- found it.
--what?
--eternal.
It is the sun that blends with the sea.
- Rimbaud, "A Season of Hell • Eternity"
Paris, 1871.
Rimbaud shuttled through the bustling crowd. He was smoking a pipe, wearing a duffel coat, and tying a rather delicate bow around his neck. His stunning beauty won him a lot of attention. Everything in Paris surprised him, and he gave a mischievous whimper at a passerby with a beard, and gave him a playful, innocent smile. The man, who seemed terrified, took a few steps and looked back at him, disappearing into the crowd.
This shot of "Total Eclipse" is full of drama. Director Agneska Holland designed such a fateful encounter for Rimbaud and Verlaine.
This is an authentic biographical film.
Total Eclipse of the Heart tells the story of Rimbaud's dazzling three-year writing career in the 19th century French symbolism poet. Rimbaud, a young poet who was only 17 years old, sent his poems to Verlaine, a symbolist poet who was already a little famous at the time. No one could have foreseen that 28-year-old Verlaine fell in love with this brilliant and talented poet, his eyes shining like burning gold, the rebellious, arrogant and imaginative lines in his mouth, and his youth. Beautiful face and body. Rimbaud is sometimes naive, sometimes cruel, this charming mixture of innocence and sophistication makes Verlaine fall, he abandons his wife and elopes with Rimbaud to London.
Victorian London was the center of the world, where, although they were penniless and living in embarrassment, the inspiration for writing was like an inexhaustible source to fill the empty and lost soul. This is the most creative years of Rimbaud's poet's career. His poetry, like the warmest sunshine at noon, discards superfluous decoration and burns mediocre eyes, becoming one of the brightest rays of light in the 19th century.
Verlaine asked Rimbaud: "What is your greatest fear?"
Rimbaud replied: "People think that I am as mediocre as them."
The relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine is difficult to characterize with the word lover. As the only person at the time to perceive and appreciate Rimbaud's talent, Verlaine consciously assumed the financial resources to support his existence, and was eager to draw inspiration from his youthful, vigorous enthusiasm for writing.
Rimbaud is keenly aware of this desire. He "wanted to be everything, to be everyone, to be a genius, to create the future." The eternal place of the soul, however he fails and he begins to be disappointed with the world.
That scene -
winter in London, the dark clouds are low.
The 30-year-old Verlaine stopped hesitantly with two fish in his hand, and looked suspiciously at Rimbaud who was standing in front of the window laughing. The laughter almost froze him.
An hour earlier, Rimbaud had been lying in bed mocking him as a "bald, ugly, old, alcoholic lyricist who haunted me because his wife wouldn't take him back." He tried hard to restrain his twitching expression, put on his hat and went out without saying a word, went to the fish market to buy 2 fish and went home, only to be stunned by Rimbaud who laughed at him at the door.
Shame mixed with a great rage flooded him, and Verlaine smashed the fish at Rimbaud and walked away without looking back. Realizing that the joke was overdone, Rimbaud jumped out of the window in a panic to chase after him, apologized loudly, and watched Verlaine leave London with tears in his eyes.
That wasn't their last parting.
Verlaine's melancholy personality and lack of assertiveness led him to remain passive in their relationship. In the second half of the 19th century, when homosexuality was seen as a crime, immorality and indignity, the relationship between two people was like a bubble in the sun, dreamy and fragile.
When the gunshots rang out, Rimbaud's palm was pierced by Verlaine's gun, and blood dripped on his defenseless face. He didn't seem to believe this scene, turned back to look for Verlaine, and found him with tears on his face. Verlaine was sentenced to imprisonment for the crime of indecent assault and wounding; Rimbaud returned to his hometown and completed the collection of poems "A Season of the Region" and then closed the pen, and never wrote another poem for the rest of his life.
After that, they rarely met again until death.
A hundred years later, rocker Bob Dylan wrote them into a song ("You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go"), and he sang -
"The relationship is so broken, like Verlaine and Rimbaud."
They were like Father and son, like brothers, like lovers, like close friends, the short-lived, dreamy but broken feelings have been passed down to this day.
Rimbaud always appears in Verlaine's dreams.
In the dream, 17-year-old Rimbaud was carrying a white flag, which squeaked in the sea breeze. He seemed to sense the gaze being watched, looked back at the camera, revealed a vague and slightly immature shy smile, and continued to advance towards the sea without hesitation.
He said: "I found it."
Verlaine asked: "What?"
Rimbaud said: "Eternal. It is the sun that meets the sea."
-END-
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