Read Online The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud by Henry Miller - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Henry Miller
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showed himself willing to part with it at the first call. Writing to his mother from Harar in 1881, he says:
“Si vous avez besoin, prenez de quoi est à moi: c’est à vous. Pour moi, je n’ai personne à qui songer, sauf ma propre personne, qui ne demande rien.”
When one thinks that these men, whose work has been an unending source of inspiration to succeeding generations, were forced to live like slaves, that they had difficulty in securing their sustenance, which was hardly more than a coolie demands, what are we to think of the society from which they sprang? Is it not evident that such a society is preparing its own rapid downfall? In one of his letters from Harar, Rimbaud contrasts the natives of Abyssinia with the civilized whites.
“Les gens du Harar ne sont ni plus bêtes, ni plus canailles, que les nègres blancs des pays dit civilisés; ce n’est pas du même ordre, voilà tout. Ils sont même moins méchants, et peuvent, dans certain cas, manifester de la reconnaissance et de la fidélité. Il s’agit d’être humain avec eux.”
Like Van Gogh, he was more at home with the despised and the downtrodden than with men of his own milieu. Rimbaud took a native woman to satisfy his affection, while Van Gogh acted as a husband (and father of her children) to an unfortunate woman inferior to him in every way, a woman who made his life unbearable. Even in the matter of carnal love they were denied the privileges of the ordinary man. The less they demanded of life the less they received. They lived like scarecrows, amidst the abundant riches of our cultural world. Yet no two men of their time could be said to have refined their senses in anticipation of a feast more than they. In the space of a few years they had not only eaten up, but eaten through, the accumulated heritage of several thousand years. They were faced with starvation in the midst of seeming plenty. It was high time to give up the ghost. Europe was already actively preparing to destroy the mould which had grown to fit like a coffin. The years which had intervened since their death belong to that dark side of life in whose shadow they had struggled to breathe. All that is barbarous, false, unlived out, is coming to the surface with the force of an eruption. We are beginning at last to realize how very un-modern is this boasted “modern” age. The truly modern spirits we have done our best to kill off. Their yearning does indeed seem romantic now; they spoke the language of the soul. We are now talking a dead language, each a different one. Communication is finished; we have only to deliver the corpse.
“I shall probably leave for Zanzibar next month,” Rimbaud writes in one of his letters. In another he is thinking of going to China or to India. Every now and then he inquires what news about the canal (Panama) ? He will travel to the end of the earth if there is hope there of eking out a living. It never occurs to him to return to his own country and begin life anew. It is always the exotic place to which his mind turns.
What a familiar chord that strikes! How often, in the early days, I dreamed of going to Timbuctoo! If that were impossible, then to Alaska or the Polynesian Islands. In the Trocadero Museum once I stood gazing for a long time at the faces of the natives in the Caroline Islands. As I studied their beautiful features I recalled that distant relatives of ours had settled there. If I could ever get there, I thought, I would feel “at home” at last. As for the Orient, that has always been in the back of my head, a longing which began early in childhood. Not only China and India, but Java, Bali, Burma, the state of Nepal, Tibet. Never once has it occurred to me that I would have difficulties in those faraway places. It always seemed to me that I would be welcomed with open arms. To return to New York, on the other hand, was a frightening thought. The city whose every street I know like a book, where I have so many friends,
“Si vous avez besoin, prenez de quoi est à moi: c’est à vous. Pour moi, je n’ai personne à qui songer, sauf ma propre personne, qui ne demande rien.”
When one thinks that these men, whose work has been an unending source of inspiration to succeeding generations, were forced to live like slaves, that they had difficulty in securing their sustenance, which was hardly more than a coolie demands, what are we to think of the society from which they sprang? Is it not evident that such a society is preparing its own rapid downfall? In one of his letters from Harar, Rimbaud contrasts the natives of Abyssinia with the civilized whites.
“Les gens du Harar ne sont ni plus bêtes, ni plus canailles, que les nègres blancs des pays dit civilisés; ce n’est pas du même ordre, voilà tout. Ils sont même moins méchants, et peuvent, dans certain cas, manifester de la reconnaissance et de la fidélité. Il s’agit d’être humain avec eux.”
Like Van Gogh, he was more at home with the despised and the downtrodden than with men of his own milieu. Rimbaud took a native woman to satisfy his affection, while Van Gogh acted as a husband (and father of her children) to an unfortunate woman inferior to him in every way, a woman who made his life unbearable. Even in the matter of carnal love they were denied the privileges of the ordinary man. The less they demanded of life the less they received. They lived like scarecrows, amidst the abundant riches of our cultural world. Yet no two men of their time could be said to have refined their senses in anticipation of a feast more than they. In the space of a few years they had not only eaten up, but eaten through, the accumulated heritage of several thousand years. They were faced with starvation in the midst of seeming plenty. It was high time to give up the ghost. Europe was already actively preparing to destroy the mould which had grown to fit like a coffin. The years which had intervened since their death belong to that dark side of life in whose shadow they had struggled to breathe. All that is barbarous, false, unlived out, is coming to the surface with the force of an eruption. We are beginning at last to realize how very un-modern is this boasted “modern” age. The truly modern spirits we have done our best to kill off. Their yearning does indeed seem romantic now; they spoke the language of the soul. We are now talking a dead language, each a different one. Communication is finished; we have only to deliver the corpse.
“I shall probably leave for Zanzibar next month,” Rimbaud writes in one of his letters. In another he is thinking of going to China or to India. Every now and then he inquires what news about the canal (Panama) ? He will travel to the end of the earth if there is hope there of eking out a living. It never occurs to him to return to his own country and begin life anew. It is always the exotic place to which his mind turns.
What a familiar chord that strikes! How often, in the early days, I dreamed of going to Timbuctoo! If that were impossible, then to Alaska or the Polynesian Islands. In the Trocadero Museum once I stood gazing for a long time at the faces of the natives in the Caroline Islands. As I studied their beautiful features I recalled that distant relatives of ours had settled there. If I could ever get there, I thought, I would feel “at home” at last. As for the Orient, that has always been in the back of my head, a longing which began early in childhood. Not only China and India, but Java, Bali, Burma, the state of Nepal, Tibet. Never once has it occurred to me that I would have difficulties in those faraway places. It always seemed to me that I would be welcomed with open arms. To return to New York, on the other hand, was a frightening thought. The city whose every street I know like a book, where I have so many friends,
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