Introduction: After the publication of the nineteenth century French poet Baudelaire's "Flower of Evil", it caused a shock throughout Europe, and in addition to the romanticism and realism that were popular at that time, "symbolism" came out, which greatly subverted people's understanding of poetry and "beauty". Romanticism likes to depict the natural scenery of the countryside, but symbolism is obsessed with portraying the real life in the city; romanticism is mostly a pleasing natural beauty, but symbolism is an ugly and dark world.
As the successor of Baudelaire, the French poet Rimbaud not only inherited his literary concept and creative style, but also perfectly practiced the creative method of "synaesthesia", so that vision, smell and touch continue to overlap and repeatedly transform, forming a vivid and three-dimensional poetic world, expanding the depth and breadth of symbolist ecological aesthetics, providing reference ideas for modernist literature in later generations, and after being introduced to China, it has influenced many modern poets.
Rimbaud's life can be said to be short, but he has written numerous exquisite poems in his writing career of more than a decade. He gazed at the world with a cold gaze, and through the various difficulties of reality, he had already glimpsed the soul world higher than reality, so Rimbaud expressed his views on this world through poetry. In the world of the poems he created, he was a "psychic", a "fire thief", and a master.
(1) Rimbaud's life experience
Rimbaud was born in 1854, and he lived in the era when Paris was in the political turmoil, successively experiencing the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, and these social changes also made Rimbaud more clearly see the instability of the real society and the idea of exploring the soul world. Rimbaud was born into a commoner family in the provinces of Paris, and there is no record of what education he received, but judging from his family background, Rimbaud was unable to receive a high level of education, and where his writing ability came from is still a mystery.
Rimbaud statue
He came to Paris at the age of sixteen, at a time when the Paris Commune was in full swing, and he also participated in the activities of the Commune, and in the process met the poet Verren, and the two became a same-sex couple. Beginning in 1872, Rimbaud and Verlaine lived a life of displacement in England and Belgium, and eventually Rimbaud broke up with Verlaine when he decided that he did not meet his ideals for poetry. There is also a legendary story here: Verlaine shot Rimbaud in desperation, and later spent several years in prison for this matter.
The breakup with Verlaine brought a huge mental shock to Rimbaud, and from then on Rimbaud completely gave up his writing career and began to wander around Europe, Asia, and Africa in pursuit of a "true adventurer" life. His poetry is divided into 4 parts: poetry; the latest verses; a season of hell; and a collection of color atlases. These four collections of poems were eventually compiled and published by Verlaine, the Aura.
The first on the left is Verlaine and the second from the left is Rimbaud
We can see that Rimbaud's creative career is only a few years, but his enigmatic words leave us with endless thoughts.
(ii) Rimbaud's succession to Baudelaire
Rimbaud's early creation has the shadow of Baudelaire, and in his poems he delicately depicts the most ordinary scenes in the world, creating an atmosphere of harmonious coexistence of all things in the world, and the poet himself quietly listens to the voice of all things in this nature, and the poet is not an observer of nature, but a participant in it.
He describes it in the poem "Feelings": "On a summer blue dusk, I walk toward the trail and step on the grass, and the ears of wheat gently stab me / Fantasy, I feel a chill under my feet / Let the evening wind stroke my hair / I don't say anything, I don't want anything / Endless love pours into my heart / I will go far, go far / Like a bohemian / Throw myself into nature, happy as a woman." "
Rimbaud's Manuscript of Feelings
I merged with the grass, the ears of wheat, the coolness under my feet and the evening breeze in the embrace of nature, and from this I had "love" in my heart, which was love for nature, love for life. In the end, the poet is gone, leaving us with only a back, but it can arouse countless reverie, which is the subtlety of poetry.
(1) The combination of sight, hearing and smell
"A is black, e is white, i is red, u is green, o is blue: vowels / One day I will tell you your mysterious origins." This is the beginning of Rimbaud's poem "Vowels", and he directly points out what the poem is meant to express: the five vowels a, e, i, u, o correspond to sounds, connecting the material that can represent sound with the visual vowels, and for the first time constructing a union between the senses. Next, these five vowels are associated with the five colors of black, white, red, green and blue, which is the combination of hearing and vision.
