Customer Reviews (1)

Indispensable à tout Rimbaldien
On découvre à travers le beau-frère d'arthur Rimbaud toute l'historiographie du début du diècle sur Rimbaud, soit : - une volonté d'image propre du poête maudit - l'absence totale de commentaires sur sonhomosexualité. Un livre indispensable pour tout rimbaldien ... Read more

Product Description
An introduction to Rimbaud's life and achievement in the context of his love affair with Verlaine; which has been the subject of many plays and novels and a film. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

excellent short introduction with perceptive original insights
I was very pleased to find in this book not just a reliable short introduction to Rimbaud's life and work but also some unknown (to me) details about the lives and works of Rimbaud's circle, as well as the writer's effect on later generations -- for a short, inexpensive book on the subject this is peerless.

Flawed summary of the life of a revolutionary poet
I wanted to like this book, dealing as it does with a poet who more than anyone else discovered the boundaries of language, and then redefined it in a way which has since been much imitated, but never equaled. This book is beautifully produced and written in a chatty and engaging, if a little defensive, style - Benjamin Ivry does seem too intent at times at forcing Rimbaud into the role of militant gay icon when this was only one aspect of his life - and the photos and bibliography are excellent.

However, there are several unforgivable errors, ranging from the glaring (Rimbaud had his right leg amputated, not the left) to the merely annoying (quotes from a couple of poems are misattributed). Also, Ivry seems at times so carried away with his subject that he relies too much on supposition to prove a point: for example, there is absolutely no evidence that Verlaine commissioned Rosman's famous painting of a bed-ridden, gunshot-wounded Rimbaud.

What I did like about this book was the final chapter, a fascinating collection of quotes from gay artists, poets, writers and film-makers through the years, proving that, as Eugene Borza once said about Alexander the Great, there are as many Rimbauds as there are those who profess a serious interest in him.

Flawed summary of the life of a revolutionary poet
I wanted to like this book, dealing as it does with a poet who more than anyone else discovered the boundaries of language, and then redefined it in a way which has since been much imitated, but never equaled. This book is beautifully produced and written in a chatty and engaging, if a little defensive, style - Benjamin Ivry does seem too intent at times at forcing Rimbaud into the role of militant gay icon when this was only one aspect of his life - and the photos and bibliography are excellent.

However, there are several unforgivable errors, ranging from the glaring (Rimbaud had his right leg amputated, not the left) to the merely annoying (quotes from a couple of poems are misattributed). Also, Ivry seems at times so carried away with his subject that he relies too much on supposition to prove a point: for example, there is absolutely no evidence that Verlaine commissioned Rosman's famous painting of a bed-ridden, gunshot-wounded Rimbaud.

What I did like about this book was the final chapter, a fascinating collection of quotes from gay artists, poets, writers and film-makers through the years, proving that, as Eugene Borza once said about Alexander the Great, there are as many Rimbauds as there are those who profess a serious interest in him.

Rimbaud as a Saint of Gay Culture
In the early 1950s, Rene Etiemble published a doctoral dissertation of monumental proportions, "Le Mythe de Rimbaud", which enumeratedthe numerous, variegated and, ultimately, misleading and false mythologieswhich had been propogated about Rimbaud in the decades following his deathin 1891.Etiemble devoted more than twenty years to researching andrefuting these myths, including the myths of Rimbaud the seer, theCatholic, the Communard, the homosexual, the scoundrel, and the martyr.AsEnid Starkie suggested in her definitive biography, Etiemble's work had asalutary effect on modern approaches to Rimbaud by showing that "nosingle one of these descriptions accurately fits him."The result,among other things, was to shift the focus of Rimbaud studies fromhagiography, on the one hand, and demonization, on the other, to anexploration of Rimbaud's revolutionary poetic language andexpression.

More than fifty years after Etiemble's watersheddissertation, Benjamin Ivry has written "Arthur Rimbaud", abrief, fascinating, but ultimately somewhat disingenuous biographical glosson Rimbaud's life.Ivry's book is the first in a series of books to bepublished by Absolute Press, books intended "to explore and portraythe various and often unexpected ways in which homosexuality has informedthe life and creative work of the influential gay and lesbian artists,writers, singers, dancers, composers, and actors of our time."It is,in other words, a book which has an agenda--an agenda which once againseeks to fit the enigmatic nature of Rimbaud's biography into a mythology,this time a mythology of Rimbaud as a founding saint of modern gay culture. Thus, Rimbaud's brilliant, complex and poetically difficult masterpieces,"Une Saison en Enfer" and "Illuminations", works whichare laden with symbol and mystery, with a radically innovative poeticvitality, are reduced by Ivry to the product of Rimbaud's erstwhilehomoerotic relationship with Paul Verlaine.Every aspect of Rimbaud'sbrief life as a poet, in Ivry's depiction, is driven by Rimbaud's"gayness", by his love for Verlaine, by his presumed disinterestin women.Never mind other aspects of Rimbaud's biography--his severemother, his absent father, his religious upbringing, his revolutionarypoetic work itself!Moreover, while the book contains a usefulbibliography, it is devoid of footnotes, so it is impossible to ascertainthe veracity of the speculations which permeate Ivry's text.

Havingsaid all of this, I also must say that Ivry is an outstanding writer--hisprose sparkles--and this little book is definitely worth reading if youhave an interest in Rimbaud because it provides fascinating details onRimbaud's relationship with Verlaine and others.In particular, the bookextensively discusses the gay aspects of Rimbaud's life and poetry andRimbaud's influence on subsequent writers from Cocteau to Kerouac to JimMorrison.These are aspects of Rimbaud's life which are not explored veryclosely by Starkie's definitive biography and, if you read Ivry's book withsome degree of skepticism, it provides a fascinating and provocativecomplement to the standard treatment of Rimbaud's life

PERSEPTIVE INFO-CRAMMED BIOGRAPHY OF CONTROVERSIAL RIMBAUD
Benjamin Ivry's short, but informative tome is a refreshing outline on one of France's most controversial poets. Rimbaud(1854-1891) was a L'enfant terrible, writing all his major works before the age of 20! In Ivry's illuminating biography, the reader gets to understand the motivatingfactors behind his wrenching verse. Unlike manyRimbaud books, Ivry's bookdelves into the torrid, temultuous affair the young poet had with the olderpoet, Paul Verlaine. Their stormy affair is one of the most renowned in gayliterary history. Ivry pulls no punches in his description of their nearfatal relationship and through this understanding, we see where the painand the power of his verse emanated from. He offers a fount of informationon this rarely understood young artist and the demimonde of French literarysociety at the turn of the century. He also deconstructs many of Rimbaud'smost infamous poems, so that even the novice can understand the power ofhis words. Stocked with rare photos and art, this wonderful little bookalso has an extensive bibliography! ... Read more