Pornocrates by Félicien Rops. Etching and aquatint

The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.

Overview[link]

Decadence was the name given, originally by hostile critics, to several late nineteenth-century writers who valued artifice more than the earlier Romantics' naïve descriptions. Some of them adopted the name, referring to themselves as "Decadents". For the most part, they were influenced by the tradition of Gothic novels and by the poetry and fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, and were associated with Symbolism and/or Aestheticism.^[1][2][3]

This concept of decadence dates from the eighteenth century, especially from Montesquieu, and was adopted by critics as a term of abuse after Désiré Nisard used it against Victor Hugo and Romanticism in general. A later generation of Romantics, such as Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire used the word proudly, to represent their rejection of what they considered banal "progress." During the 1880s a group of French writers referred to themselves as Decadents. The classic novel from this group is Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature, often considered the first great decadent work, though others attribute this honour to Baudelaire's works.^[4] Decadence is now regarded as a transition between Romanticism and Modernism.^[3]

In Britain the leading figures associated with the Decadent movement were Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and some artists and writers associated with The Yellow Book. In the United States, the brothers Edgar and Francis Saltus wrote decadent fiction and poetry.

Symbolism has often been confused with Decadence. Several young writers were referred to derisively in the press as "decadent" during the mid 1880s. Jean Moréas' manifesto was largely a response to this polemic. A few of these writers embraced the term while most avoided it. Although the aesthetics of Symbolism and Decadence can be considered to be similar in some respects, the two remain distinct.

Max Nordau wrote a bestselling attack on the movement, Degeneration (1892). A detailed study of the movement which attracted wide attention was The Romantic Agony (1933) by Mario Praz.

Artists and Writers[link]

See also[link]

• Flâneur
• French literature of the 19th century

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony, 1930 ISBN 0-19-281061-8
• Philippe Jullian, Esthétes et Magiciens 1969; Dreamers of Decadence, 1971.

Ernest Dowson

Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900), born in Lee, London, was an English poet, novelist and writer of short stories, associated with the Decadent movement.

Biography[link]

Dowson attended The Queen's College, Oxford, but left before obtaining a degree.^[1] In November 1888, he started work with his father at Dowson and Son, a dry-docking business in Limehouse, east London, established by the poet's grandfather. He led an active social life, carousing with medical students and law pupils, going to music halls, and taking the performers to dinner. Meanwhile, he was also working assiduously at his writing. He was a member of the Rhymers' Club, which included W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson. He was also a frequent contributor to the literary magazines The Yellow Book and The Savoy. Dowson collaborated on two unsuccessful novels with Arthur Moore, worked on a novel of his own, Madame de Viole, and wrote reviews for The Critic.

Dowson was also a prolific translator of French fiction, including novels by Balzac and the Goncourt brothers, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos.

In 1889, at the age of 23, Dowson fell in love with 11-year-old Adelaide "Missie" Foltinowicz, the daughter of a Polish restaurant owner. Adelaide is reputed to be the subject of one his best-known poems, Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae. He pursued her unsuccessfully; in 1897, she married a tailor who lodged above her father's restaurant and Dowson was crushed. In August, 1894, Dowson's father, who was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis, died of an overdose of chloral hydrate. His mother, who was also consumptive, hanged herself in February, 1895, and soon Dowson began to decline rapidly.

Robert Sherard one day found Dowson almost penniless in a wine bar and took him back to the cottage in Catford where he was himself living. Dowson spent the last six weeks of his life at Sherard's cottage and died there of alcoholism at the age of 32. He is buried in the Roman Catholic section of nearby Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries.

In anticipation of the anniversary of Dowson's birth on August 2, 2010, his grave, which had fallen derelict and been vandalized, was restored. The unveiling and memorial service were publicised in the local (South London Press) and national (BBC Radio 4 and the Times Literary Supplement) British press, and dozens paid posthumous tribute to the poet 110 years after his death.

Works[link]

Dowson is best remembered for some vivid phrases, such as "days of wine and roses" from his poem "Vitae Summa Brevis" (1896), which appears in the stanza:

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.

and "gone with the wind", from Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae,^[2] the third stanza of which reads:

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,

Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

The last line of this stanza, which is the last line of all four stanzas of the poem, was the inspiration for the song title "Always True to You in My Fashion" from Kiss Me, Kate by Cole Porter.

Margaret Mitchell, touched by the "far away, faintly sad sound I wanted" of the third stanza's first line, chose that line as the title of her only novel: Gone with the Wind.

Dowson also provides the earliest use of the word soccer in written language according to the Oxford English Dictionary (although he spells it socca, presumably because it did not yet have a standard written form).^[3]

His prose works include the short stories collected as Dilemmas (1895), and the two novels A Comedy of Masks and Adrian Rome (each co-written with Arthur Moore). Some of his short prose was first published in the journal The Yellow Book.

