Rimbaud

The life of poète maudit and gunrunner Arthur Rimbaud is a puzzle to nearly everyone who knows it. A precocious student who won a regional concours académique for a poem in Latin, Rimbaud left school at fifteen, shortly after the start of the Franco-German War. After two attempts to escape home for Paris, he finally moved in with the poet Paul Verlaine in the fall of 1871, where he succeeded in insulting all the literary lights of Paris in three months. The two men began an affair, which ruined what was left of Verlaine’s marriage to Mathilde Mauté (whom Verlaine regularly beat). They made two debauched trips to London and eventually fell out in Belgium, where Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist.