Fleeing the Mother Tongue 
Jeremy Harding
- Rimbaud Complete edited by Wyatt Mason
- Collected Poems by Arthur Rimbaud, edited by Martin Sorrell
- L'Art de Rimbaud by Michel Murat
- Arthur Rimbaud by Jean-Jacques Lefrère
- Arthur Rimbaud: Presence of an Enigma by Jean-Luc Steinmetz, edited by Jon Graham
- Rimbaud by Graham Robb
Arthur Rimbaud, the boy who gave it all up for something different, is a legend, both as a poet and a renouncer of poetry. He had finished with literature before the age of 21. By the time his work began to appear in the 1880s, to great acclaim, he had become a trader and a minor explorer in inhospitable country, working for a French company in Aden which sent him across the Red Sea to run a branch of the business – coffee, hides and ivory for the most part – in the town of Harar, between the Ogaden and the highlands of Abyssinia. He looked back at his earlier life as a poet with some unease. This transition from the adventure of language to adventure proper is crucial to the legend.
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Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the LRB. His versions of Rimbaud’s poetry are published by Penguin along with John Sturrock’s translation of the letters.
Other articles by this contributor:
At Quai Branly · Jacques Chirac’s museum
At the British Museum · The African Galleries
The Great Unleashing · The End of Jihad
Sarko, Ségo & Co. · The Banlieues Go to the Polls
Through the Trapdoor · Walter Benjamin’s Last Day
It Migrates to Them · The Coming Megaslums
Diary from Paris · Among the Arsonists
Best Remain Seated · Jeremy Harding seeks travel guidance
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