References[link]

• Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson by Jad Adams (I.B. Tauris 2000).
• Victor Plarr, Ernest Dowson 1888-1897: Reminiscences, Unpublished Letters and Marginalia, with a bibliography compiled by H. Guy Harrison (New York: Laurence J. Gomme, 1914).
• See also sections in: Madonnas and Magdalens - the origins and developments of Victorian sexual attitudes. London. Eric Trudgill. (Heinemann, 1976).

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

Primary Works (modern scholarly editions)

• Ernest Dowson, The Stories of Ernest Dowson, ed. by Mark Longaker (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1947)
• Ernest Dowson, The Poems of Ernest Dowson, ed. by Mark Longaker (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962)
• Ernest Dowson, The Letters of Ernest Dowson, ed. by Desmond Flower and Henry Maas (London: Cassell, 1967)
• Ernest Dowson, The Poetry of Ernest Dowson, ed. by Desmond Flower (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970)

Biographies

• Jad Adams, Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent (London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2000)
• Mark Longaker, Ernest Dowson: A Biography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945)
• Henry Maas, Ernest Dowson: Poetry and Love in the 1890s (London: Greenwich Exchange, 2009)

Critical Studies on Dowson and the 1890s

• Elisa Bizzotto, La mano e l'anima. Il ritratto immaginario fin de siècle (Milano: Cisalpino, 2001)
• Jean-Jacques Chardin, Ernest Dowson et la crise fin de siècle anglaise (Paris: Editions Messene, 1995)
• Linda Dowling, Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)
• B. Ifor Evans, English Poetry in the Later Nineteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1966)
• Ian Fletcher, Decadence and the 1890s (London: Edward Arnold, 1979)
• Graham Hough, The Last Romantics (London: Duckworth, 1949)
• Holbrook Jackson, The Eighteen Nineties (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927)
• Franco Marucci, Storia della letteratura inglese dal 1870 al 1921 (Firenze: Le Lettere, 2006)
• William Monahan (2000-10-11). "A Gallows Sermon: Life & Death Among the Decadents". New York Press. http://www.nypress.com/13/41/news&columns/feature.cfm. Retrieved 2007-03-06. 
• Murray G. H. Pittock, Spectrum of Decadence: The Literature of the 1890s (London: Routledge, 1993)
• Mario Praz, La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica (Firenze: Sansoni, 1976)
• Bernard Richards, English Poetry of the Victorian Period (London: Longman, 1988)
• Thomas Burnett Swann, Ernest Dowson (New York: Twayne, 1964)
• Arthur Symons, The Memoirs of Arthur Symons, ed. by Karl Beckson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977)
• William Butler Yeats, Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1955)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ernest Dowson

• Poems (1900)
• A few of Dowson's poems, through the University of Toronto.
• Arthur Symons' memoir of Dowson.
• Works by Ernest Dowson at Project Gutenberg
• Dowson, Schoenberg and the birth of Modernism, Horizon Review

Sam Tanenhaus (born October 31, 1955) is an American historian, biographer, and journalist.

Biography[link]

Tanenhaus received his B.A. in English from Grinnell College in 1977 and a M.A. in English Literature from Yale University in 1978. He is currently the editor of The New York Times Book Review and Week in Review.^[1] His siblings include psycholinguist Michael Tanenhaus, filmmaker Beth Tanenhaus Winsten, and legal historian David S. Tanenhaus.

Tanenhaus was an assistant editor at The New York Times from 1997 to 1999, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair from 1999 until 2004. Since 2004, he has been the senior editor of The New York Times Book Review.^[1][2] His 1997 biography of Whittaker Chambers won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for both the National Book Award for Nonfiction^[3] and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.^[4]

Bibliography[link]

• Tanenhaus, Sam (1986). Literature Unbound. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-33297-0. 
• Tanenhaus, Sam (1988). Louis Armstrong (Black Americans of Achievement). Chelsea House Publications. ISBN 0-7910-0221-7. 
• Tanenhaus, Sam and Gross, Steve (Photographer) (1995). Old Greenwich Village: An Architectural Portrait. Wiley, John & Sons, Inc.. ISBN 0-471-14405-3. 
• Tanenhaus, Sam (1997). Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75145-9. 
• Brinkley, Douglas; Tanenhaus, Sam, eds. (2007). McCarthyism in America. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11165-7. 
• Tanenhaus, Sam (2009). The Death of Conservatism. Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6884-3. 

