Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), the marvelous boy-poet of French literature, established in a few short years his reputation for hallucinative verbal creation, only to give up poetry at the age of 19.

The tempestuous life of Arthur Rimbaud his relations with Paul Verlaine, his idea of the poet as seer and of the derangement of the senses are all part of the legend. His literary fame depends primarily upon the poem Le Bateau ivre and the remarkable volumes called Les Illuminations and Une Saison en Enfer. His abandonment of art and "the ancient parapets of Europe" has made Rimbaud a symptomatic and fascinating figure of alienation in the modern world.

A brilliant student in his native town of Charleville, Rimbaud published his first known French verses (Les Étrennes des orphelins ) in La Revue pour tous for Jan. 2, 1870. Other early poems were Sensation, Ophélie, Credo in...