author
Arthur Rimbaud
1854–1891
A brilliant rebel of French poetry, he transformed literature while still a teenager and then walked away from writing altogether before the age of twenty-one. His life was as restless and mythic as his work, moving from schoolroom prodigy to traveler, trader, and legend.
4 Audiobooks
Une saison en enfer
by Arthur Rimbaud
Poésies complètes, avec préface de Paul Verlaine et notes de l'éditeur
by Arthur Rimbaud
Voyage en Abyssinie et au Harrar
by Arthur Rimbaud
About the author
Born in Charleville, France, on October 20, 1854, Arthur Rimbaud became one of poetry’s great prodigies. While still in his teens, he wrote the daring, vivid poems that made his name, including The Drunken Boat, and helped reshape modern verse with language that felt strange, musical, and startlingly new.
Rimbaud’s brief, turbulent literary life is closely tied to the poet Paul Verlaine, with whom he had a famous and difficult relationship in Paris, London, and Brussels. Out of those intense years came major works such as A Season in Hell and the prose poems later gathered as Illuminations, books that would deeply influence Symbolist and modernist writers.
What makes his story even more unusual is how early it changed course. After writing most of the work for which he is remembered before reaching adulthood, he largely abandoned literature and spent later years traveling and working abroad, especially in Africa. He died in Marseille on November 10, 1891, at just thirty-seven, but his voice has remained one of the most electrifying in world poetry.