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Oxford American interview with Sam Tanenhaus
• Sam Tanenhaus's review of "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen in The New York Times Book Review
• Sam Tanenhaus's review of "Going Rogue" by Sarah Palin in The New Yorker
• "How the Republicans Got That Way" Tanenhaus's review of "Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party" by Geoffrey Kabaservice in the New York Review of Books

External links[link]

• Part One of Booknotes interview with Tanenhaus on Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, February 23, 1997.
• Part Two of Booknotes interview with Tanenhaus on Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, March 2, 1997.
• Will the Tea Get Cold? (March 8, 2012 New York Review of Books issue)

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Arthur Rimbaud
Rimbaud, aged 17, by Étienne Carjat, "probably taken in December 1871".[1]
Born	Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (1854-10-20)20 October 1854 Charleville, France
Died	10 November 1891(1891-11-10) (aged 37) Marseille, France
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	French
Literary movement	Symbolism, decadent movement
Influences Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine
Influenced Bob Kaufman, J. Slauerhoff, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Richey Edwards
Signature

Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (/ræmˈboʊ/ or /ˈræmboʊ/; French pronunciation: [aʁtyʁ ʁɛ̃bo]; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 20. As part of the decadent movement, Rimbaud influenced modern literature, music and art. He was known to have been a libertine and a restless soul, travelling extensively on three continents before his death from cancer just after his 37th birthday.

Life[link]

Family and childhood (1854–1861)[link]

Arthur Rimbaud was born into the provincial middle class of Charleville (now part of Charleville-Mézières) in the Ardennes département in northeastern France. He was the second child of a career soldier, Frédéric Rimbaud, and his wife Marie-Catherine-Vitalie Cuif.^[2] His father, a Burgundian of Provençal extraction, rose from a simple recruit to the rank of captain, and spent the greater part of his army years in foreign service.^[3] Captain Rimbaud fought in the conquest of Algeria and was awarded the Légion d'honneur. The Cuif family was a solidly established Ardennais family, but they were plagued by unstable and bohemian characters; two of Arthur Rimbaud's uncles from his mother's side were alcoholics.^[4]

Captain Rimbaud and Vitalie married in February 1853; in the following November came the birth of their first child, Jean-Nicolas-Frederick. The next year, on 20 October 1854, Jean-Nicolas-Arthur was born. Three more children, Victorine-Pauline-Vitalie (who died a month after she was born), Jeanne-Rosalie-Vitalie and Frederique-Marie-Isabelle, followed. Arthur Rimbaud's infancy is said to have been prodigious; a common myth states that soon after his birth he had rolled onto the floor from a cushion where his nurse had put him only to begin crawling toward the door.^[5] In a more realistic retelling of his childhood, Mme Rimbaud recalled when after putting her second son in the care of a nurse in Gespunsart, supplying clean linen and a cradle for him, she returned to find the nurse's child sitting in the crib wearing the clothes meant for Arthur. Meanwhile, the dirty and naked child that was her own was happily playing in an old salt chest.^[6]

Soon after the birth of Isabelle, when Arthur was six years old, Captain Rimbaud left to join his regiment in Cambrai and never returned.^[7] He had become irritated by domesticity and the presence of the children while Madame Rimbaud was determined to rear and educate her family by herself.^[8] The young Arthur Rimbaud was therefore under the complete governance of his mother, a strict Catholic, who raised him and his older brother and younger sisters in a stern and religious household. After her husband's departure, Mme Rimbaud became known as "Widow Rimbaud".^[7]

Schooling and teen years (1862–1871)[link]

Fearing that her children were spending too much time with and being over-influenced by neighbouring children of the poor, Mme Rimbaud moved her family to the Cours d'Orléans in 1862.^[9] This was a better neighborhood, and whereas the boys were previously taught at home by their mother, they were then sent, at the ages of nine and eight, to the Pension Rossat. For the five years that they attended school, however, their formidable mother still imposed her will upon them, pushing for scholastic success. She would punish her sons by making them learn a hundred lines of Latin verse by heart and if they gave an inaccurate recitation, she would deprive them of meals.^[10] When Arthur was nine, he wrote a 700-word essay objecting to his having to learn Latin in school. Vigorously condemning a classical education as a mere gateway to a salaried position, Rimbaud wrote repeatedly, "I will be a rentier (one who lives off his assets)".^[10] He disliked schoolwork and his mother's continued control and constant supervision; the children were not allowed to leave their mother's sight, and, until the boys were sixteen and fifteen respectively, she would walk them home from the school grounds.^[11]

Rimbaud, aged 12, on the day of his First Communion.^[12]

As a boy, Arthur was small, brown-haired and pale with what a childhood friend called "eyes of pale blue irradiated with dark blue—the loveliest eyes I've seen".^[13] When he was eleven, Arthur had his First Communion; despite his intellectual and individualistic nature, he was an ardent Catholic like his mother. For this reason he was called "sale petit Cagot" ("snotty little prig") by his fellow schoolboys.^[14] He and his brother were sent to the Collège de Charleville for school that same year. Until this time, his reading was confined almost entirely to the Bible,^[15] but he also enjoyed fairy tales and stories of adventure such as the novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Gustave Aimard.^[16] He became a highly successful student and was head of his class in all subjects but sciences and mathematics. Many of his schoolmasters remarked upon the young student's ability to absorb great quantities of material. In 1869 he won eight first prizes in the school, including the prize for Religious Education, and in 1870 he won seven firsts.^[17]

