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.

LRB 9 October 2003 | PDF Download