Arthur Rimbaud
A teenage poetic prodigy who burned through a revolutionary body of work in just five years before abandoning literature entirely for a life of global wandering.
1854–1891 (age 37)·French poet·Birthday: October 20
Biography
Arthur Rimbaud was a meteor that streaked across the literary sky, illuminating it with a radical, disruptive light before vanishing. A precocious and rebellious child from Charleville in provincial France, he began writing startlingly mature verse in his mid-teens, sending his work to the established poet Paul Verlaine. This sparked a tumultuous, nomadic relationship that took them across Europe and into a world of absinthe and artistic ferment. Between the ages of 16 and 21, Rimbaud produced his entire poetic legacy, including the prose poems of 'Illuminations' and the hallucinatory 'A Season in Hell.' These works shattered conventional syntax and imagery, seeking to derange the senses to uncover deeper truths. Then, abruptly, he stopped. He left Europe for good, spending his remaining years as a merchant and gunrunner in Africa, utterly silent on the subject of poetry, leaving behind a compact, incendiary oeuvre that would fuel modernist and surrealist movements for decades.
#1 When Arthur Was Born
The biggest hits of 1854
Arthur's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1854Born
1859Started school
1867Became a teenager
President: Andrew Johnson
1870Could drive
President: Ulysses S. Grant
1872Could vote
President: Ulysses S. Grant
1875Turned 21
President: Ulysses S. Grant
1884Turned 30
President: Chester A. Arthur
1891Died at 37
President: Benjamin Harrison
Key Achievements
- Wrote 'A Season in Hell' (1873), a foundational work of symbolic poetry that chronicled his artistic and personal crisis.
- Authored the prose poem collection 'Illuminations,' published posthumously, which pioneered free verse and surreal imagery.
- His poetic theories, expressed in letters, advocated for the poet to become a 'seer' through a systematic derangement of the senses.
- His brief, intense body of work directly influenced the Symbolist, Surrealist, and Beat generations of writers.
Did You Know?
He wrote almost all of his famous poetry before the age of 21.
He had a volatile romantic relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, who shot Rimbaud in the wrist during an argument.
After quitting poetry, he worked as a coffee trader and gunrunner in present-day Ethiopia and Yemen.
He died from cancer at the age of 37 in Marseille, France.
The rock band The Doors took their name from Aldous Huxley's book 'The Doors of Perception,' which itself referenced a line from Rimbaud.
“I is someone else. So much the worse for the wood that discovers it's a violin.”