When he had reached the third class, Mme Rimbaud, hoping for a brilliant scholastic future for her second son, hired a tutor, Father Ariste Lhéritier, for private lessons.^[18] Lhéritier succeeded in sparking the young scholar's love of Greek and Latin as well as French classical literature. He was also the first person to encourage the boy to write original verse in both French and Latin.^[19] Rimbaud's first poem to appear in print was "Les Étrennes des orphelins" ("The Orphans' New Year's Gift"), which was published in the 2 January 1870 issue of Revue pour tous.^[20] Two weeks after his poem was printed, a new teacher named Georges Izambard arrived at the Collège de Charleville. Izambard became Rimbaud's literary mentor and soon a close accord formed between professor and student and Rimbaud for a short time saw Izambard as a kind of older brother figure.^[21] At the age of fifteen, Rimbaud was showing maturity as a poet; the first poem he showed Izambard, "Ophélie", would later be included in anthologies as one of Rimbaud's three or four best poems.^[22] When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, Izambard left Charleville and Rimbaud became despondent. He ran away to Paris with no money for his ticket and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for a week. After returning home, Rimbaud ran away to escape his mother's wrath.

From late October 1870, Rimbaud's behaviour became outwardly provocative; he drank alcohol, spoke rudely, composed scatological poems, stole books from local shops, and abandoned his hitherto characteristically neat appearance by allowing his hair to grow long.^[23] At the same time he wrote to Izambard about his method for attaining poetical transcendence or visionary power through a "long, intimidating, immense and rational derangement of all the senses. The sufferings are enormous, but one must be strong, be born a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet."^[24] It is rumoured that he briefly joined the Paris Commune of 1871, which he portrayed in his poem L'orgie parisienne (ou : Paris se repeuple), ("The Parisian Orgy" or "Paris Repopulates"). Another poem, Le cœur volé ("The Stolen Heart"), is often interpreted as a description of him being raped by drunken Communard soldiers, but this is unlikely since Rimbaud continued to support the Communards and wrote poems sympathetic to their aims.^[25]

Life with Verlaine (1871–1875)[link]

Plaque in Brussels

Caricature of Rimbaud drawn by Verlaine in 1872.

Rimbaud was encouraged by friend and office employee Charles Auguste Bretagne to write to Paul Verlaine, an eminent Symbolist poet, after letters to other poets failed to garner replies.^[26] Taking his advice, Rimbaud sent Verlaine two letters containing several of his poems, including the hypnotic, gradually shocking "Le Dormeur du Val" (The Sleeper in the Valley), in which certain facets of Nature are depicted and called upon to comfort an apparently sleeping soldier. Verlaine, who was intrigued by Rimbaud, sent a reply that stated, "Come, dear great soul. We await you; we desire you," along with a one-way ticket to Paris.^[27] Rimbaud arrived in late September 1871 at Verlaine's invitation and resided briefly in Verlaine's home.^[28] Verlaine, who was married to the seventeen-year-old and pregnant Mathilde Mauté, had recently left his job and taken up drinking. In later published recollections of his first sight of Rimbaud, Verlaine described him at the age of seventeen as having "the real head of a child, chubby and fresh, on a big, bony rather clumsy body of a still-growing adolescent, and whose voice, with a very strong Ardennes accent, that was almost a dialect, had highs and lows as if it were breaking."^[29]

Rimbaud and Verlaine began a short and torrid affair. Whereas Verlaine had likely engaged in prior homosexual experiences, it remains uncertain whether the relationship with Verlaine was Rimbaud's first. During their time together they led a wild, vagabond-like life spiced by absinthe and hashish.^[30] They scandalized the Parisian literary coterie on account of the outrageous behaviour of Rimbaud, the archetypical enfant terrible, who throughout this period continued to write strikingly visionary verse. The stormy relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine eventually brought them to London in September 1872,^[31] a period about which Rimbaud would later express regret. During this time, Verlaine abandoned his wife and infant son (both of whom he had abused in his alcoholic rages). Rimbaud and Verlaine lived in considerable poverty, in Bloomsbury and in Camden Town, scraping a living mostly from teaching, in addition to an allowance from Verlaine's mother.^[32] Rimbaud spent his days in the Reading Room of the British Museum where "heating, lighting, pens and ink were free."^[32] The relationship between the two poets grew increasingly bitter.

