Just a moment

Arthur Rimbaud is one of the most celebrated French poets of 19th century and a favourite of mine since I spent a whole year studying him in Lycee. His work only spans a few years in his late teens and twenties after which he departed to Africa and left poetry to one side. What interest me is that during his creative years he stayed twice in London (at least. he may have come again in 1874).

In September 1872, he arrives in London from Belgium with Verlaine, another great poet with whom he had a tumultuous relationship. This is right after the war of 1870 between France and Prussia, and after the Commune de Paris to which both Rimbaud and Verlaine are linked with. Rimbaud and Verlaine get in touch with some fellow refugees from the Commune and find a place to stay in Soho on 34 Howland Street (see the link to see what it looks like today). In late 1872 Rimbaud comes back to Charleville in Northern France, the region he is originally from. His second stay is from July 1873, where he comes back to stay with Verlaine on 8 Great College Street (link to see what it looks like today ), in Westminster a few feet away from the Houses of Parliament. They both got rejected then by the Commune community perhaps because of their immorality. Apparently there is plenty of reports filed by the Metropolitan police on the life and whereabouts of the Rimbaud-Verlaine couple. It seems that they lived there fairly isolated and always the foreigner in a strange and brutal city.

Rimbaud wrote about London in the poem "Ville" in the Illuminations, 1875. Further readings about this poem in French and in English (mostly).