The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud (11 page)

It is not strange that the Nineteenth Century is constellated with demonic figures. One has only to think of Blake, de Nerval, Kierkegaard, Lautréamont, Strindberg, Nietzsche, Dostoievsky—all tragic figures, and tragic in a new sense. All of them are concerned with the problem of the soul, with the expansion of consciousness and the creation of new moral values. At the hub of this wheel which sheds light on the void, Blake and Nietzsche reign like dazzling twin stars; their message is still so new that we think of them in terms of insanity.
*
Nietzsche rearranges all existent values; Blake fashions a new cosmogony. Rimbaud is close to both in many ways. He is like a nova which appears suddenly, grows to terrifying brilliance, then plunges to earth. (“Et je vécus, étincelle d’or de la lumière
nature
.”) In the darkness of the womb, which he sought with the same ferocity as he did the light of heaven, he transforms into radium. His is a substance which it is dangerous to handle; his is a light which annihilates when it does not exalt or illumine. As a star he hovered too close to the earth’s orbit. Not content to shed his brilliance
over
the earth, he was fatally attracted by the reflection of his own image in the dead mirror of life. He wanted to transform his light into radiant power; this could only be accomplished by a fall. This delusion, which Orientals call ignorance rather than sin, emphasizes the confusion between the domains of art and of life which gripped the men of the Nineteenth Century. All the great spirits of the modern age have struggled to demagnetize themselves, as it were. All were annihilated by Jovian bolts. They were like inventors who, having discovered electricity, knew nothing about insulation. They were attuned to a new power which was breaking through, but their experiments led to disaster.

All these men, and Rimbaud was one of them, were inventors, lawgivers, warriors, prophets. They
happened
to be poets. The superabundance of their talents, coupled with the fact that the age was not ripe for their coming, combined to create an ambiance of defeat and frustration. In a profound sense they were usurpers, and the fate meted out to them reminds us of the suffering of the protagonists in the ancient Greek dramas. They were pursued and laid low by the Furies which, in modern parlance, are the insanities. Such is the price man pays when he attempts to elevate the magical level of his gods, when he attempts to live in accordance with the new code before the new gods are securely entrenched. These gods, of course, are always the projection of man’s exalted inner powers. They represent the magical element in creation; they blind and intoxicate because they rend the darkness from which they spring. Baudelaire expressed it out of the depths of his own bitter experience when he said:
“En effet il est défendu à l’homme, sous peine de déchéance et de mort intellectuelle, de déranger les conditions primordiales de son existence et de rompre l’équilibre de ses facultés avec les milieux où elles sont destinées à se mouvoir, de déranger son destin pour y substituer une fatalité d’un genre nouveau …”

In brief, the dreamer should be content to dream, confident that “imagination makes substance.” This is the poet’s function, the highest because it brings him to the unknown—to the limits of creation. The masters are beyond the spell of creation; they function in the pure white light of being. They are done with becoming; they have incorporated themselves in the heart of creation, fully realized as men and luminous with the glow of the divine essence. They have transfigured themselves to the point where they have only to radiate their divinity.

The elect, being adepts, are at home anywhere. They know the meaning of hell but they do not localize it, not even as earthly existence. They are devachanees; they enjoy the intervals between one state of existence and another. But the free spirits, who are the tormented ones—born out of time and out of rhythm—can only interpret their intermediary states as hell itself. Rimbaud was such a one. The excruciating boredom from which he suffered was the reflection of the vacuum in which he existed—whether he created it or not is immaterial. One thing seems clear, in this connection: he could put his powers to no use. This is a partial truth, to be sure, but it is this aspect of truth which the man of culture is concerned with. It is the truth of history, so to speak. And history tends more and more to be identified as man’s fate.

Now and then, from the deep, hidden river of life, great spirits in human form are thrown up; like semaphores in the night they warn of danger ahead. But their appeal is in vain to those “abandoned but still burning locomotives” (the false spirits of the age) “who hold to the rails for a time.” The culture of these souls, said Rimbaud, whose image I use,
began with accidents
. It is this atmosphere of accident and catastrophe which permeates the historical level of interpretation. The demonic figures, possessed because they are imbued with a passion beyond them, are the sentinels who appear from nowhere in the darkest hours of night. Theirs is the voice which goes unheeded.