Verlaine (far left) and Rimbaud (second to left) depicted in an 1872 painting by Henri Fantin-Latour

By late June 1873, Verlaine grew frustrated with the relationship and returned to Paris, where he quickly began to mourn Rimbaud's absence. On 8 July, he telegraphed Rimbaud, instructing him to come to the Hotel Liège in Brussels; Rimbaud complied at once.^[33] The Brussels reunion went badly: they argued continuously and Verlaine took refuge in heavy drinking.^[33] On the morning of 10 July, Verlaine bought a revolver and ammunition.^[33] That afternoon, "in a drunken rage," Verlaine fired two shots at Rimbaud, one of them wounding the 18-year-old in the left wrist.^[33]

Rimbaud dismissed the wound as superficial, and did not initially seek to file charges against Verlaine. But shortly after the shooting, Verlaine (and his mother) accompanied Rimbaud to a Brussels railway station, where Verlaine "behaved as if he were insane." His bizarre behavior induced Rimbaud to "fear that he might give himself over to new excesses,"^[34] so he turned and ran away. In his words, "it was then I [Rimbaud] begged a police officer to arrest him [Verlaine]."^[34] Verlaine was arrested for attempted murder and subjected to a humiliating medico-legal examination.^[35] He was also interrogated with regard to both his intimate correspondence with Rimbaud and his wife's accusations about the nature of his relationship with Rimbaud.^[35] Rimbaud eventually withdrew the complaint, but the judge nonetheless sentenced Verlaine to two years in prison.^[35]

Rimbaud returned home to Charleville and completed his prose work Une Saison en Enfer ("A Season in Hell")—still widely regarded as one of the pioneering examples of modern Symbolist writing—which made various allusions to his life with Verlaine, described as a drôle de ménage ("domestic farce") with his frère pitoyable ("pitiful brother") and vierge folle ("mad virgin") to whom he was l'époux infernal ("the infernal groom"). In 1874 he returned to London with the poet Germain Nouveau^[36] and put together his groundbreaking Illuminations.

Travels (1875–1880)[link]

Rimbaud (self-portrait) in Harar in 1883.^[37]

Rimbaud and Verlaine met for the last time in March 1875, in Stuttgart, Germany, after Verlaine's release from prison and his conversion to Catholicism.^[38] By then Rimbaud had given up writing and decided on a steady, working life; some speculate he was fed up with his former wild living, or that the recklessness itself was his font of creativity. Others suggest he sought to become rich and independent to afford living one day as a carefree poet and man of letters.^{[citation needed]} He continued to travel extensively in Europe, mostly on foot.

In May 1876 he enlisted as a soldier in the Dutch Colonial Army^[39] to travel free of charge to Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) where four months later he deserted and fled into the jungle, eventually returning incognito to France by ship.^[40] At the official residence of the mayor of Salatiga, a small city at the foot of a dormant volcano located 46 km south of Semarang, capital of Central Java Province, there is a marble plaque stating that Rimbaud was once settled at the city. As a deserter, Rimbaud would have faced a Dutch firing squad if caught. ^[41]

In December 1878, Rimbaud arrived in Larnaca, Cyprus, where he worked for a construction company as a foreman at a stone quarry.^[42] In May of the following year he had to leave Cyprus because of a fever, which on his return to France was diagnosed as typhoid.

Abyssinia (1880–1891)[link]

In 1880 Rimbaud finally settled in Aden, Yemen as a main employee in the Bardey agency.^[43] In 1884 he left his job at Bardey's to become a merchant on his own account in Harar, Ethiopia, where his commercial dealings notably included coffee and weapons. In this period, he struck up a very close friendship with the Governor of Harar, Ras Makonnen, father of future Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.^[44]

Death (1891)[link]

Rimbaud's grave in Charleville. The inscription reads simply Priez pour lui ("Pray for him").

In February 1891, Rimbaud developed what he initially thought was arthritis in his right knee.^[45] It failed to respond to treatment and became agonisingly painful, and by March, the state of his health forced him to prepare to return to France for treatment.^[45] In Aden, Rimbaud consulted a British doctor who mistakenly diagnosed tubercular synovitis and recommended immediate amputation.^[46] Rimbaud delayed until 9 May to set his financial affairs in order before catching the boat back to France.^[46] On arrival, he was admitted to hospital—the Hôpital de la Conception, in Marseille—where his right leg was amputated on 27 May.^[47] The post-operative diagnosis was cancer.^[46]

After a short stay at his family home in Charleville, he attempted to travel back to Africa, but on the way, his health deteriorated, and he was readmitted to the same hospital in Marseille where the amputation had been performed and spent some time there in great pain, attended by his sister Isabelle. Rimbaud died in Marseille on 10 November 1891 at the age of 37 and was interred in Charleville.^[48]

Poetry[link]

In May 1871, aged 16, Rimbaud wrote two letters explaining his poetic philosophy. The first was written May 13 to Izambard, in which Rimbaud explained:

I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.^[49][50]

