Rimbaud - Jean-Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud

Japanese: ランボー - らんぼー（英語表記）Jean-Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud

French poet. Born on October 20th in Charleville, Ardennes, northern France. The second son of an army captain and a mother from a small landowner's family in the nearby village of Loches, Rimbaud was raised by his mother alone, along with his siblings, as his father was often away on duty and did not return until Rimbaud was six years old. His mother was strict, hardworking, arrogant, extremely devout, and had a dry personality, which had a strong influence on the poet's childhood.

[Kosuke Shibusawa]

The Prodigy: The Age of the Seer

He first enrolled at the Rosa School, which had many bourgeois children, and transferred to the Charleville Municipal School two years later, where he displayed his outstanding ability. However, as an exemplary student and winner of numerous awards, in 1870, when the young poet teacher Georges Izambard was appointed as his homeroom teacher, he began to change and rebel against his mother's expectations. With the teacher's various support and influence, he satisfied his strong desire to read, while also submitting his first poems to magazines and sending them to poets in Paris. When the Prussian-French War began and the city was threatened by hostilities, his life began to become unsettled, and he ran away from home three times and wandered around various places. During that time, he wrote 23 poems, which were neatly copied into two notebooks and entrusted to an acquaintance, and they were preserved for posterity.

He never returned to school after this, but instead, his revolutionary passion was kindled during the Paris Commune that followed, he read every book in the city's libraries, and he underwent a great transformation both intellectually and experientially. He then wrote letters to Isambard and his acquaintance Paul Demeny outlining his own poetic ideals and methods. These are known as "Lettres du voyant," or "Letters of a Seer," and in them he criticizes all previous poetry and asserts in a high tone that the poet as a seer must reach the "unknown" through "a long, extensive, and rational disturbance of all the senses," and then discover a new universal language to convey it.

Having thus undergone his own sudden and unique poetic awakening, Rimbaud continued to train himself as a seer according to his own methods, producing his early masterpieces such as "Les Boats Drunken Men" (1871) and "Vowels" (1872?), which is considered an example of symbolist technique in that it associates colors with vowels. These already fully show the characteristic of his poetry, namely the establishment of objective images of all things captured by a rapidly moving viewpoint. In the autumn of 1871, he wrote to Verlaine and, accepting her invitation, went to Paris. The relationship between the two quickly developed into a homosexual one, while Rimbaud's violent behavior and words gradually isolated him among the Parisian literary elite. However, it was a productive period poetically, and by the summer of 1872 he had written many works that are called "late verse poems," such as "Tears," "Song of the Tallest Tower," "Eternity," and "Memory." These works are characterized by an unconventional poetic form that has become increasingly free, and an unprecedented level of symbolism.

[Kosuke Shibusawa]

"Season in Hell" and "Illumination"

From the latter half of 1872 to 1873, he stayed with Verlaine in Belgium and London, and in early April, he returned to Roche's family and began writing "Season in Hell", but on the way he planned to go to London with Verlaine again. However, this time, in addition to being poor, the two were constantly fighting and arguing, and Verlaine finally left for Brussels. When Rimbaud arrived after him, Verlaine, drunk, fired a pistol at him, hitting him in the left wrist. Verlaine was arrested, and Rimbaud was hospitalized in the city. After recuperating, he continued working on "Season in Hell" with Roche, completing it in August 1873. This prose poem is an expression of a personal crisis that takes into account his own development of poetic technique, his involvement with Christianity, and his love experience with Verlaine, and is also an encapsulation of all the hellish contradictions and sufferings of modern Europe.It was the only work that Rimbaud risked his literary destiny with and attempted to publish of his own volition, but it never made it onto the market due to unpaid self-publishing fees.

Partly due to his scandal with Verlaine, he was never accepted into the Paris literary world, so he went to London again the following year in 1874, and then to Germany in 1875, but at the end of February, Verlaine came to visit him in Stuttgart after his release from prison, and Rimbaud entrusted her with the manuscript of another masterpiece collection of prose poems, "Illuminations" (published in 1886, written when the author was between the ages of 18 and 21). In the complex images that radically reject and dismantle past modes of expression, this collection of poems flashes a primordial world endowed with a strong materiality, and it would go on to have a major influence on later movements such as Surrealism.

