A RIMBAUD FOR ALL SEASONS

Rimbaud is many things to many people. He has been claimed by mystics, revolutionaries, feminists. He is a gay icon. He is a pagan. He is reformed Catholic. He is the first punk poet.

While he was still alive, though having abandoned poetry and buried himself away in Abyssinia, he gained a cult following of young poets. He was the icon of the Symbolists who hailed him as their own.

Since then he’s been a beatnik, a punk, a rock star. He’s been depicted in jeans; with a backpack; with a guitar.

He was the Dylan of his time; or the Patti Smith. He disappeared into Africa like Jim Morrison is alleged to have done – Jim supposedly following the trail of his hero and not dead at all.

For me it went like this:

Firstly, fascination with his love affair with Paul Verlaine. The story had everything: passion, poetry, violence, an abandoned wife. It had drink and drugs and degenerate behaviour. It had unwashed poets struggling to survive, living in squalor, welcoming their degradation, refusing to labour for an honest day’s pay. Their story involved knives, punches, wife-burning, baby battering – and it ended with a bullet in the wrist.

Secondly, he was the hero of my heroes. Bob Dylan read him, wrote a song mentioning him and Verlaine. Jim Morrison acted like the uncontrollable Rimbaud – unwelcome in polite households. 

Patti Smith wrote poetry and songs inspired by him. Van Morrison was a Rimbaldian too. I saw him everywhere – on record sleeves along with scattered Tarot cards and mystic symbols, graffitoed on walls, on the covers of books. 

He was the bliss that I was feeling.

He was influenced by his reading of mystic and occult books – Eliphas Levy, kabbalists, alchemists, Edgar Allan Poe, Eastern religions. I went to his source material and tried to see things how he saw them.

He tied in with my obsession with Dionysos. The Greek demi-god with a human mother and divine father. Dionysos is the Lord of the Dance. The bringer of thrilling music and wailing. The enticer of women, who enchants his Bacchantes and exhorts them to wildness and rapture.

Rimbaud, like Dionyosos, provided an entry point to the mystic realm: The words he used. The images he conveyed. The way he reached for something beyond – and seemed to grasp it.

He made me feel it, see it, understand it.

And that’s why I wanted to write about him.

DELIRIUM or The Rimbaud Delusion will be available as a paperback and ebook later this year.

FEAR OF THE NEW NOVEL

Now that DELIRIUM is finished and about to go through the pre-publication neatening up process, my mind is turning to ideas for a new writing project. But though I have ideas kicking around, I find I’m experiencing the same bewilderment that I always experience once a book is finished.

I realise I have no idea how to write.

Or rather, I completely forget how I wrote the last novel and can’t imagine how I can ever write another one.

At this stage, the whole process baffles me. Even though I’ve done it before, several times, I can’t see how I can possibly write another 80,000 or more words because I simply can’t remember how it happened last time.

I know it did happen. I have the words in a digital file to prove it. But how did they get there? Who wrote them? How come there are so many of them?

Of course, I know deep down that I will be able to do it again – if I want to. But I always seem to have to add that proviso. If I want to, I can write another novel – but I can’t be forced to do it. I have to let it sneak up on me.

It’s a bit like washing the dishes.

I say to myself, ‘I’ll just put the plates in hot water to soak and I’ll do them later’ and then I say, ‘Well, I may as well add some washing up liquid.’ After that it’s a small step to: ‘Since I’m here, I might as well do them while the water is hot.’ And so, by sneaking the idea up on myself, the dishes get done.

And that’s how novels happen. A snatch of conversation gets written down – may as well save it as I might need it later. A couple of characters start forming – might as well jot down some notes, just in case. A few ideas float up from the unconscious. Better write them down or else I'll forget them.

And before I realise it, I have what looks suspiciously like a pile of freshly washed chapters.

FLASH500 HUMOUR VERSE WINNERS

The FLASH500 HUMOUR VERSE competition winners are up on the website.

Winning entries will also be published in WORDS WITH JAM magazine.

Once again judged by me - and I had a great time reading all the poems.

Get your entries in now for the next competitions for humorous verse, flash fiction and novel opening chapters.

DEATH OF RIMBAUD

Arthur Rimbaud

37 ans

10 Novembre 1891

Priez pour lui 



Rimbaud back from Africa
sketched by his sister Isabelle.

Arthur Rimbaud died on the 10th November 1891 only a couple of weeks past his 37th birthday - an inflamed knee and an austere life in Abyssinia having used up what was left of his youth.

But what a youth it had been - charging around Europe mad to live and careless of anyone who got in his way. Then later trekking around Africa seeking his fortune. Though the fortune he searched for changed as he changed continents.

In Paris, in Brussels, in London, he sought the alchemical gold - the gold that brings with it bliss and enlightenment, that he believed could be found by altering the base metal of mundane life through extremes of behaviour, through drink, drugs, delirium. And sex.

With Paul Verlaine as his willing punchbag (a punchbag happy to punch back), Rimbaud scoured the cafes and bars, experienced the dives and debauchery of whatever city he was in. Looking like an angel, he lived like a demon. At times he believed he had found what he was looking for - attained 

Rimbaud at 16

that higher state that allowed him to see beyond the mundane and into the divine. He challenged a God he professed not to believe in to accept him as a worthy opponent.

Well, we all know what happens to angels who challenge the Almighty. Rimbaud fell like Lucifer into the flames of his own disgust. But hell turned out not to be a place of ice and fire. It was instead a return to that ordinary life he had once desired so fervently to leave behind.
 
On the shores of Africa he turned into an able clerk, honest and trustworthy, his work ethic firmly in place. When the spirit of adventure he could not suppress rose again in him, he travelled to Ethiopia - then known as Abyssinia - to seek a different fortune, to amass a different type of gold.

At the end of his life he had been carrying 14lbs of gold around with him, permanently strapped to his waist for fear of thieves. He ate little, dressed badly, lived sparsely, hoarding all the time gold coin after gold coin until the weight of it wore him down.

After a monstrous journey back to Europe, his leg was amputated. He lived out his final days in dreams and delirium and died in Marseilles begging to be transported back to Africa.



Rimbaud family tomb, Charleville Cemetery

DELIRIUM or The Rimbaud Delusion, a novel by Barbara Scott Emmett is available as a paperback and ebook.  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FKJ1OCE 

Crime and Thriller Reviews: Ten facts about ... Jimmy Bain

Crime and Thriller Reviews: Ten facts about ... Jimmy Bain: When did you first realise you wanted to be a writer? I always enjoyed English literature at school. After university I worked in a p...

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See my LBG page for details, reviews etc.

 

Finished!

Finally started sending DELIRIUM out to agents in the last week. 

The novel is complete (apart from the inevitable tweaks that I keep making and will keep on making until someone forcibly removes it from my hands).

Now maybe I can get back to some promoting and blogging and suchlike. Before I start work on the next one...

It's Been a While...

It's been a while since I posted on my blog. My excuse is that I've been busy trying to finish my Rimbaud novel.  I keep saying it's nearly done but I still haven't finished yet.

Now called DELIRIUM, it's up to around 105,000 words - which makes it the longest book I've ever written.

It really is getting close to completion now - just a bit more tweaking and rearranging and a couple more bits to write, then a complete read-through and overhaul and that's it. Doesn't sound like much, eh?

I had hoped to have it finished by the end of 2012 but my new deadline is Easter.  When is Easter again? Not too far away, so I'd better get on with it.

Here's a mock-up of a draft of an idea for a potential cover in the meantime - though it's unlikely to be used for the final product.