sugar on August 30. In this hypothesis, Rimbaud had been in Java just thirty-six days, and took four months to go there and come back, since he did not return to Le Havre until December 17 of that same year. From there, he went to Paris and was already in Charleville for the Christmas dinner.
The attempts to leave Europe continued, this time with another goal: Africa.
Why Africa?
It is in North Africa, in remote garrisons, that his father’s shadow lies. Young Arthur wants to know what is there, in those sun-drenched lands, in those sad, silent dunes that have so dazzled him.
It is nothing new for the disappearance of, or separation from, a father to be a trigger for literary creation. The works of Joyce, Dostoevsky, and Proust are marked by that absence.
In his book Le Génie et la folie, the French psychiatrist Philippe Brenot also mentions something that might tally with the case of Rimbaud: the absence of the father pushing forward the figure of the mother. As Brenot says:
“The frequency of male homosexuality in writers can be explained by the Oedipal relationship with that Jocastian mother, with all sexual drives focused exclusively on the bond between them. Women are pallid figures compared with the mother and none can equal her. Only homosexuality and the role of sublimation can protect against the forbidden temptation. Proust, Genet, Jouhandeau, Verlaine, Roussel, Wilde, Byron, and Montaigne eulogize the homonymous virtues. Not to mention Socrates, Aristotle, Caesar, Botticelli, Leonardo, Francis Bacon, Lully, Rimbaud, Gide, Max Jacob, Jean Cocteau, Montherlant, Nijinsky, Pasolini . . . And the same thing happens with women, protected by homosexuality from incestuous tendencies: Ninon de Lenclos, George Sand, Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, Virginia Woolf . . . ”
In the spring of 1877, Rimbaud made another attempt and traveled to Hamburg, hoping to sign on as a sailor to the Middle East. He failed in this and ended up in Scandinavia, working as an interpreter in a French circus. His great asset in those years, as we have seen, was his knowledge of languages. But the northern cold was too much for his constitution and very soon he realized that he had to leave. Early in the fall, he set sail for Alexandria, but fell sick on the high seas and had to disembark on the Italian coast.
Once again, back to Charleville.
A year later, in 1878, he tried again in Hamburg and at last found an offer of work in Alexandria. He had to set sail from Genoa. The roads through the Alps were closed in winter and he had to cross them on foot, with the snow up to his waist. He reached Genoa and set off for Egypt. The job awaiting him in Alexandria was on a farm, but he soon left. Now he wanted to go to Cyprus, but before that he agreed to go to Suez to work in a strange job that consisted of collecting the loot from boats that had sunk or broken apart off Cape Guardafui. From there he went to Cyprus, to be foreman in a quarry in the desert. It was hard, solitary work. He remained there until June 1879, when typhoid fever forced him to return to France. Perhaps he had by now resigned himself to his fate and was content to watch life go by, without any expectations.
What happened next was the death of his father, in that same year of 1879. Farewell to Captain Frédéric Rimbaud, who took his leave of the world in Dijon, surrounded by his second family. Vitalie and her children did not attend the funeral.
According to Starkie, Delahaye, his most loyal friend, once asked him what had happened to his poetry. Rimbaud grimaced and replied:
“I never think about it.”
On his twenty-fifth birthday, he announced in Charleville that he was going away for a long time. A group of friends gathered to say goodbye to him in a café on Place Ducal. When Rimbaud arrived, looking very elegant, he solemnly announced that his years of wandering were now over and that he was preparing himself for great tasks. His poetic ravings had been left behind. From now on, he would live like a normal person, climbing as high as he could and building a huge fortune.
None of these friends ever saw him again.
5
We arrived in Bogotá just before eight in the morning. It was cold and foggy, which,
to tell the truth, was not a good omen, although the streets were already swarming with activity.
This glimpse of the city, with its black storm clouds and its murky air obscuring the mountains, was not the best incentive for feeling cheerful, not even moderately. Quite the contrary. Nor did a glance at the other passengers suggest anything happy: sleepy and yawning, with their stuck-down hair and their rumpled clothes, they walked like zombies along the central aisle to the door of the aircraft and then along the mechanical arm that leads to the terminal, whose icy tiled floors and large windows did nothing but increase the cold and the desolation, that lack of warmth and affection that seemed to descend from the dark clouds.
You have to be very well adjusted to arrive in Bogotá without feeling a pang of anxiety, a tightening in the chest that restricts your breathing and transforms the lack of air into a kind of moral sanction. Whenever I’ve landed here, ever since I was a child, I’ve felt again that terrible dread and a strong sense of guilt, however unfounded. As if I were one of the brothers Karamazov, Alyosha for example.
Is it the thickness of the air or the quality of the light or the combination of all that with my own past? Maybe that’s the key: the past.
There he is, that boy to whom nothing ever happened, who wanted things to happen, and who looked at the sky and the mountains, wondering time and time again when it would be his turn. I could extend this to my adolescence, and to an extent I still feel it. Whenever someone has the spotlight in their face there is always someone else just outside the light, standing in the shadows, waving his hands nervously, feeling slightly sad and very anxious. That was me. The things I longed for happened to other people, people close to me, and I could do nothing but resign myself to occupying a modest place. By the time life at last started to give me something, my skin was already so sensitive that the spotlight hurt me and what I had so much yearned for did me harm in the end. All that anxiety was there, in the thick cold air of Bogotá, that low-intensity earth tremor from which I had sometimes had to distance myself in order to aspire to a life of my own.
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