The Drunken Boat (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Arthur Rimbaud
- First Published: 1883
- Type of Work: Narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: Freedom, Adolescence, Nature, Symbolism, Rivers or waterways, Ships, Sea or seafaring life, Shipwrecks, Animals, Boats or boating, Fishes, Marine animals
The Poem
“The Drunken Boat” was written by the sixteen-year-old Arthur Rimbaud as a demonstration of his poetic skills for the audience of poets that he expected to meet in Paris in 1871. The one hundred lines of the poem are divided into twenty-five quatrains, Alexandrines rhymed abab, which are quite traditional and conventional. Beneath the controlled surface, however, seethes a turmoil of complex and conflicting, but interdependent, thoughts and feelings. The poem is a statement of adolescent rebellion and a hymn to liberation and independence. It expresses the...
[The entire page is 1494 words long]
