Friday, April 16, 2010

Unseen Rimbaud photo found in flea market


A previously unseen photo of Arthur Rimbaud, the cult Symbolist poet and traveller who turned his back on poetry at the age of twenty-one to eventually live in Africa and become a gun runner (and possibly slave trader), has been found in a French flea market.

There are only about eight known photos of Rimbaud in existence, and only a few blurry shots of him as an adult in Aden, Abyssinia (where he spent the remainder of his life until he died, aged 37), so this slightly awkward formal shot (Rimbaud is second from right; at least two members of the party seem to be giving him a dirty look) is a revelation.

1 comment :

Barnaby said...

Merci pour votre comments. Malheureusement, mon francais c'est pas bon.

From what I can find about Raphaƫl Zacharie de IZARRA, and there is a lot of information about him, he specialises in 'literary hoaxes' which may or not be real. A few years ago he claimed to be the author of a newly-unearthed Rimbaud poem called Dream of Bismarck, even though it had been authenticated as a genuine Rimbaud. Now I think he is claiming to have fabricated the Rimbaud flea market photo.

It seems he spends a lot of his time writing comments on blogs concerning Rimbaud and discrediting any newly-found information about him. I'm not sure what the point of it all is, I'm sure there's something lost in Google translation; maybe you just need to be French and literary to get the joke.