You Can Run Arthur, But You Can’t Hide

Somebody Else - Arthur Rambaud in Africa 1880-91
By Charles Nicholl

After being shot by a not-so-straight-shooting Paul Verlaine, his drama-queen mentor and friend-with-benefits, Arthur Rimbaud had probably had just about all the décadence he could ingest, and with the bullet of a crazed lover lodged in his haemorrhaging wrist it must have seemed high time for change. So at the still green age of twenty-five France’s poster boy of Decadent Poetry exchanged his pen and the société bobo of Paris and London for a sledgehammer in a Cypriot rock quarry.

Greek Isle, although concept of paradise to many, wasn’t Rimbaud’s it would seem. Perhaps some residue of absinthe lingered, because before you could recite Departure the by now ex-poet was charged in a wrongful death incident. What next then? Next Rimbaud did that for which Rimbaud is renowned – he caught the first boat out. To where? To Somewhere else of course!

Our colourful character is soon found sailing down the Red Sea. Eventually making land fall in Yemen. But this escape doesn’t last either, and before too long he makes the crossing to Somalia by dhow, where he reports on the headlining local news story of the day – piracy!

From Somalia Rimbaud travels inland by foot, following Burton’s route to Ethiopia (Rimbaud’s trekking is of course legendary), and here within the walled and sacred Muslim city of Harar he reinvents himself once again – this time as a coffee merchant.

The picture of respectable businessman somehow never quite fits our poet though, and while trying pressingly to recreate himself poor Arthur flounders – old self haunting him at every turn, you can run dear self, but you can’t hide. His self  was of course touched by genius, and like many great artists Rimbaud discovered burdens with his gift.

Mr. Rambaud in a suit counting coffee beans is about as surreal as Sid Vicious reciting Victorian prose at a New Jersey Starbucks. And when acknowledgement by le grande public, denied earlier, finally does come knocking he want’s no part of it – indeed he flees celebrity. Rimbaud wants the newly inquisitive to know: ‘Je est [metnant] un autre’ (I is [now] somebody else). Meanwhile letters home indicate that he’s bored and miserable. In three grainy photos, all that remain from the Africa years, his face is as downright wretched and gaunt as a late van Gogh self-portrait.

Rimbaud’s Chroniclers, understandably more interested in poetry, might here conclude, “Whilst in Ethiopia A. R. fell ill, and was shipped back to France where, with mamon by his side, the hands of the clock were stopped.” But as our particular forum concerns itself first and foremost with Ethiopian studies this reviewer must confess nothing short of outrage at one certain act of inestimable consequence.

While on a business trip to Ankober, then Ethiopia’s capitol, Rimbaud rashly burns volumes upon volumes of a business associate’s fastidiously kept diaries about 19th century Shoa and King Menelik II. Rimbaud’s reason? He was incensed about, among other things, bad debts imposed upon him resulting from the untimely death of that associate.

When reading Charles Nicholl’s account of the various hustling, which led to this poetic outburst we begin to understand his frustration. Indeed Rimbaud was being swindled from both left and right. But how a man of letters could go so far as to perform a book burning, ultimate sacrilege unto literature – sin against knowledge, is problematic. 

Charles Nicholl’s study is engaging, fascinating and rewarding – we can’t but deeply sympathise with the struggles and endless foils of Rimbaud’s journey. The narrative proclaims that Rimbaud’s true self might’ve been somewhere else, or somebody else. But of course it wasn’t. Rimbaud was never not himself - tireless explorer of what it is to be.

For those attempting to piece together whatever scraps might be garnered about 19th century Shoa however there’s a separate count to consider, and this comes with a separate verdict. Rimbaud burned books, not to mention the life’s work of a colleague. Through that act, his outrage became ours. Some might even feel dark sentiments (momentarily at least) towards the poet: Why the hell couldn’t Verlaine have been more of a straight-shooter?

-Bruce Strachan

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