Arthur Rimbaud’s Roller Coaster Life, from Sensitive Poet to Mercenary and Arms Dealer

The Rimbaud-Verlaine Affair

The Franco-Prussian War (1870 – 1871) came to Rimbaud’s rescue, saving him from life with an overbearing mother and within the narrow horizons of his small town. The Charleville school was closed, as the authorities repurposed it into a military hospital. That left Rimbaud bored and restless, so he ran away, and snuck on a train to Paris, only to get arrested upon arrival and thrown into jail for fare evasion and vagrancy. He was eventually released and returned to his mother, but ran away again a week later. Seemingly overnight, he went from the model student and neat nerd into a full-blown delinquent, drinking, cursing, engaging in petty thefts, and letting his hair grow long and wild.

An acquaintance advised the teenager to write to Paul Verlaine (1844 – 1896), an established Symbolist poet. Verlaine was impressed after reading a couple of the youngster’s poems, and in 1871, he sent him a train ticket and an invitation to come to stay with him in Paris. That was bad news for Verlaine’s young and pregnant wife, because Rimbaud proved to be a home wrecker who ended up stealing her husband. Verlaine began a torrid love affair with his teenaged houseguest, and abandoned his wife and infant son to be with Rimbaud.

The affair scandalized even the relatively open-minded (for their day) Parisian literary circles, as the lovers pursued a vagabond lifestyle highlighted by copious amounts of opium, absinthe, and hashish. They decamped for London in 1872, where they lived in dire poverty as borderline bums, with Verlaine barely making ends meet from teaching gigs, supplemented by an allowance from his mother. In the meantime, Rimbaud spent his days in the British Museum’s Reading Room, writing poems. Hardship brought out the worst in both, and the duo grew increasingly embittered with each other, until Verlaine finally ditched Rimbaud in London, and reconciled with his wife in Brussels.

By the summer of 1873, however, Verlaine missed his former lover something fierce, so he telegraphed Rimbaud to meet him in a Brussels hotel. The reunion did not go well. The couple argued nonstop, and Verlaine took to drinking heavily. The stormy relationship finally came to an end on July 10th, 1873, in appropriately dramatic fashion. During the course of one of their heated arguments, Verlaine flew into a drunken and jealous rage, pulled out a revolver, and opened fire on Rimbaud. Luckily, drink and rage rendered Verlaine too unsteady to take careful aim, the only bullet to hit Rimbaud struck his wrist, instead of any vital organs.

Rimbaud viewed the wound as superficial and had it dressed at a hospital, but was disinclined at first to file charges. He just wanted to get away from Brussels and Verlaine as soon as possible, and was in such a rush to do so that he eschewed surgery to have the bullet removed, figuring that he could do that later when he was far away. However, while Verlaine and his mother – an enabler if there was ever one – accompanied Rimbaud to a train station later that day, Verlaine started acting crazy again. Knowing that his former lover was still packing the pistol, and having already been shot once that day and not wanting to get shot again, Rimbaud ran to a street cop and begged him to arrest the unstable Verlaine.