Delirium by Jeremy Reed Read Free Book Online Page A

inside him; all manner of violent disturbance has to be encountered in the exploration of the shadow, and what is retrieved may have form or not. What is important is that it is not discounted from poetry on any moral pretext. And the poet’s discoveries will require the new language, of which Rimbaud warns that madness will ensue should it be encountered by the unprepared. Rimbaud’s notion of language is cabalistic, orphic, alchemical; it pivots on the individual symbolism contained by words through their component letter and number valencies. Language is breath: and poetry is the occult manifestation of that rhythm. The poet, says Rimbaud, is ‘responsible for humanity, even for the animals’. His words should animate the universe. He should be able to interpret the communication of all creatures. The poet is the one through whom the universe vibrates. In Rimbaud, the distinction between self and world, individual and differentiated objects is broken down. Most poetry is written with the notion that the subjective responds to objective phenomena. Rimbaud hastens to rectify this misconception.
                  Why was his mother desperate about him at this time? It is unlikely that he had access to drugs in Charleville — this was to come later in Paris — but clearly his aberrations had become ungovernable. Did he interfere with his sisters? Did his mother catch him masturbating? As a behaviour trait in Paris, he excreted into his host’s milk bottle. It is possible he did the same at home. But there had also been trouble with his former teacher Georges Izambard. Ever since Rimbaud had sent Izambard ‘Le Cœur volé’, with its undisguised admission of homosexuality, a wedge had come between the two; a division which was to prove final. Izambard had written in response to Rimbaud’s poem and poetic theory: ‘You devised some incoherent and heteroclite thoughts, from which a small, monstrous foetus is born, which you then put in a glass jar... And be careful, with your theory of the seer, that you don’t end up in the jar yourself, a monster in the museum.’ Rimbaud’s reply to his teacher’s inevitable caution must have been violent and obscene, for Izambard was sufficiently miffed as to send it to Madame Rimbaud. Izambard may have been intending to clear himself of any possible intimations of homosexual conduct with Rimbaud, who may himself have set a rumour abroad, and thus wanted to come clean before the latter’s mother. How better to vindicate himself than to point to Arthur’s homo-erotic poetry and to the psychotic notions inherent in his poetic theory? One can imagine the storm at home; Rimbaud’s hysteria, his nervous frustration, must have had him spring at his mother like a cornered rat. They were all trying to interfere with his mind. Those whose limitations extended to monotheism, provincialism, inveterately inherited moral values. What could Rimbaud with his Messianic quest have to do with this?
                  He continues:
     
                  This future will be materialistic, as you see. — Always full of Number and Harmony, these poems will be made to endure. — Essentially, it will be Greek Poetry again, in a way.
                  Eternal art will have its functions, since poets are citizens. Poetry will no longer lend rhythm to action; it will be in advance.
                  There will be poets like this! When the endless servitude of woman is broken, when she lives for and by herself, man — up till now abominable — having given her her freedom, she to will be a poet! Woman will discover the unknown! Will her world of ideas differ from ours? — She will discover strange things, unfathomable, repulsive and delicious; we shall accept them, we shall understand them.
                  Meanwhile, let us ask the poet for something new — ideas and forms. All the smart alecks will soon think they have satisfied this