Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slightly unsatisfactory but a must for....., 5 Jul 1999
By A Customer
....... all of those English-language readers of Rimbaud in the original who thought they knew French, but didn't (and that means 99% of us). And thought they knew about Rimbaud's life but didn't (and that means 999 in a thousand of us). Hands up, for example, all those who knew Rimbaud had before he ever set foot in Africa, already: deserted from the Dutch Navy, sailed before the mast in a Scottish merchant vessel, worked as a circus cashier in Scandinavia and Bremen, and as a quarry overseer in Cyprus. If they didn't this book is for them. Full marks to Nicholl for leading us line by line, picture by picture, through large chunks of Rimbaud's life, for showing us how he walked everywhere for example: from Charleville to Brussels, Brussels to Paris, Paris to Stuttgart, Stuttgart across the Alps to Milan and all that before walking from Djibouti to Shoa, Shoa to Harar, nearly always on foot and for all his life, until his knee gave way. "Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse" and "un pied près de mon coeur", indeedy. Reminds me of Osip Mandelstam's phrase about Dante's metre: his feet knowing the length and breadth of Italy as he walked the roads of exile. But Nicholl shows us that unlike Dante, Rimbaud's exile was a self-chosen one. He walked out on everything: walked out on his family, walked out on literature (and never looked back, despite what folk might say), walked out on homosexuality and decadence in walking out on Verlaine, and walked out on Europe. And for what? He wanted to be a trader, explorer, photographer. He certainly became a good accountant, expedition organizer, manager, bargainer and an excellent negotiator. His Arabic was allegedly brilliant, his knowledge of the Koran good enough that he was called in by Abyssinian Muslims at least occasionally, to comment on it. And he knew other languages: Amharic, English and other obscure dialects. But for all that, and for all the effort Nicholl put in to following Rimbaud's every move, his style and approach as a biographer is sometimes annoying: it would be nice to know exactly what disease killed Rimbaud off, was it cancer or what? It would have been nicer to know something of non-Anglo Saxon scholarship on Rimbaud rather than the somewhat tiresome fact that Bob Dylan might have been influenced by him and that Nicholl's buddy the late Kevin Stratford, introduced him to Rimbaud's work. And it would have been nice for a few of the other blips to have been ironed out, such as the location of Queenstown (not in N.Ireland but the pre independence name of Cobh the port of Cork, I believe), to name but one of several. But generally, Chapeau, Monsieur Nicholl. Bernard Meares, Geneva, Switzerland
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating., 5 Jul 1999
By A Customer
A brilliantly accessible and insightful account of Rimbaud's years spent in Africa following the premature end of his literary career in Paris. Nicholl writes lovingly but not sentimentally about his subject, presenting interesting evidence, opinion, and conclusions. In truth, anyone thinking of reading this - or indeed any Rimbaud biog - should first pick up Enid Starkie's essential "Arthur Rimbaud", and it is important to stress that Nicholl here concentrates on the poet's African years when he had long given up literature, and if your interest in Rimbaud is purely of him as a poet, then this is not for you. But for anyone wanting to get closer to Rimbaud as a man, and to delve into the mystery of his final years, this is ideal. Great photographs too from Nicholl's own pilgrimage to Harar and Aden.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Illuminating and still keeps the romantic mystery, 12 Jun 2002
By A Customer
A fascinating and illuminating read. As a travel book it fulfils my desire to learn more and want to go myself. As a romance it is enchanting and thus quite charming. As a biography it goes where no-one else has considered it interesting to go - and how wrong they were. As a whole it entraps and enchants, and keeps it mystery like a the best romantics.
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by Graham Robb
by Arthur Rimbaud
by Charles Nicholl
by Edmund White
by Paul Verlaine
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