Un verano con Rimbaud

The journey with which this wonderful book begins evokes the first of many escapes by Arthur Rimbaud, in 1870, fleeing from his mother. For the author of Illuminations and A Season in Hell, life is organized in movement, the supreme state of poetry. Sylvain Tesson, who shares the wanderer's restless nature with him, follows in the footsteps of the enfant terrible from his first Latin verses to the yearning for adventure that led him to Abyssinia. Rimbaud moved restlessly, constantly changing his point of view. He escaped the Ardennes, passed through Parisian salons he wanted no part of, pursued love in Belgium, wandered London, and ventured to die on African dirt tracks. A summer with Rimbaud travels through real and imaginary landscapes and delves into the poet's expressions and verses such as his well-known "I am another", which allows us to reflect on the splitting of the modern subject, or his famous vowel poem. Tesson understands his need to move like no one else, he proposes a subtle and elegant interpretation of his verses and awakens in the reader the desire to know or meet again with a scarce but wild work.