The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud (15 page)

His was the most terrible deception I know of. He asked for more than any man dared and he received infinitely less than he deserved. Corroded by his own bitterness and despair, his dreams turned to rust. But for us they remain as pure and untarnished as the day they were born. Of the corruption he passed through not a single ulcer adheres. All is white, glistening, tremulous and dynamic, purified by the flames. More than any poet he lodges himself in that vulnerable place called the heart. In all that is broken—a thought, a gesture, a deed, a life—we find the proud Prince of the Ardennes. May his soul rest in peace!

Rimbaud was born in the middle of the nineteenth century, October 20th, 1854, at 6:00 A.M., it is said. A century of unrest, of materialism, and of “progress,” as we say. Purgatorial in every sense of the word, and the writers who flourished in this period reflect this ominously. Wars and revolutions were abundant. Russia alone, we are told, waged thirty-three wars (mostly of conquest) during the 18th and 19th centuries. Shortly after Rimbaud is born his father is off to the Crimean War. So is Tolstoy. The revolution of 1848, of brief duration but full of consequences, is followed by the bloody Commune of 1871, which Rimbaud as a boy is thought to have participated in. In 1848 we in America are fighting the Mexicans with whom we are now great friends, though the Mexicans are not too sure of it. During this war Thoreau makes his famous speech on Civil Disobedience, a document which will one day be added to the Emancipation Proclamation—as a rider. Twelve years later the Civil War breaks out, perhaps the bloodiest of all civil wars—but see what we gained! From 1847 until his death in 1881, Amiel is writing his
Journal Intime
, which is the logbook of the sick man of Europe erroneously called Turkey. It gives a thoroughgoing analysis of the moral dilemma in which the creative spirits of the time found themselves. The very titles of the books written by the influential writers of the 19th Century are revelatory. I give just a few …
The Sickness Unto Death
(Kierkegaard),
Dreams and Life
(Gérard de Nerval),
Les Fleurs du Mal
(Baudelaire),
Les Chants de Maldoror
(Lautréamont),
The Birth of Tragedy
(Nietzsche),
La Bête Humaine
(Zola),
Hunger
(Knut Hamsun),
Les Lauriers sont coupés
(Dujardin),
The Conquest of Bread
(Kropotkin),
Looking Backward
(Edward Bellamy),
Alice in Wonderland
(Lewis Carroll),
The Serpent in Paradise
(Sacher-Masoch),
Les Paradis Artificiels
(Baudelaire),
Dead Souls
(Gogol),
The House of the Dead
(Dostoievsky),
The Wild Duck
(Isben),
The Inferno
(Strindberg),
The Nether World
(Gissing),
A Rebours
(Huysmans) …

Goethe’s
Faust
was not so very old when Rimbaud asked a friend for a copy of it. Remember, the date of his birth is October 20th, 1854. (6:00 A.M. Western Standard Diabolical Time.) The very next year, 1855,
Leaves of Grass
makes its first appearance, followed by general condemnation. In 1860 Baudelaire’s work on
les stupéfiants
appears, also followed by condemnation and suppression. Meanwhile
Moby Dick
had come out (1851) and Thoreau’s
Walden
(1854). In 1855 Gérard de Nerval commits suicide, having lasted till the remarkable age of 47. In 1854 Kierkegaard is already penning his last words to history, in which he gives us the parable of “The Sacrificed Ones.” Just four or five years before Rimbaud completes
A Season in Hell
(1873), Lautréamont publishes privately his celebrated piece of blasphemy, another “work of youth,” as we say, in order not to take these heartbreaking testaments seriously. (How many authors in this 19th Century publish their first works privately!) By 1888 Nietzsche is explaining to Brandes that he can now boast of three readers: Brandes, Taine and Strindberg. The next year he goes mad and remains that way until his death in 1900. Lucky man! From 1893 to 1897 Strindberg is experiencing a
crise
, as the French put it, which he describes with magistral effects in the
Inferno
. Reminiscent of Rimbaud is the title of another of his works:
The Keys to Paradise
. In 1888 comes Dujardin’s curious little book, forgotten until recently. In the same year Edward Bellamy’s Utopian document is published. By this time Mark Twain is at his height,
Huckleberry Finn
having appeared in 1884, the same year as
Against the Grain
of Huysmans. By the fall of 1891, the year of Rimbaud’s death, Knut Hamsun is directing discussions in which “the right of the obscure and the mysterious in literature” is being fought over. In that same year Gissing’s
New Grub Street
is launched. It is an interesting year in 19th Century literature, this year of Rimbaud’s death; it ends a decade in which a number of writers important to the 20th Century are born. Here are a few titles of books which appeared in the year of 1891, curious books in that they differ so widely one from another …
Gö;sta Berling, The Light that Failed, The Little Minister, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Les Cahiers d’André Walter, Le Livre de la Pitié et de la Mort, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Là-Bas, The Fruits of Civilization, The End of Sodom, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Sixtine (roman de la vie cérébrale)
…

What a century of names! Let me include a few I have not mentioned … Shelley, Blake, Stendhal, Hegel, Fechner, Emerson, Poe, Schopenhauer, Max Stirner, Mallarmé, Tchekov, Andreyev, Verlaine, Couperus, Maeterlinck, Madame Blavatsky, Samuel Butler, Claudel, Unamuno, Conrad, Bakunin, Shaw, Rilke, Stefan George, Mary Baker Eddy, Verhaeren, Gautier, Léon Bloy, Balzac, Yeats…

What revolt, what disillusionment, what longing! Nothing but crises, breakdowns, hallucinations and visions. The foundations of politics, morals, economics and art tremble. The air is full of warnings and prophecies of the débâcle to come—and in the 20th Century it comes! Already two world wars and a promise of more before the century is out. Have we touched bottom? Not yet. The moral crisis of the 19th Century has merely given way to the spiritual bankruptcy of the 20th. It is “the time of the assassins,” and no mistaking it. Politics has become the business of gangsters. The peoples are marching in the sky but they are not shouting hosannahs; those below are marching towards the bread lines.
C’est—l’aube exaltée ainsi qu’un peuple de colombes
…

*
Get the album called “Euphoria,” Vaya Records.

*
The French edition published by Mermod, Lausanne, the German by Verlag der Arche, Zurich.

*
Published by Horace Schwartz, P. O. Box 503, Sunnyvale, California, 1955.

*
See
The Power Within Us
by Haniel Long; Duell, Sloan & Pearce, New York.

*
See the essay called “An Open Letter to Surrealists Everywhere” in
The Cosmological Eye
, New Directions, New York.

*
Italics mine.

*
The Mystic Will
, by H. H. Brinton.

*
“Let us be happy! I am God, and I have made this caricature.” (Nietzsche from the asylum.)

*
“The difficulty now is to get rid of me,” said Nietzsche from the asylum. Signed “The Crucified One.”

*
Did not Lao-tse attempt the same thing?

*
“I must have beings who resemble me!” said Lautréamont.

COPYRIGHT 1946 BY
NEW DIRECTIONS PUBLISHING CORPORATION

COPYRIGHT 1949 BY
NEW DIRECTIONS PUBLISHING CORPORATION

COPYRIGHT © 1956 BY
NEW DIRECTIONS PUBLISHING CORPORATION

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55-12452

eISBN
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First published as ND Paperbook 115 in 1962

Published simultaneously in Canada by
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