SOURCE: Bishop, Michael. “Rimbaud.” In Nineteenth-Century French Poetry, pp. 255-81. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993.

In the following essay, Bishop provides an overview of Rimbaud's poetry and aesthetic theories.

Thirty-seven years after his birth in Charleville, on 20 October 1854, the man behind the myth we have come to know as Rimbaud died of gangrene poisoning and complications, in the presence of his sister, Isabelle, in the Hôpital de la Conception, Marseille. A precocious young pupil who skipped the cinquième année and an extraordinary Latinist, he was writing some of his most lasting work at the ages of fifteen and sixteen. Reading Rabelais and Hugo, straining under the limitations of family and province, Rimbaud soon broke loose in wild vagabondages as far as Belgium and Paris in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War. At sixteen he was already composing sociopolitical-cum-poetical “Manifestos” to his friends and mentors, Delahaye, Izambard...