Arthur Rimbaud

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 influenced modern literature and arts, and prefigured surrealism. He started writing poems at a very young age, while still in primary school, and stopped completely before he turned 21. He was mostly creative in his teens (17–20). The critic Cecil Arthur Hackett wrote that his "genius, its flowering, explosion and sudden extinction, still astonishes".

Rimbaud was known to have been a libertine and for being a restless soul. He traveled extensively on three continents before his death from cancer just after his thirty-seventh birthday.

Life

Family and childhood (1854–1861)

Arthur Rimbaud was born in the provincial town of Charleville (now part of Charleville-Mézières) in the Ardennes département in northeastern France. He was the second child of Frédéric Rimbaud (7 October 1814 – 16 November 1878) and Marie Catherine Vitalie Cuif (10 March 1825 – 16 November 1907).