Rimbaud said much the same in his second letter, commonly called the Lettre du voyant ("Letter of the Seer"). Written May 15—before his first trip to Paris—to his friend Paul Demeny, the letter expounded his revolutionary theories about poetry and life, while also denouncing most poets that preceded him. Wishing for new poetic forms and ideas, he wrote:

I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable torture during which he needs all his faith and superhuman strength, and during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed – and the great learned one! – among men. – For he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his own soul – which was rich to begin with – more than any other man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die charging through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come; they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed!^[51][52]

Rimbaud expounded the same ideas in his poem, "Le bateau ivre" ("The Drunken Boat"). This hundred-line poem tells the tale of a boat that breaks free of human society when its handlers are killed by "Redskins" (Peaux-Rouges). At first thinking that it drifts where it pleases, it soon realizes that it is being guided by and to the "poem of the sea". It sees visions both magnificent ("the blue and yellow of singing phosphorescence", "l'éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs",) and disgusting ("nets where a whole Leviathan was rotting" "nasses / Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan). It ends floating and washed clean, wishing only to sink and become one with the sea.

Archibald MacLeish has commented on this poem: "Anyone who doubts that poetry can say what prose cannot has only to read the so-called Lettres du Voyant and 'Bateau Ivre' together. What is pretentious and adolescent in the Lettres is true in the poem—unanswerably true."^[53]

Rimbaud's poetry influenced the Symbolists, Dadaists and Surrealists, and later writers adopted not only some of his themes, but also his inventive use of form and language. French poet Paul Valéry stated that "all known literature is written in the language of common sense—except Rimbaud's."^[54]

Works[link]

• Le Soleil Était Encore Chaud (1866)
• Poésies (c. 1869–1873)
• Le bateau ivre (1871)
• Proses Évangeliques (1872)
• Une Saison en Enfer (1873) – published by Rimbaud himself as a small booklet in Brussels. Although "a few copies were distributed to friends in Paris... Rimbaud almost immediately lost interest in the work."^[55]
• Illuminations (1874)
• Lettres (1870–1891)

Cultural legacy[link]

Rimbaud's poetry, as well as his life, made an indelible impression on 20th century writers, musicians and artists. Pablo Picasso, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Vladimir Nabokov, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Giannina Braschi, Léo Ferré, Henry Miller, Van Morrison and Jim Morrison have been influenced by his poetry and life.^[54] Rimbaud's life has been portrayed in several films. Italian filmmaker Nelo Risi's 1970 film Una stagione all'inferno ("A Season in Hell") starred Terence Stamp as Rimbaud and Jean Claude Brialy as Paul Verlaine. In 1995 Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland directed Total Eclipse, which was based on a play by Christopher Hampton who also wrote the screenplay. The film starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Rimbaud and David Thewlis as Paul Verlaine.

References[link]

Notes[link]

Secondary sources[link]

External links[link]

	Biography portal
	Poetry portal

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Arthur Rimbaud

French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Arthur Rimbaud

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Arthur Rimbaud

• Works by or about Arthur Rimbaud in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Arthur Rimbaud Poetry list
• "Arthur Rimbaud". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8086. Retrieved August 10, 2010. 
• Arthur Rimbaud – Poets.org
• Arthur Rimbaud's Life and Poetry – French and English
• La Nouvelle Décadence – Extensive online library of Rimbaud translations and biographies
• (French) Electronic edition of Rimbaud's poems
• (French) "Rimbaud's holes in space" project launched for the 150th anniversary (Charleville-Mézières)
• (French) Website for the 150th anniversary (Charleville-Mézières)
• (French) Arthur Rimbaud, his work in audio version

The White Rabbit is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He appears at the very beginning of the book, in chapter one, wearing a waistcoat, and muttering "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" Alice follows him down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Alice encounters him again when he mistakes her for his housemaid Mary Ann and she becomes trapped in his house after growing too large. The Rabbit shows up again in the last few chapters, as a herald-like servant of the King and Queen of Hearts.

Personality[link]

In his article "Alice on the Stage," Carroll wrote "And the White Rabbit, what of him? Was he framed on the "Alice" lines, or meant as a contrast? As a contrast, distinctly. For her 'youth,' 'audacity,' 'vigour,' and 'swift directness of purpose,' read 'elderly,' 'timid,' 'feeble,' and 'nervously shilly-shallying,' and you will get something of what I meant him to be. I think the White Rabbit should wear spectacles. I'm sure his voice should quaver, and his knees quiver, and his whole air suggest a total inability to say 'Boo' to a goose!"^[1]

Overall, the White Rabbit seems to shift back and forth between pompous behavior toward his underlings, such as his servants, and grovelling, obsequious behavior toward his superiors, such as the Duchess and King and Queen of Hearts, in direct contrast to Alice, who is reasonably polite to everyone she meets.