The movie "Total Eclipse of Love" tells the story of Rimbaud and Verlaine
Five vowels appear in turn, and the five colors appear in turn, presenting a gradual advancement, the colors are static, but the vowels are dynamic, one static and one moving, similar to the techniques commonly used in ancient Chinese landscape paintings: there is stillness in movement, and the combination of movement and static. Vowels are colors, sounds are colors, and auditory materials are visual materials, which initially construct his imagination space.
Then he gave a new image to each vowel: a is the buzzing flies and smelling stench, e is the trembling of the umbrella flower, i is the lips that can be touched, and the laughter that can be heard, and u is the fluctuation of the sea. Each vowel not only corresponds to the visual experience, but also corresponds to the olfactory feeling, giving the vowel a dual sensory experience, and this sensory rich experience can produce double stimulation and let the poet's feelings run freely.
Umbel flowers
(ii) The overlap of the senses to create three-dimensional poetry
"o is the piercing cry of the holy trumpet / There is a silence in the heavens on earth / It is the Omega, the purple light that emanates from his eyes." The "holy trumpet" is "screaming", this combination of holiness and vulgarity is very impactful, but the heavens are "a silence", this strange phenomenon may be because both heaven and earth have become numb to the new things in life, so that they cannot feel this sensory stimulation. Then, the "purple light" emitted by the Omega, combined with the harsh strange call, double stimulates the reader's senses visually and audibly.
Rimbaud wrote to his secondary school teacher, Isanbar: "I want to be a poet, and I try to make myself a psychic... That is to touch the unknown through the confusion caused by various organs. "Aptly summarizes Rimbaud's creative proposition.
Rimbaud once said that if the poet wants to become a "psychic", to become a psychic in various organs and words, he must use the illusions and hallucinations caused by the dislocation of all organs of the body to describe the truth of everything in the world, and only this sensory dislocation can truly appreciate the supreme existence beyond the real world. If you describe what you know with known feelings and words, you can't break through the status quo and get new feelings.
An art exhibition that feels misplaced
In order to find words that can express this sense of dislocation, and thus create new unknown poetry through words that already exist, the poet needs to use new and unique senses to skillfully integrate various sensations to obtain poetry with a cross-three-dimensional sense. Thus there is a juxtaposition of "piercing monsters" with "purple light", "stinking garbage" and "buzzing flies".
(i) A breakthrough for Baudelaire
Baudelaire's poetry is also full of descriptions of all things in nature: "With the extended power of an infinite thing, as if amber, musk, benzoin and frankincense are singing the ferocity of the spirit and the senses." "The interaction between multiple senses is also mentioned here, but it is a relatively simple relationship between the various organs of the human body. Rimbaud deliberately seeks the intricate relationship between things from a comprehensive perspective, mainly based on the different feelings of each organ as the starting point.
Rimbaud once wrote in his Night of Hell: "Enough is enough!...... People tell me about errors, magic, false aromas, pure music. I stand by the truth, I see justice: I have a healthy and established judgment, and I am ready to be the perfect person... Proud people. Rimbaud did not accept the existing definition of poetry by society, nor did it fully follow the aesthetic view of Baudelaire, the founder of Symbolism, and Rimbaud had his own judgment to create a distinctive effect through the overlapping of the senses, showing the intricate relationships between things.
Baudelaire statue
(ii) Rimbaud is the creator of the world of poetry
Since he wanted to open up a completely different world of poetry, he needed to find a novel poetic language, and in this regard, Rimbaud was called the "alchemist of words", who repeatedly refined and repeatedly selected, and finally created a colorful and overwhelming "Color Atlas".
Rimbaud once wrote in a letter: "He searched for himself and drank all the poison to preserve his essence. In the midst of indescribable torment, he needs firm faith and superhuman strength. This is Rimbaud's request for the poet, and it is a true portrayal of himself.
Rimbaud sees everything, chooses and combines at will in the world of words, thus creating a unique world of poetry, in which he is the master of all things. All the words lost their original combinations, leaving Rimbaud to rearrange, he only chose his favorite words, formed a new combination, and then mercilessly discarded the words he did not need. When it comes to vocabulary, Rimbaud is innovative and ruthless.