The bogs of Western culture which await the derailed
trains de luxe
in which our pompous spirits sit blithely bombinating their stale aphorisms Rimbaud described vividly. “I see that my discomforts come from my failure to understand soon enough that we are of the Western World. The marshes of the West!” Then quickly he adds:
“Non que je croie la lumière alterée, la forme extenuée, le mouvement égaré …”
(He is not the dupe of history, one observes.) In the next breath, as if he knew his fate from eternity, he is saying:
“L’esprit est autorité, il veut que je sois en Occident.”

Now and then, during his sojourn in the lower depths, he remarks, quite as though he were stirring in his sleep—
“C’est la vie encore!”
Yes, life it is, no mistake about it. Only it is the other side of that double-faced coin. And he who, however mockingly he phrases it, is nevertheless in possession of the truth, must put up with it, must see it through. There will be no other life for him … he chose it from beyond the grave. All the elements of his character were laid down at birth; they will lend to his destiny the unique character of his agony. He will suffer not only because his parents willed it, not only because the age demanded that he suffer, he will suffer because of the whole evolution through which the spirit of man has gone. He will suffer precisely because it is the spirit of man which is in travail. He will suffer as only the seed suffers when it falls upon barren ground.

In the light of these reflections, why should the second half of his life appear more mysterious and enigmatic than the first? Is a man’s destiny not determined by his character? We become what we are, else all is the play of hazard. The fortuitous
rencontres
, the strange accidents of fortune, make sublime sense. A man is always consistent with himself, even when at some unforeseen moment in an otherwise commendable life he suddenly commits a horrible crime. It is so often, is it not, the man of exemplary character who commits the nauseating crime.

Rimbaud repeatedly calls attention to his bad traits. He underscores them, in fact. When I spoke earlier of the latter half of his life being a Calvary, I meant it in the sense that he gave his impulses free rein. He is crucified not because of his exceptional qualities, for they would have borne him through any ordeal, but because he surrenders to his instincts. For Rimbaud this surrender spells abdication: the ungovernable steeds take over the reins. What work it is now to find the right track! Endless work. Sometimes it would seem that he is not so much a
different
man as a man at loose ends. The poet will still manifest himself, if only in the bizarre pattern of his erratic tracks. Look at the places he allows himself to be dragged to! He is in and out of almost every European port, headed now this way, now that—Cyprus, Norway, Egypt, Java, Arabia, Abyssinia. Think of his pursuits, his studies, his speculations! All marked “exotic.” His exploits are as daring and unchartered as his poetic flights. His life is never prosaic, however dull or painful it may appear to him … He was in the midst of life, thinks the clerk in his office. Yes, many a solid citizen, to say nothing of the poets, would give an arm or a leg could they but imitate Rimbaud’s adventurous life. The pathologist may call it “ambulatory paranoia,” but to the stay-at-home it seems like bliss. To the Frenchman cultivating his garden it must, of course, have seemed like sheer dementia. It must have been terrifying, this
tour du monde
on an empty stomach. It must have seemed even more crazy, more terrifying, when they learned that he was getting dysentery from constantly carrying in his belt 40,000 francs in gold. Whatever he did was bizarre, fantastic,
inouï
. His itinerary is one uninterrupted phantasmagoria. Yes, there are the passionate and imaginative elements in it which we admire in his writing, no question about that. But there is also a coldness about his acts, just as there was in his behavior as a poet. Even in his poetry there is this cold fire, this light without warmth. This is an element which his mother donated and which she aggravates by her attitude toward him. To her he is always unpredictable, the dismal sport of a loveless marriage. No matter how he struggles to remove himself from the parental orbit, she is there like a lodestone pulling him back. He can free himself from the claims of the literary world but never from the mother. She is the black star which attracts him fatally. Why did he not forget about her utterly, as he did all the others? Evidently she is the link with the past which he cannot relinquish. She becomes, in fact,
the past
. His father had the wanderlust too, it seems, and finally, just after Rimbaud was born, he wandered away forever. But the son, no matter how far he wanders, cannot make this break; he takes the father’s place, and like the father whom he identifies himself with, he continues to add to his mother’s misery. And so he wanders. He wanders and wanders until he reaches the land of the shepherds “where the zebus dream, buried in grass up to the dew-laps.” There he too dreams, I am certain, but whether they are glorious or bitter dreams we do not know. He no longer puts them down; he gives us only the marginal notes—instructions, requests, demands, complaints. Had he reached the point where it was no longer necessary to record his dreams? Was action the substitute? These questions will be asked eternally. One thing alone is evident—he knew no joy. He was still possessed, still driven. He does not abandon the creator’s task in order to bask in the light. He is all energy, but it is not the energy of a being “whose center is at rest.”
*

