Everything started well. September 1871: Arthur Rimbaud, 17, has just run away from his mother in Charleville and arrives in Paris. “I am prevented from coming. My mother is a widow and extremely devout” he wrote to the poet Paul Verlaine who, dazzled by the young man’s verses, replied: “Come, dear great soul, we are calling you, we are calling you wait!” But Verlaine cannot imagine the shock, the cataclysm that Rimbaud will cause in his life, and more generally in literature.
As soon as he arrived in Paris, the young genius fascinated his elders. Adorer, he says, of “free liberty”, he wants to become “sighted” through “a long, immense and reasoned disruption of all the senses”. But fascination quickly turns to hostility. Because “the frightening poet” as he is called, multiplies the provocations: he insults, he lies, he steals, and very quickly he upsets the orderly life of Verlaine, a married man and father of a family. A crazy and violent adventure begins, amorous and poetic, which, in defiance of conventions, will take the two men on a limitless journey, like a drunken boat, until a famous revolver shot.
The guest: Henri Scepi, professor of 19th century French literature, specialist in modern poetry, at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. Member of CRP19, Research Center on 19th century poetics.
The fiction: “Arthur Rimbaud, the beauty of the devil” by Marc Helfer
With :
- Arthur Rimbaud: Samuel Charle
- Paul Verlaine: Léo-Antonin Lutinier
- Charles Cros: Grégoire Tachnakian
- Théodore de Banville: Charles Morillon
- Mathilde Mauté: Anne-Gaelle Jourdain
- Vitalie Rimbaud: Christine Pignet
- Sound recording, editing and mixing: Etienne Colin, Julien Doumenc
- Sound artist: Sophie Bissantz
- Assistant director: Anissa Zidna
- Director: Christophe Hocké
To read: “Rimbaud, Verlaine, a concert of hells” edited by Henri Scepi, Yann Frémy and Solenn Dupas and published by Gallimard in the Quarto collection as well as by Jean-Jacques Lefrere “Arthur Rimbaud” published by Robert Laffont in the Bouquins collection.
To discover: THE 3 Rimbaud museums in Charleville-Mézières
Musique : François Breut Animal raids