Rimbaud was an "alchemist" who carefully selected words
Knowing Rimbaud's understanding of the poet, look in reverse "o is the holy trumpet piercing strange cry / There is a silence in the heavens on earth / Is the Omega, the purple light emitted from his eyes." "It's not hard to understand. This is related to the Christian idea of "eschatology", when the end times come, Jesus will come and judge the good and evil in the world, and the good will get above heaven, and the wicked will only go to hell.
In Rimbaud's poems, he himself is the "Omega," and when the end is coming, all the imagery in the poem holds its breath and waits for the Judgment of the Creator, and they either go to hell or to heaven. Rimbaud is the Creator of this world of poetry, and the imagery in poetry is the subject of this world, quietly waiting for his judgment.
The Christian Judgment of the Last Days
Rimbaud is like a meteor across the literary world, dazzling but fleeting, but his poetry has brought a long-term influence to French symbolism, his "Drunken Boat" and "Vowels" made the literati of that era fascinated, and the imitation of Rimbaud's prose poetry also became a fashion.
(1) The literary craze for imitation of Rimbaud
When the Symbolist poet revisited Rimbaud and discovered his value, he had been writing for years. When the poet whom Verlaine hailed as "cursed" was suddenly reacquainted in the literary world, it immediately aroused a strong reaction in the literary world, and his poems were copied repeatedly, and the words of praise were endless.
Not only that, but it also triggered a large number of poets to imitate Rimbaud's creative style. For example, the young poet René Gill from Belgium, whose Alchemy of Language is an imitation of Rimbaud's Alchemy of Words. Rimbaud's "a is black; e is white; i is red; o is blue; u is green", in René Gill's pen, becomes "a is the organ; e is the harp; i is the violin; o is the brass instrument; u is the flute". Each gives a special image to the five vowels, thus constructing the poet's own ideal world.
pipe organ
(2) Rimbaud is constantly borrowed in modern Chinese literature
In China, although Rimbaud's name is not as well-known as other French symbolist poets, he also has an important position in the history of modern Chinese literature that cannot be ignored. Zhu Guangqian, a literary master, believes that Symbolist poets such as Verlaine have improved the status of sound in poetry, and there is "a kind of psychopathy of 'colored hearing', and when you hear sound, you see color." The method of connecting color with sound, which began in Baudelaire and flourished in Rimbaud, is something we have said in detail earlier.
Dai Wangshu under the influence of Verlaine, after writing the famous "Rain Lane", the poetry creation has undergone great changes, in "Rain Lane", the author's description of the beautiful girl who is "lilac-like" is straightforward and easy to understand, and lilac is the embodiment of the girl. But then he said in "On the Zeros of Poetry" that "poetry cannot borrow from music, it should go to the composition of music". "The new poem should have a new emotion and a form of expression of that emotion." Obviously a new way of thinking about this way of creating.
Dai Wangshu "Rain Lane"
The "de-musicalization" proposed by Dai Wangshu means that the creation of poetry cannot simply rely on hearing or vision, but should transcend this sensory experience. This is similar to Rimbaud's work of blending different senses and recombining words to produce novel experiences that transcend verbal descriptions. From this point of view, Rimbaud's poetic proposition provides more space for thinking about the creation of modern and contemporary Chinese poetry.
Conclusion: Rimbaud not only inherits Baudelaire's creative style, but also expands the symbolic aesthetic concept in depth, injects a novel experience of the fusion of multiple senses, and integrates the poet's creator identity into poetry without trace: composing poems for the five vowels, the joint mobilization of various senses, the poet is the creator of the poetic world... All of this reflects the influence of Baudelaire's ecological aesthetic view, and whether there is no innovation of Rimbaud himself.
Rimbaud uses sensory confusion to break through the barriers between sound and color, build a bridge between vision, hearing, smell and other senses, and break people's stereotypes of beauty and ugliness. This is the doomsday judgment that Rimbaud created, the splendor he created, the new poetry that he created.
bibliography
The Complete Works of Rimbaud
"Dai Wangshu Selected Collection"
Symbolism and Modern Chinese Poetics