fullest one is inclined to reply in the affirmative. Yet they were not permitted to run full cycle; if we are to be fair to them, this unlived future must be taken into consideration. I have said it of Lawrence, and I will say it of Rimbaud, that had they been granted another thirty years of life, they would have sung a different tune entirely. They were at one with their destiny always; it was their fate which betrayed them and which is apt to deceive us in examining their deeds and motives.
Rimbaud, as I see him, was
par excellence
an evolving type. The evolution he went through in the first half of his life is no more amazing than the evolution of the second half. It is we, perhaps, who are unaware of the glorious phase he was preparing to enter. He sinks below our horizon on the eve of another great change, at the beginning of a fruitful period when the poet and the man of action were about to fuse. We see him expiring as a defeated man; we have no perception of the rewards which his years of worldly experience were storing up for him. We see two opposite types of being united in one man; we see the conflict but not the potential harmony or resolution. Only those who are interested in the
significance
of his life will permit themselves to dally with such speculations. Yet the only purpose in going to the life of a great personality, of studying it in conjunction with his work, is to bring forth what is hidden and obscure, what was uncompleted, as it were. To speak of the real Lawrence or the real Rimbaud is to make cognizant the fact that there is an
unknown
Lawrence, an
unknown
Rimbaud. There would be no controversy about such figures had they been able to reveal themselves utterly. It is curious to note in this connection that it is precisely the men who deal in revelations—
self-revelations
—about whom there is the greatest mystery. Such individuals seem to be born into the world struggling to express what is most secret in their nature. That there is a secret which gnaws them is hardly a matter of doubt. One need not be “occult” to be aware of the difference between their problems and other eminent men’s, as well as their approach to these problems. These men are deeply allied to the spirit of the times, to those underlying problems which beset the age and give it its character and tone. They are always dual, apparently, and for a good reason, since they incarnate the old and the new together. It is for this reason that more time, more detachment, is required to appreciate and evaluate them than their contemporaries however illustrious. These men have their roots in that very future which disturbs us so profoundly. They have two rhythms, two faces, two interpretations. They are integrated to transition, to flux. Wise in a new way, their language seems cryptic to us, if not foolish or contradictory.
In one of the poems Rimbaud makes mention of that gnawing secret I refer to:
“Hydre intime, sans gueules,
Qui mine et désole.”
It was an affliction which poisoned him both at the zenith and the nadir of his being. In him sun and moon were both strong, and both eclipsed. (
“Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer.”
) The very core of his being was corroded; it spread, like the cancer which attacked his knee. His life as a poet, which was the lunar phase of his evolution, reveals the same quality of eclipse as his later life of adventurer and man of action, which was the solar phase. Narrowly escaping madness in his youth, he escaped it once again upon his death. The only solution possible for him, had he not been cut off by death, was the contemplative life, the mystic way. It is my belief that his thirty-seven years were a preparation for such a way of life.
Why do I permit myself to speak of this unfinished part of his life with such certitude? Because once again I see analogies to my own life, my own development. Had I died at the age Rimbaud died, what would be known of my purpose, my efforts?