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>>Nicholl`s >portrait of Rimbaud, as an entirely taciturn bastard boss-from-Hell as likely to be as cruel as >compassionate might just have led Harding to reflect upon the >likelihood of Rimbaud ever managing to exhibit selfless >identification with the working-man or -woman. I've read little about the poems, though I've read the poems quite a bit. Surely a Marxist/Communard argument about the poems would be very hard to sustain? They're way too anarchic, way too metamorphic, way too internal - the petit visionary who keeps flaming out into a pile of dust (or merde). At the most banal level, they could be seen as brilliant expressions of a certain kind of middle class adolescent angst - the drugs, the identification with rebellion, the self hatred, the egocentricity. They'd be tedious if they weren't so sceptical and beautiful and extreme (and the other qualities that make them poems). Bonnefoy makes the link between a suffocating bourgeoise provincial background and Rimbaud's frustrated grasping for sublimity, which makes total sense to me. >it`s very interesting >on the North African slave trade in the nineteenth century, on >patterns of immigration and exploration, on tribal custom, ethnic and >religious tension between tribes and white European entrepreneurs &c. A fascinating topic. AC PO Box 186 Newport VIC 3105 AUSTRALIA home page: http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%