Poetry Criticism | Rimbaud, Arthur - James Lawler (essay date 1994)

James Lawler (essay date 1994)

SOURCE: Lawler, James. “Of Ecstasy and Action: Rimbaud's ‘Matinée d'ivresse’.” In Understanding French Poetry: Essays for a New Millennium, edited by Stamos Metzidakis, pp. 35-49. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994.

[In the following essay, Lawler discusses the critical controversy surrounding Rimbaud's composition of “Morning of Intoxication,” possibly while under the influence of hashish.]

A brief account links Rimbaud to drug-taking. It refers to an episode of November 1871 when Verlaine and Delahaye found Rimbaud asleep on a bench in the Hôtel des Etrangers. He told them, on waking, that he had taken hashish. “Eh alors? …, demanda Verlaine.—Alors, rien du tout … des lunes blanches, des lunes noires, qui se poursuivaient.”¹ The experience hardly seems to have gone deep. Much has nevertheless been made of it by a number of critics who call it decisive and associate it...

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