A Saint-Georgeais brings Rimbaud back to life thanks to artificial intelligence in an event book

Un good tease. The Saint-Georgeais poet Luc Loiseau had already made the mouths of Rimbaud’s admirers water with the buzz of the real false portrait which had set the web ablaze in 2023. The photo, yellowed, seemed to have been found at the bottom of an old trunk in an attic. We saw Arthur Rimbaud, standing, in a street in Paris on 1^is November 1873, facing the lens of a certain Ernest Balthazar. “We only know eight photos of him. This shows if the possible exhumation of a ninth photo had shaken up the world of poetry. However, I had clearly specified, by posting it on a Facebook group bringing together lovers of the poet, my use of artificial intelligence. » Yes, because the author of the portrait is very contemporary with our times, is 53 years old and lives in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne. The affair caused so much noise that it even appeared on TF1’s TV news in the “fact-checking” section.

The famous photo is on the cover of the book released this Thursday, November 7 by Éditions Gallimard, “Rimbaud is alive. » The result of titanic work. “Between the texts and taking the photos, it took me a long year with busy days,” confides Luc Loiseau. The story covers five years of the poet’s life from 1870 to 1875. The author has drawn on all the period testimonies of those who crossed the path of “the man with the soles of wind”, even during the time of ‘an evening. He sifted through all the information referring to it. “I have been passionate about it since I was a teenager. I have a well-stocked “Rimbaldian” library. I also went to the National Library of France,” says the Saint-Georgeais.

A life of excess

For 272 pages, we immerse ourselves in these five most fertile years of Rimbaud’s life, a true character in a novel, as if we were there. The presence, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), of around a hundred illustrative photos is no stranger to this. “It had to be credible, as if there had been a photographer there that day at that moment. The hardest part was restoring the reality of the scenes. When I wasn’t satisfied with the AI’s work, I would put the loom back on again and again. Afterwards, I had to correct the details. The result is the result of a combination of several digital techniques. The raw images could not be used as they were,” emphasizes Luc Loiseau.

The publisher, inevitably demanding for a book of this caliber, also put in his two cents. “They looked at each shot with a magnifying glass. It had to be free from any defects. Each image took me between two and six hours of work. » Of the 150 photos proposed by Charentais-Maritime, Gallimard selected around a hundred. The goal in all this is “to allow the reader to enter directly into the insane life, full of twists and turns, that Arthur Rimbaud led during this period between 15 and 20 years old. » An existence marked by excess, escapes, drunkenness…

Far from being a book intended for scholars, it is above all an ode to creation, freedom and adventure. “After 1875 he would never again write a line of poetry until the end of his days in 1891 at the age of 37. ” For what ? To find out, you have to open “Rimbaud is alive. »

“Rimbaud is alive” was released on November 7 by Éditions Gallimard at the price of 39 euros.