Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Christian Prozak, review: "Rimbaud, Double Life"

Christian Prozak

Review of:

Edmund White, Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel. New York: Atlas & Co.

très readable and condensed
chrono from élitist pompous texts
like G. Robb and autre Rimbaudallaires
yet critical of Starkiescheiss and
investigative betwixt
analysis of life thru verse

am mucho pleased with this history
context & narrative
but EWhite’s traducs suck
ie, “In order to touch one of my dad’s bits—big, black
and hard—” is not only
inaccurate & slovenly
(see MSpitz From Absinthe,
“that fat hard dark dick/of my dad”)
but just as misleading as plethora of guesswork preceding Fowlie, Varèse, etcetera

Still, this study is thick w/ sticky nugs such as

“One night when [Verlaine] was blind with drink and wanted money from his mother so that he could continue his rout into the dawn hours, he became so angry with her for holding out on him that he attacked with his cane the jars containing Madame Verlaine’'s miscarriages, smashing the glass and dismembering the tiny rubbery fetuses and scattering them across the floor—and remarking soddenly that they, like him, had been macerating in alcohol long enough.”

and

“Most humiliating, Verlaine was visited by two doctors, who examined his body to ‘see if he was a homosexual.’ The doctors remarked on the small penis and its particularly small, tapering head. More significant for them was the anus.”

and w/ das “boat” under the microscope
(following influence of JVerne
James FenCoop and EdAlPoe)
offerings of insight acute, ie,

“Critics often claim that creative sparks fly when the themes and techniques of genre literature are elevated to the status of high art—and Rimbaud was one of the first poets of the modern era to understand this principle.”

nevtheless
despite puny piddlies
this portrait is most comprehensive
flash of madpunk tragi-spiral
into most mythic Abyss.

_____

RECONFIGURATIONS: A Journal for Poetics & Poetry / Literature & Culture,
http://reconfigurations.blogspot.com/, ISSN: 1938-3592, Volume Three (2009): Immanence/ Imminence
_____

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