Tears in the Fence

Victor Segalen’s essay on Rimbaud, translated here for the first time into English, appeared in 1906 in the influential literary review Mercure de France. Segalen was an admirer of Rimbaud’s poetry and, like many others, perplexed by the poet’s abandonment of literature. In the essay he attempts to reconcile the poet Rimbaud with the trader/adventurer Rimbaud, taking issue as he does so with various theories being expounded at the time.

Segalen begins with an appreciation of Rimbaud’s verse. He’s dismissive of the early poems like ‘The Orphan’s New Year Gifts’, but praises the ‘beautiful pagan breath’ of ‘Sun and Flesh’ and the visionary qualities of ‘The Drunken Boat’, in which he says Rimbaud ‘foresees his future turmoil, his endless walks, his struggles…’ In the final line of ‘The Drunken Boat’ Segalen says ‘a frisson of the unknown is truly encompassed.’ This is, he believes, the mark of great poet, and many such lines, he asserts, can be harvested from Rimbaud’s work, ‘sparse as it is’. 

The more obscure prose poetry of Les Illuminations appeals less to Segalen, who notes that Rimbaud may never have intended these fragments for publication. He feels the images and references are too private, hence inaccessible to the reader beyond a general sense of beauty and harmony, with sudden shifts of imagery, which ‘shivers with sensitivity’. 

Segalen was a naval doctor, traveller, linguist, archaeologist, and poet, his interests and experience therefore overlapping with many of Rimbaud’s own preoccupations. He spent some time in Djibouti, allowing him the opportunity to interview local people who had known Rimbaud. The figure which emerges from these conversations is of ‘a tall, thin man’, ‘an amazing walker’ and ‘a man of astounding conversation’. But he finds no evidence of Rimbaud ever having discussed poetry, and the only writings these traders are aware of are Rimbaud’s submissions to the French Geographical Society. But the prospect of finding evidence of a continuing poetic interest among ‘men of business, caravaneers, consuls, etc.’ was always going to be a challenge, Segalen reflects. 

Rimbaud’s letters from Africa to his family and a few friends (published in 1899) are no more explicit, being full of practical matters, and complaints about the vicissitudes of daily life. The letters, Segalen says, give ‘no indication that Rimbaud still occupied himself with his prodigious childish games’ (jeux d’enfant in the original, ‘childhood games’ is perhaps a less judgmental way of rendering this). 

Had he wished to, the adult Rimbaud had opportunities to reconnect with his literary past. In February 1888 a former classmate , Paul Bourde, who was writing for Le Temps, alerted Rimbaud to the existence of a small circle of admirers in Paris who eagerly awaited his return. Rimbaud did not respond to this news. As Segalen says: ‘No hint that he might have taken into consideration the impact of his early writings has been found.’

Segalen reviews various theories, including the psychological notion of ‘split personality’, in an attempt to explain this divide between the poet and the trader/explorer. He dismisses pathological explanations as not fitting Rimbaud’s case. He turns instead to the concept of ‘Bovarysme’ (Bovarysm) developed by the philosopher and essayist Jules de Gautier. The idea derives from Flaubert’s novel and describes someone who values an aspect of their activity which is inferior at the expense of a more significant area of achievement. Gautier gives the example of the painter Ingres who considered his virtuosity as a musician to be more important than his painting. 

Segalen sees Rimbaud as an example of Bovarysm. Poetry came easily to the adolescent Rimbaud, he argues, and as a result he never fully appreciated the value of what he had produced. Later his energies became dissipated in a series of struggles with ‘the implacability of life’ in which the gains and setbacks of the trader seemed more real than his youthful poetic dreams. 

The final question Segalen considers is whether or not Rimbaud might one day have returned to poetry. Rimbaud’s first biographer, Paterne Berrichon (who married Rimbaud’s sister Isabelle after the poet’s death), believed that ‘poetry was part of his [Rimbaud’s] nature’ and that he could not possibly have ‘imposed silence on his voice’ indefinitely. Segalen rejects this ‘optimistic hypothesis’ and argues that to the end Rimbaud ‘persisted in despising his essential being’ and smothered his ‘poetical inspiration’. 

It is interesting to see Segalen, who was Rimbaud’s junior by 24 years, wrestling with questions which have occupied critics and biographers ever since. Rimbaud’s youthful poetic achievements involved much more work and dedication than Segalen was perhaps aware of. But Segalen’s acceptance of the fact of Rimbaud’s abandonment of poetry, writing only 15 years after the poet’s death, is honest and an important counter to the mythologising already begun by Berrichon and others. Segalen’s essay has not been available before in English and this parallel text edition will be of much interest to Rimbaud devotees. 

A final word on the translation. In the opening paragraph of the essay Segalen talks about the ‘two Rimbauds’ and their apparent irreconcilability. The last sentence of this paragraph reads: ‘Cela reste inquiétant de duplicité’, and in a later passage he refers to ‘la duplicité de son existence’. In both instances Longre and Stubbs translate ‘duplicité’ as ‘duplicily’. This is certainly one meaning of the French word, but another meaning is ‘doubleness’ and that I think is the sense intended here. Nowhere in the essay is Segalen suggesting any deceit or hypocrisy on the part of Rimbaud. So the first phrase should be translated as something like ‘There remains a disturbing sense of doubleness’, and the second ‘the doubleness of his existence’. 

Simon Collings 7^th August 2024