
The Three Rimbauds
Dominique Noguez(Author)
Seagull Books London Ltd (Publisher)
Published on 17. May 2022
Book
Hardback
120 pages
978-0-85742-882-0 (ISBN)
Description
Mingling fact and fiction, The Three Rimbauds imagines how Rimbaud's life would have unfolded had he not died at the age of thirty-seven.
The myth of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) focuses on his early years: how the great enfant terrible tore through the nineteenth-century literary scene with reckless abandon, leaving behind him a trail of enemies, the failed marriage of an ex-lover who shot him, and a body of revolutionary poetry that changed French literature forever. He stopped writing poetry at the age of twenty-one when he left Europe to travel the world. He returned only shortly before his death at the age of thirty-seven.
But what if 1891 marked not the year of his death, but the start of a great new beginning: the poet's secret return to Paris, which launched the mature phase of his literary career? This slim, experimental volume by Dominique Noguez shows that the imaginary "mature" Rimbaud-the one who returned from Harar in 1891, married Paul Claudel's sister in 1907, converted to Catholicism in 1925, and went on to produce some of the greatest works in twentieth-century French prose-was already present in the almost forgotten works of his childhood, in style and themes alike. Only by reacquainting ourselves with the three Rimbauds-child, young adult, and imaginary older adult-can we truly gauge the range of the complete writer.
The myth of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) focuses on his early years: how the great enfant terrible tore through the nineteenth-century literary scene with reckless abandon, leaving behind him a trail of enemies, the failed marriage of an ex-lover who shot him, and a body of revolutionary poetry that changed French literature forever. He stopped writing poetry at the age of twenty-one when he left Europe to travel the world. He returned only shortly before his death at the age of thirty-seven.
But what if 1891 marked not the year of his death, but the start of a great new beginning: the poet's secret return to Paris, which launched the mature phase of his literary career? This slim, experimental volume by Dominique Noguez shows that the imaginary "mature" Rimbaud-the one who returned from Harar in 1891, married Paul Claudel's sister in 1907, converted to Catholicism in 1925, and went on to produce some of the greatest works in twentieth-century French prose-was already present in the almost forgotten works of his childhood, in style and themes alike. Only by reacquainting ourselves with the three Rimbauds-child, young adult, and imaginary older adult-can we truly gauge the range of the complete writer.
Reviews / Votes
"...now with The Three Rimbauds, Dominique Noguez's inventive reimagining of Rimbaud's life, we have a new simulacrum, a counterfactual Rimbaud who never was but possibly could have been, related in a parody of a learned biography." * Arteidolia *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Greenford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
5 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 136 mm
Width: 210 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
230 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-85742-882-0 (9780857428820)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Dominique Noguez (1942-2019) was a prolific writer of essays, novels, and criticism of literature and film. He was a professor of film studies at Universite de Montreal and Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. Seth Whidden is professor of French at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor in French at the Queen's College, Oxford.
Content
Preface
The Three Rimbauds
Translator's Notes
The Three Rimbauds
Translator's Notes