His literary life ended around this time, and he began his life as a traveller and adventurer, traveling around the world, and as a trader in Africa. His journey took him to Scandinavia, Italy, Java, Egypt, and Ethiopia, where he worked in various professions, and finally led a caravan to trade in the interior of Africa. In the mid-1980s, his literary reputation finally began to grow in his home country, but he himself was completely uninterested. In February 1991, he developed varicose veins in the joints of his right leg, making it difficult for him to walk, and in May he was admitted to the Conception Hospital in Marseille, where his right leg was amputated. He returned to Roches for a while, but in August he returned to Marseille accompanied by his sister Isabelle, and was admitted to the same hospital. He died of systemic carcinoma on November 10th, at the age of 37. His life was a tragic one, full of suffering from beginning to end, but his works are still shrouded in glory.

[Kosuke Shibusawa]

"The Poems of Rimbaud, translated by Kobayashi Hideo (1948, Sogen Sensho/revised edition, included in the New Edition of the Complete Works of Kobayashi Hideo, Volume 2, 1978, Shinchosha)" ▽ "The Complete Works of Rimbaud, edited by Suzuki Shintaro and Sato Saku, 3 volumes (1976-78, Jinbun Shoin)" ▽ "The World of Rimbaud, edited by Awazu Norio (1974, Seidosha)" ▽ "Rimbaud, revised edition, by Yves Bonnefoy, translated by Abe Yoshio (1977, Jinbun Shoin)" ▽ "Arthur Rimbaud, by P. Petitfils, translated by Nakayasu Chikako and Yuasa Hiroo (1986, Chikuma Shobo)" ▽ "A Season in Hell, Illuminations, and others, translated by Shibusawa Kosuke (included in the Complete Works of World Literature, Volume 55, 1981, Kodansha)"

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

Japanese:

フランスの詩人。10月20日、北フランスのアルデンヌ県シャルルビル市に生まれる。陸軍大尉の父と、近郊ロシュ村の小地主の出の母との間の次男であるが、父は任地にいて不在がちのうえ、ランボー6歳のとき以後は戻らず、兄妹とともに母一人の手で育てられた。厳格勤勉で気位が高く、極度の敬神家であり、乾いた性格のこの母親の存在は、詩人の幼時に強い影響を及ぼした。

［渋沢孝輔］

神童――見者の時代

最初、ブルジョアの子弟の多いロサ学院に入学、2年後に市立シャルルビル高等中学校に転校し、ずぬけた秀才ぶりを発揮するが、模範的優等生として数々の優等賞を得たりしていたランボーは、1870年、若い詩人教師ジョルジュ・イザンバールGeorges Izambardが担任として赴任してきたころから、母親の期待に背いて変貌(へんぼう)し始める。この教師のさまざまな援助と影響下に、旺盛(おうせい)な読書欲を満たす一方、最初の詩作を雑誌に投稿したり、パリの詩人に送り付けたりするようになり、やがてプロイセン・フランス戦争開始で戦火が街に迫ると、生活も荒れ始め、前後3回にわたって家出して各地を放浪。その間の詩23編は、2冊のノートに清書されたものが知人に託されていて、後世に残ることになった。

　これ以後二度と学校には戻らず、続くパリ・コミューンに革命的情熱を燃え上がらせたり、街の図書館であらゆる本を読みあさったり、知的にも体験的にも大変貌を遂げたところで、イザンバールならびに知人のポール・ドメニーPaul Demenyに宛(あ)てて、自己の詩的理念と方法を述べた手紙を送る。いわゆる「見者の手紙」Lettres du voyantであるが、そこでは過去の詩のいっさいが批判されるとともに、見者としての詩人は、「あらゆる感覚の、長期にわたる、大掛りな、そして合理的な攪乱(かくらん)」を通じて「未知」に到達し、さらにそれを伝える普遍的な新しい言語を発見すべきであることが高い調子で述べられている。

