which escorts him to the beyond, broken but redeemed.
During the “Night in Hell,” when he realizes that he is the slave of his baptism, he cries: “O Parents, you contrived my misfortune, and your own.” In the dark night of the soul, during which he proclaims himself a master in phantasmagoria and boasts that he is going to unveil every mystery, he renounces everything which would link him with the age or the land he was born in. “I am ready for perfection,” he states. And he was, in a sense. He had prepared his own initiation, survived the terrible ordeal, and then relapsed into the night in which he was born. He had perceived that there was a step beyond art, he had put his foot over the threshold, and then in terror or in fear of madness he had retreated. His preparations for a new life were either insufficient or of the wrong order. Most commentators think the latter, though both are possibly true. So much emphasis has been laid upon that phrase—“long, immense, logical derangement of all the senses.” So much has been said about his early debauches, about his “Bohemian” life. One forgets how utterly normal that was for a precocious youth bursting with ideas who has run away from an intolerable home atmosphere in the provinces. Rare creature that he was, he would have been abnormal had he not succumbed to the potent appeals of a city like Paris. If he was excessive in his indulgence it is only to say that the vaccination took with a vengeance. It was not such a long time he spent either in Paris or in London. Not enough to ruin a healthy lad of peasant stock. For one who was in revolt against everything it was in fact a salutary experience. The road to heaven leads through hell, does it not? To earn salvation one has to become inoculated with sin. One has to savor them all, the capital as well as the trivial sins. One has to earn death with all one’s appetites, refuse no poison, reject no experience however degrading or sordid. One has to come to the end of one’s forces, learn that one is a slave—in whatever realm—in order to desire emancipation. The perverse, negative will fostered by one’s parents has to be made submissive before it can become positive and integrated with the heart and mind. The Father (in all his guises) has to be dethroned so that the Son may reign. The Father is Saturnian in every phase of his being. He is the stern taskmaster, the dead letter of the Law, the
Verboten
sign. One kicks the traces over, goes berserk, filled with a false power and a foolish pride. And then one breaks, and the I that is not the I surrenders.
But Rimbaud did not break
. He does not dethrone the Father, he identifies himself with him. He does it as much through his godlike assumption of authority as through his excesses, his ramblings, his irresponsibility. He goes over into the opposite, becomes the very enemy whom he hated. In short, he abdicates, becomes a vagabond god in search of his true kingdom. “To emasculate oneself, is not that a sure way of damning yourself?” (This is one of the many questions he poses during his agony.) And that is precisely what he does. He emasculates himself by abdicating the role for which he was chosen … Is it possible that in Rimbaud the sense of guilt was atrophied?
What a struggle for power, possessions, security he wages during the “active” period of his life! Did he not realize what a treasure he possessed, what power he wielded, what unimpeachable security he knew when he was simply the poet? (I wish I could say that he also revealed himself to be the poet of action, but the accidents which stud the latter half of his life never develop into those incidents which profit the man of action.) No, there is a blindness which it is impossible to fathom, and Rimbaud’s is that sort. A curse has been laid on him. He not only loses his sense of direction, but he loses his touch. Everything goes wrong. He changes identity so thoroughly that if he were to
During the “Night in Hell,” when he realizes that he is the slave of his baptism, he cries: “O Parents, you contrived my misfortune, and your own.” In the dark night of the soul, during which he proclaims himself a master in phantasmagoria and boasts that he is going to unveil every mystery, he renounces everything which would link him with the age or the land he was born in. “I am ready for perfection,” he states. And he was, in a sense. He had prepared his own initiation, survived the terrible ordeal, and then relapsed into the night in which he was born. He had perceived that there was a step beyond art, he had put his foot over the threshold, and then in terror or in fear of madness he had retreated. His preparations for a new life were either insufficient or of the wrong order. Most commentators think the latter, though both are possibly true. So much emphasis has been laid upon that phrase—“long, immense, logical derangement of all the senses.” So much has been said about his early debauches, about his “Bohemian” life. One forgets how utterly normal that was for a precocious youth bursting with ideas who has run away from an intolerable home atmosphere in the provinces. Rare creature that he was, he would have been abnormal had he not succumbed to the potent appeals of a city like Paris. If he was excessive in his indulgence it is only to say that the vaccination took with a vengeance. It was not such a long time he spent either in Paris or in London. Not enough to ruin a healthy lad of peasant stock. For one who was in revolt against everything it was in fact a salutary experience. The road to heaven leads through hell, does it not? To earn salvation one has to become inoculated with sin. One has to savor them all, the capital as well as the trivial sins. One has to earn death with all one’s appetites, refuse no poison, reject no experience however degrading or sordid. One has to come to the end of one’s forces, learn that one is a slave—in whatever realm—in order to desire emancipation. The perverse, negative will fostered by one’s parents has to be made submissive before it can become positive and integrated with the heart and mind. The Father (in all his guises) has to be dethroned so that the Son may reign. The Father is Saturnian in every phase of his being. He is the stern taskmaster, the dead letter of the Law, the
Verboten
sign. One kicks the traces over, goes berserk, filled with a false power and a foolish pride. And then one breaks, and the I that is not the I surrenders.
But Rimbaud did not break
. He does not dethrone the Father, he identifies himself with him. He does it as much through his godlike assumption of authority as through his excesses, his ramblings, his irresponsibility. He goes over into the opposite, becomes the very enemy whom he hated. In short, he abdicates, becomes a vagabond god in search of his true kingdom. “To emasculate oneself, is not that a sure way of damning yourself?” (This is one of the many questions he poses during his agony.) And that is precisely what he does. He emasculates himself by abdicating the role for which he was chosen … Is it possible that in Rimbaud the sense of guilt was atrophied?
What a struggle for power, possessions, security he wages during the “active” period of his life! Did he not realize what a treasure he possessed, what power he wielded, what unimpeachable security he knew when he was simply the poet? (I wish I could say that he also revealed himself to be the poet of action, but the accidents which stud the latter half of his life never develop into those incidents which profit the man of action.) No, there is a blindness which it is impossible to fathom, and Rimbaud’s is that sort. A curse has been laid on him. He not only loses his sense of direction, but he loses his touch. Everything goes wrong. He changes identity so thoroughly that if he were to
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