A sensationalized retelling of the Rimbaud-Verlaine story. The great French poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote all his poems, which continue to amaze and inspire to this day, during a brief burst of activity in the early 1870s, when he was just a teenager. According to Christopher Hampton's screenplay, it's amazing Rimbaud found time to write anything at all, since he was carrying on a torrid, absinthe-soaked homosexual love affair with the older and not quite so great poet Paul Verlaine. This affair ended when Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the hand in a Brussels hotel room. In this version of the story, it's also amazing that Rimbaud wanted to have anything to do with Verlaine, who is depicted as a utterly despicable human being

Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud, born in 1854, a symbolistic French poet was born and educated in Charleville, Ardennes. When he was 16, he composed the strikingly original poem, "The Drunken Boat", which he submitted to the poet Paul Verlaine who was very impressed by his work.. Verlaine invited him to Paris to visit the poet that had wrote such wonderful poetry. In 1872-1873 Verlaine and Rimbaud lived together in London and Brussels. During a drunken state Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the hand. In 1873, Rimbaud returned home after Verlaine was sent to prison and wrote A Season in Hell..

In 1880, Rimbaud became a trader in North Africa, with headquarters at H?rer and Shoa, central Abyssinia. Verlaine, under the impression that Rimbaud was no longer alive, published the latter's poems in Illuminations (Les Illuminations). This work contains the famous Sonnet des voyelles (Sonnet of the Vowels), in which each of the five vowels is associated with a different color. In 1891, Rimbaud who was age 37, returned to France for medical treatment of a tumor on his knee which had to amputated; he died in a hospital at Marseille. On the strength of a few poems that he wrote between the ages of 10 and 20, Rimbaud ranks as one of the most original of all French poets. Rimbaud's works were published by Verlaine in several posthumous editions, the first complete collection appearing in 1898.

Information gathered from Encarta and The Columbia Encyclopedia

Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine was born on March 30, 1844, in Metz, the son of an army officer, and educated at the Lycée Bonaparte in Paris. His early works, including Poèmes saturniens (1866), are characterized by the antiromanticism of the Parnassians with whom Verlaine was then associated; the verse is concerned more with technique than with feeling. In 1870 Verlaine married, but he left his wife two years later to travel and live with the 17-year-old poet Arthur Rimbaud. Verlaine shot and wounded Rimbaud during a quarrel in 1873 and was imprisoned for the next two years. The collection Romances sans paroles (Songs Without Words, 1874), is based on his life with Rimbaud and was written in prison. Also in prison Verlaine returned to the Roman Catholicism of his childhood; his reconversion is the source of a volume of confessional religious poetry, Sagesse (Wisdom, 1881).

Verlaine taught French in England from 1875 to 1877, then returned to France to teach English for a year. With his student Lucien Létinois, whom he called his adopted son, Verlaine tried unsuccessfully to be a farmer. Létinois died suddenly in 1883; Verlaine's Amour (1888) is primarily about Létinois. The rest of Verlaine's life consisted of alternating periods of drunken debauchery and ascetic repentance. With the publication of Les poètes maudites (Accursed Poets, 1884), a work of criticism, and of Jadis et Naguère (Long Ago and Not So Long Ago, 1884), a collection of verse, Verlaine emerged as a symbolist poet, concerned with dreams and illusion.

Verlaine thus exerted considerable influence on the French poets who followed him. The sound of his poetry is usually more important than its meaning; it is therefore unusually difficult to translate. He also wrote autobiographical prose, including Mes Hôpitaux (My Hospitals, 1892), Mes prisons (My Prisons, 1893), and Confessions (1895). Verlaine died on January 8, 1896.

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Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works by Paul Schmidt
I Promise to Be Good : The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud by Wyatt Mason, Arthur Rimbaud
A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat by N Rimbaud,

More books can be found on Amazon

Links
The Drunken Boat
Arthur Rimbaud's Life and Poetry

Track Listing

1. The Opening
2. Trip To Paris
3. The Sea Quartet
4. Arrival
5. Cafe Andre
6. Hashish Kiss
7. Looking For Rimbaud
8. Naked On The Roof
9. Cafe Bobino
10. Hashish
11. Le Dormeur De Val
12. Coming Home
13. Triangle
14. Knife
15. The Sun
16. Mathilde And Verlaine
17. Two Trains
18. Verlaine Escapes
19. Rimbaud Wounded
20. Memory
21. The Sentence
22. Tear
23. Cafe Bobino
24. The Drunken Boat
25. The Abyssinian Plateau
26. The Death
27. Eternity (Finale)
28. End Credits