The Drunken Boat
by Arthur Rimbaud
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At a glance:
- Author: Arthur Rimbaud
- First Published: 1883
- Type of Poem: Narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry, Symbolist literature
- 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.)
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