Disney film[link]

White Rabbit
Disney character
First appearance	Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Created by	Lewis Carroll
Voiced by	Bill Thompson (original film) Corey Burton (House of Mouse, Kingdom Hearts and all other appearences) Jeff Bennett (Kinect Disneyland Adventures) Shigeru Ushiyama (Japanese, Kingdom Hearts series)
Information
Species	Rabbit
Gender	Male
Occupation	Page
Nationality	Wonderland

In Disney's animated version of the book, the Rabbit seems to have the most logic out of all the Wonderland characters. Thus, he is often the straight man for their zany antics; when he asks the Dodo for help on getting the "monster" (Alice) out of his house, Dodo's ultimate solution is to burn the house down, to which the White Rabbit is greatly opposed. At the Mad Tea Party, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare try to "fix" his watch, proclaiming it "exactly two days slow". Through various food they put in the watch (butter, tea, jam, and lemon), the two cause it to go mad, and the Hare smashes it with his mallet. The Rabbit was perhaps most famous for the little ditty he sang at the beginning - "I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!" The Rabbit was voiced by Bill Thompson.

Some believe the rabbit was late for the announcement of the Queen to the royal garden. The panic the rabbit showed was his fear of losing his head. Upon her arrival (where Alice has been helping to paint the roses red) the cards finish their song and the rabbit blows his trumpet (which he had been carrying for most of his lines) royally introducing the king and queen.

The White Rabbit made a few appearances on the Disney Channel original show, House of Mouse. His most noticeable appearance was when he confessed to Clarabelle Cow that "I'm not really late, and I don't really have a date. I'm a fraud!". He is seen grabbed by the reservation clerk Daisy Duck in the show's intro. He was voiced by Corey Burton, who would voice the Rabbit in all future speaking roles. In Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the genie was transformed into him.

The White Rabbit also appears at the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts as a meetable character.

Tim Burton film[link]

The White Rabbit works for the Red Queen, but is also a secret member of the Underland Underground Resistance, and was sent by the Hatter to search for Alice. Sheen stated, "The White Rabbit is such an iconic character that I didn't feel like I should break the mould too much." In this film adaption, the white rabbit is given the name Nivens McTwisp.^[2]

Other adaptations[link]

• The 1988 Czech film Alice, noted for its disturbing interpretation of Carroll's story, shows a dark stop-motion version of the character. At the beginning of the film, the White Rabbit starts out as a stuffed rabbit that comes alive in Alice's bedroom and breaks out of his glass case; he leaks sawdust through a hole in his chest. During Alice's pursuit of the White Rabbit in Wonderland, he physically attacks her with paddles, a hacksaw, and a group of skeletal animals. The White Rabbit is also the Queen of Hearts' executioner, using scissors to behead the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and other characters. Upon awakening from her dream and finding the White Rabbit missing from his case, Alice finds his scissors and resolves to behead him herself.

In popular culture[link]

Video games[link]

• In American McGee's Alice, the White Rabbit is responsible for Alice's return to Wonderland. He is first seen as Alice's soft toy, then becomes something that resembles a shriveled version of the John Tenniel illustration. When Alice is chasing him in the Village of the Doomed, he shrinks and goes down a hole. Alice follows him by shrinking herself with a hand-made potion. They meet again in the Wonderland Woods, where he tells her to find Caterpillar. Later, he is killed by the Mad Hatter, who crushes him under his foot. He reappears as a minor character in the sequel, Madness Returns, first in the opening sequence of the game, and then as a host of some mini-games (along with the Mad Hatter).
• In the Nintendo DS RPG, A Witch's Tale, the White Rabbit forces its way before the main character, Liddell. It can be a unlockable plush for fighting too.
• In the PlayStation 2 action-RPG game, Kingdom Hearts and its Game Boy Advance follow-up, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, the White Rabbit leads Sora, Donald Duck and Goofy to the Queen's palace, worried about being late. His Japanese voice actor was Shigeru Ushiyama.
• Rockstar's game Manhunt features a level called "Kill the Rabbit." In this stage, the player hunts down a man wearing a white rabbit suit, which the game's antagonist describes as "Wonderland fun".
• The rabbit appears in the video game adaptation of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland as a playable character. He attacks using his watch, and can manipulate time.
• In the Eye of the North expansion of Guild Wars, finding the boss Nulfastu Earthbound requires the player to follow a white rabbit into a rabbit hole. When the player enters, the boss appears, along with a large amount of other hostile monsters, that easily overwhelms an unprepared group of players.
• There is a reference to the White Rabbit in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.
• In Super Mario 64 MIPS the rabbit references the White Rabbit with a few lines, such as "I'm late for an important date."