Wherein lies the enigma, then? Not in his outward behavior, certainly, for even as a freak he is consistent with himself. Even when he dreams of one day having a son, a son who might become an engineer (sic), we can follow him. To be sure, the idea is a bit
bouleversante
, but we can swallow it. Has he not prepared us to expect
anything
of him? Is he not human too? Has he not a right to play with notions of marriage, fatherhood and the like? The poet who can go elephant hunting, who can write home for a “Theoretical and Practical Manual of Exploration,” who can dream of submitting a paper on the Gallas to the Geographical Society, what is so startling if he also craves a white wife and a child after his own heart? People wonder that he treated his Abyssinian mistress so decently. And why not, pray? Is it so strange that he should be civil, polite, even considerate … that he should now and then do a little good, as he puts it? Let us remember Shylock’s speech!

No, what is difficult to swallow, what sticks like a lump in the throat, is his renunciation of Signed “The Crucified One.” art. This is where Monsieur Tout-le-monde comes in. This is his
crime
, as we like to say. All his faults, his vices, his excesses we can pardon—but not this. This is the unforgivable affront,
n’est-ce pas
? How we betray ourselves here! We would all like to run out sometimes, wouldn’t we? We are fed up, sick of the whole works, but we stick. We stick because we lack the courage, the imagination to follow suit. We don’t stick it out of a sense of solidarity. Ah no! Solidarity is a myth—in this age, at least. Solidarity is for slaves who wait until the world becomes one huge wolf pack … then they will pounce all at once, all together, and rip and rend like envious beasts. Rimbaud was a lone wolf. He did not, however, slink out by the back door with his tail between his legs. No, nothing of the sort. He thumbed his nose at Parnassus—and at the judges, priests, schoolmasters, critics, slave drivers, moneybags and mountebanks who make up our distinguished cultural society. (Don’t flatter yourself that his age was any worse than ours! Don’t think for a moment that these misers, maniacs and hyenas, these phony ones on every level, are now extinct! This is
your
problem as well as his!) No, as I say, he wasn’t worried about not being accepted … he despised the petty satisfactions which most of us crave. He saw that it was all a stinking mess, that being another historical cipher would get him nowhere. He wanted to live, he wanted more room, more freedom: he wanted to express himself, no matter how. And so he said,
“Fuck you, Jack! Fuck you one and all!”
Whereupon he opened his fly and pissed on the works—and from a considerable height, as Céline once put it. And that, dear slaves of life, is really unpardonable, is it not?
That is the crime
, isn’t it? Very well, let us pronounce the verdict. “Rimbaud, you have been judged guilty. You will have your head neatly cut off in a public place in the name of the discontented artists of the civilized world.” At this moment, when I think of the glee with which the mob always rushes to the guillotine, especially when there is a “choice” victim, I recall the words of “The Stranger” in Albert Camus’ novel—and I know what it is to be an alien soul. The
procureur
has just put to the audience attending the trial of this “monster” the rhetorical question:
“A-t-il seulement exprimé des regrets? Jamais, messieurs. Pas une seule fois au cours de l’instruction cet homme n’a paru ému de son abominable forfait.”
(This is always the real crime, notice … never the crime itself.) And so, at this point, the victim continues his interior monologue….
“A ce moment, il s’est tourné vers moi et m’a désigné du doigt en continuant à m’accabler sans qu’en réalité je comprenne bien pourquoi. Sans doute je ne pouvais pas m’empêcher de reconnaître qu’il avait raison. Je ne regrettais pas beaucoup mon acte. Mais tant d’acharnement m’étonnait. J’aurais voulu essayer de lui expliquer cordialement, presque avec affection, que je n’avais jamais pu regretter vraiment quelque chose. J’étais toujours pris par ce qui allait arriver, par aujourd’hui ou par demain. Mais naturellement, dans l’état où l’on m’avait mis, je ne pouvais parler à personne sur ce ton. Je n’avais pas le droit de me montrer affectueux, d’avoir de la bonne volonté. Et j’ai essayé d’écouter encore parce que le procureur s’est mis à parler de mon âme.”