Punk’s Unlikely Grandfather: Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and the legacy of Arthur Rimbaud’s Poetry

An absolute must-read for any French high school student–myself included–Arthur Rimbaud remains one of the most famous French poets, and one of the greatest poets of the Romantic period. When I first studied him, at the ripe age of fifteen, it was the first time I ever felt as though poetry spoke to me, and I quickly proclaimed him as my favorite poet, finding a way to fit him into every single essay I had to write. Though I do not read or quote his poetry nearly as much as I did five years ago, I still have his face pinned onto one of my jackets, among pins of some of my favorite rock bands, for one simple reason: Arthur Rimbaud is cool as hell.

To call Arthur Rimbaud a prodigy would be an understatement. At age nine, he was writing full essays, in middle school, he was winning national academic competitions, and by the age of fifteen, his poems were starting to be published in literary revues. What stood out to my fifteen-year-old self was not that he had begun writing poetry when he was younger than me, but rather the fact that he would retire by the age of twenty. This meant that, of all the poems we were to study for class, a large majority of them had been written and published before he’d reached adulthood, something that a teenage creative like me could only dream of accomplishing.

But what drew me in the most about Arthur Rimbaud was his way of life. A self-proclaimed bohemian, Rimbaud ran away multiple times between the ages of fifteen and sixteen years old, attempted to join the army to fight against the Prussians, was arrested in Paris, and wrote and published a number of satirical pieces. In his later teenage years, he had a tumultuous and problematic love affair with the French poet Paul Verlaine, which came to an end after Rimbaud called his partner’s bluff when the latter threatened to kill himself as Rimbaud was leaving him, and Verlaine shot him in the arm. Rimbaud retired from writing a while later and never looked back, instead traveling the world both with the army and alone as a vagabond, for which fellow writer Ernest Delahaye dubbed him “the man with soles of wind.”

I’ve developed a newfound love for Rimbaud after reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids over the summer. Patti Smith, dubbed ‘high priestess of punk’ by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, emerged in the 1970s New York City music scene as a poet who broke expectations of musical conventions, an attitude that embodied the punk genre. In Just Kids, Smith describes first reading Rimbaud’s Illuminations at the age of sixteen and finding herself infatuated with his poetry. Rimbaud quickly became her “archangel” and Illuminations was one of the only objects she took with her when she moved to New York. His writing played a big role in her decision to start writing poetry and, she began writing–and later when entering the world of music–she openly pulled influences from his manner of writing, and her love for the poet accompanied her as she traveled to Paris. She has, on numerous occasions, named him as her muse, and compared her relationship with him to a romantic one, writing in Just Kids that her reading of his poetry was “the best sex [she] ever had.” 

While Patti Smith may be considered the artist most enamored with  Rimbaud’s poetry, and the current owner of his childhood home, he influenced a surprisingly large amount of artists in the 1960s and 70s. He found himself being quoted and referenced by Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, the Clash, and Allen Ginsberg, among others. Although this adoration of Rimbaud nearly a century after the end of his poetic career may appear strange, the combination of his poetry and way of life creates a persona that begs to be admired. Patti Smith and Jim Morrison both praised his writing style, while Courtney Love read excerpts from Illuminations at Kurt Cobain’s funeral. Bob Dylan describes having been heavily influenced by Rimbaud writing that “I is an other,” and name-drops his and Verlaine’s tumultuous relationship in “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When I Go.” Additionally, Rimbaud embodied everything that was counterculture: a visionary marching to the beat of his own drum, indulging in sex and alcohol, and creating masterpieces on war and youth and eroticism before disappearing from the literary sphere at the brink of adulthood. He burned bright and died young, something that was true of many musical artists of the time.

Arthur Rimbaud’s literary merits are far from undervalued. However, his international legacy beyond the poetic sphere remains largely confined to alternative spaces. Even if not for his poetry, his life alone is one worthy of remembering, and his constant vocal rejection of social norms can be defined as completely and totally punk, the incarnation of rock and roll. 

Article and Design by Micah Petyt