Rimbaud's letters, 1870-1873.
Item
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Title
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Rimbaud's letters, 1870-1873.
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Identifier
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AAI9224831
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identifier
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9224831
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Creator
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Lewis, Norman Harrison.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Mary Ann Caws
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Romance | Biography
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Abstract
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The letters which Arthur Rimbaud wrote between the years 1870-1873 coincide with his most productive literary period. Although two letters from this era, the 1871 "Letters of a Voyant," have often been investigated, other significant correspondence has been neglected. Indeed, the key "Voyant" letters of May 13 and 15, 1871, addressed respectively to Izambard, Rimbaud's former teacher, and to Demeny, a young fellow-poet, reveal important aspects of Rimbaud's development as a writer, and encase an "ars poetica." But their canonicity sometimes obscures other important letters of this period, addressed to Izambard, Demeny, Delahaye, Banville and Verlaine.;The letters are examined from the point of view of four specific and interrelated ideas: the concept of "Voyance," the poet's use of neologism, his reading during the years 1870-1873, and his relationship to issues of revolution in general, and to the Paris Commune of 1871 in particular.;The first chapter explores Rimbaud's concept of "Voyance" as expressed in the letters, beginning with a brief history of the idea of the seer poet, and shows how Rimbaud both belonged to this tradition and how he diverged from and subsequently expanded it through his concept of the "deregulation of the senses.".;The second chapter deals with one of the avowed purposes of the "Voyant": to discover a new language. Rimbaud's linguistic innovations in the poetry and prose of 1870-1873 are paralleled in his correspondence during these years, which abound with examples of neologism, unusual juxtapositions of words and levels of vocabulary, and the encoding of words and phrases.;The third chapter examines the poet's reading during these three years, and focuses particularly on his interest in the writings of the Parnassians and the Communards.;The fourth chapter looks at ways in which Rimbaud's letters may help us better understand his relationship to the Paris Commune of 1871, and to revolutionary and populist ideas in general.;In the conclusion, issues including interactive editing, literary collaboration, the nature of the interlocutor, and the genre of epistolarity are considered.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