Television and films[link]

• In Lost, the White Rabbit is alluded to several times in the series. First it is the name of an episode, and Locke claims that Jack is chasing the White Rabbit in the form of his father. The White Rabbit is also the symbol for the Looking Glass Station and it is also carrying a clock with it.
• In Star Trek, the 1966 episode "Shore Leave", shows the protagonists visiting a planet where characters of their imagination come to life. The White Rabbit appears to Doctor McCoy early in the episode.
• In The Matrix there are several metaphysical "waking up" metaphors that reference the Wonderland stories. Early in the film, Neo is told to follow the "White Rabbit" and seconds later, his doorbell rings, and when he opens the door he finds a woman with a tattoo of a white rabbit on her shoulder. Later in the film, Morpheus offers him the "red pill" to "find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes". Right before he meets the oracle one can see Night of the Lepus playing on a nearby television, symbolizing Neo's decision to "follow the white rabbit" and to disturb the order of the Matrix.
• In the Syfy Alice, The White Rabbit is a secret organization that works for the Queen of Hearts and abducts people from the real world (referred to as "Oysters"), so they can gamble in the Queen's casino. The actual character is represented by a member of The White Rabbit, called Agent White, who kidnaps Jack (Alice's fiance, later revealed to be the Queen's son) and tries to retrieve a magic ring called the Stone of Wonderland from Alice. When it is found out that he failed his mission, the Queen has him executed.
• In Jurassic Park, the character of Dennis Nedry writes a computer program to disable security systems of the park and hide his steps. Samuel L. Jackson's character finds a file called "whiterabbit.obj" that he claims did it all.
• In Wizards of Waverly Place, Alex chases the White Rabbit (Justin Russo). He wears white jeans, a white T-shirt, white hair, and big rabbit ears.
• In the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, when dabbling with occult sciences and sorcery during his investigation, Sherlock Holmes makes an allusion to both the White Rabbit and the rabbit-hole, comparing the sorcery to the rabbit-hole and himself to the white rabbit saying " Although I went deeper into the rabbit-hole than I intended, I brushed the dirt from my fluffy white tail and emerged enlightened".

Literature[link]

• In The Looking-Glass Wars, the White Rabbit is re-imagined as Bibwit Harte, an albino tutor with super-sensitive hearing. If you unscramble his name correctly you get (White Rabbit).
• In the manga series Alice in the Country of Hearts, written by Quinrose and published by Tokyopop. There is a character who is obviously the white rabbit. He is named Peter White, in this version he is the prime minister of the castle of hearts. He is portrayed as a cruel man who would kill anyone in an instant. He has little in common with the image of the white rabbit other than white rabbit ears, a large oversized pocketwatch, and a suit. He is desperately in love Alice and often caught rhyming as he speaks. Alice does mention hating him on several occasions and claims to hate "White Rabbit ears" the most.
• In the Stephen King novel The Long Walk, a boy named Stebbins refers to himself as "The White Rabbit type."

Music[link]

• Jefferson Airplane recorded a song called "White Rabbit", with references to this character and the Wonderland saga in general as metaphors for drug-induced experiences.
• Screaming Tea Party's song "Reckless Rabbit" opens with the lyrics, "My name is Alice, and I'm following the White Rabbit."
• Electric Six's song "Feed my Fuckin' Habit" makes reference to this with the lyrics "Feed my fuckin' habit... Follow the white rabbit" (album I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master, 2007).
• My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult's song "A Daisy Chain 4 Satan" has references of a white rabbit in their lyrics about drugs: "I live for drugs... I'm the white rabbit. I freaked out on acid... I'm the white rabbit."
• Egypt Central's song "White Rabbit" makes references to the rabbit (Your magic white rabbit has left its writing on the wall. We followed like Alice, and just kept falling down the hole).
• Shinedown's song "Her Name is Alice", from the compilation album Almost Alice, uses the line 'And the girl that chased the rabbit, drank the wine, and took the pill...' to reference the White Rabbit; indeed, most of the song references Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
• Vladimir Vysotsky's song "Белый кролик, Алиса и Додо" ("White Rabbit, Alice and Dodo").^[3]

Musical[link]

• The White Rabbit appeared as a banished fairy tale creature in the original Broadway musical Shrek, based on the 2001 film. He was played by Noah Rivera.
• The White Rabbit was portrayed by Edward Staudenmayer in Frank Wildhorn's musical Wonderland. In the show, he is portrayed as a panicky character with a sarcastic sense of humor. Staudenmayer praised the character's role in the story, saying, "Everything [he has] to say is funny or important." As well as the character that brings Alice to Wonderland in the first place, the Rabbit is also a close ally of her during the course of the show. His sole weapon is his pocket watch, which can turn back time; he uses it to help himself, El Gato the Cheshire Cat, Caterpillar, and Jack the White Knight escape from prison towards the end of the show.

Other Influences[link]

A military trench-digging machine developed by the British Royal Navy at the beginning of World War II was originally known as White Rabbit No. 6, but the name was changed to Cultivator No. 6 to conceal its identity.

References[link]

External links[link]

• White Rabbit character description
• TSR Modules EX1-2, Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror - article on the modules and download links