　こうして急激に独自の詩的覚醒(かくせい)を経たランボーは、以後自らの方法に従って「見者」修行に励みながら、『酔いどれ船』（1871）や、母音に色を結び付けて象徴主義的技法の一手本のごとくみなされている『母音』（1872？）などの初期の代表作を生むが、これらには、迅速に移動する視点がとらえた万象の客観的イメージの定着という、彼の詩の特性がすでに十分に現れている。1871年秋、ベルレーヌに手紙を出し、その招きを得てパリに出ると、2人の仲は急速に同性愛的関係にまで発展し、一方ランボーの粗暴な言動は、パリの文人たちの間で彼をしだいに孤立させる。しかし詩的には多産な時期で、72年夏ころまでに、「涙」「もっとも高い塔の歌」「永遠」「記憶」など、〈後期韻文詩〉とよばれている多くの作品を書いた。しだいに自由になった破格の詩形と、かつてない縹渺(ひょうびょう)たる象徴性をもった作品群である。

［渋沢孝輔］

『地獄の季節』と『イリュミナシヨン』

1872年後半から73年にかけては、ベルレーヌとベルギー、ロンドンに滞在、4月初め、ロシュの家族のもとに帰って『地獄の季節』の執筆にとりかかるが、途中でまたまたベルレーヌと図ってロンドンへ。しかしこのたびは貧窮に加えて、2人の間に喧嘩(けんか)口論が絶えず、ついにベルレーヌはブリュッセルに去り、追いかけて到着したランボーに、口論のすえ酔ったベルレーヌはピストルを発射、左手首に命中させてしまう。ベルレーヌは逮捕され、ランボーは市内の病院に入院、静養ののち、ロシュで『地獄の季節』の続きにかかり、73年の8月中に完成させる。見者の詩法の経過や、キリスト教とのかかわり、ベルレーヌとの愛の体験を踏まえた個人的危機の表現であり、近代ヨーロッパのあらゆる堕地獄的矛盾苦悩の集約的表現でもあるこの散文詩は、ランボーが文学的〈運命〉を賭(か)け、自らの意志で出版を企てた唯一の作品であったが、自費出版の費用未払いのため市場に出るには至らなかった。

　ベルレーヌとのスキャンダルのせいもあって、ついにパリ文壇にいれられぬまま、翌1874年にもロンドンに渡り、さらに75年にはドイツに行くが、2月末、出獄してシュトゥットガルトまで訪ねてきたベルレーヌに、ランボーはもう一つの傑作散文詩集『イリュミナシヨン』（1886刊。作者18～21歳のころにかけ作成）の原稿を託している。過去の表現様式を過激に否定解体した複合的なイメージのうちに、強固な物質性を備えた原初的世界が閃(ひらめ)き、のちのシュルレアリスムなどにも大きな影響を与えることになる詩集である。

　彼の文学生活はほぼこのあたりで終わり、以後は世界各地を遍歴する旅行家または冒険家、そしてアフリカにおける交易商人の生活が始まる。その足跡はスカンジナビア、イタリア、ジャワ、エジプト、エチオピアに及び、その間さまざまな職業につき、最後はアフリカ奥地で隊商を率いて貿易に従事した。80年代なかばに至って本国ではようやく彼の文名が高まりつつあったが、本人はまったく無関心であった。91年2月、右脚関節に静脈瘤(りゅう)ができて歩行困難となり、5月マルセイユのコンセプシヨン病院に入院して右脚を切断した。一時ロシュに帰るが、8月妹イザベルIsabelleに伴われてふたたびマルセイユに向かい、同じ病院に入院。全身癌腫(がんしゅ)で11月10日死亡した。37歳。終始苦悩に満ちた悲劇的な生涯であったが、その作品はいまなお栄光に包まれている。

［渋沢孝輔］

『小林秀雄訳『ランボオ詩集』（1948・創元選書／改訳版・『新訂小林秀雄全集　第2巻』所収・1978・新潮社）』▽『鈴木信太郎・佐藤朔監修『ランボー全集』全3巻（1976～78・人文書院）』▽『粟津則雄編『ランボオの世界』（1974・青土社）』▽『イヴ・ボヌフォワ著、阿部良雄訳『ランボー』改訂版（1977・人文書院）』▽『P・プチフィス著、中安ちか子・湯浅博雄訳『アルチュール・ランボー』（1986・筑摩書房）』▽『渋沢孝輔訳『地獄の一季節・イリュミナシヨン／他』（『世界文学全集　第55巻』所収・1981・講談社）』

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