Strathern A Season in Abyssinia

An Impersonation of Arthur Rimbaud
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-31550-5
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten

Marseilles, 1891: as Arthur Rimbaud lies dying in hospital, his mind wanders fitfully - taking him back to Commune-era Paris, and the scandalous life he led with Verlaine. But, above all, he is transported to Harar, Abyssinia, where he ventured in 1880 to seek his fortune, having chucking in the disreputable game of writing poetry... Paul Strathern's second novel, published in 1972, won a Somerset Maugham Award both for its superb evocation of the colour, squalor and hurlyburly of Harar and for its inspired 'impersonation' of Rimbaud - restless, ragged self-overcomer, would-be explorer-imperialist, and genius poet repulsed by his past literary life. In a new preface to this edition Strathern discusses the mercurial personality of Rimbaud, his novel's bold shifts between first and third person, and his own travels in East Africa that informed the book.

Paul Strathern

Autoren/Hrsg.

Strathern, Paul

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION

The Man Who ‘Disappeared Himself’: An Interview with Paul Strathern

Pass by the Sea A Season in Abyssinia One Man’s War Vaslav: An Impersonation of Nijinsky The Adventures of Spiro

Mendeleyev’s Dream: The Quest for the Elements Dr Strangelove’s Game: A Brief History of Economic Genius The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance Napoleon in Egypt The Artist, the Philosopher and the Warrior Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola and the Battle for the Soul of the Renaissance City and The Spirit of Venice: From Marco Polo to Casanova

PAUL STRATHERN: My interest in someone of great achievement who then ‘disappeared himself’, so to speak, began with T.E. Lawrence: the Lawrence of Arabia who became ‘Aircraftsman Shaw’. Rimbaud, of course, did much the same. It’s an interesting psychology, with elements of disillusionment, rejection of youthful idealism and so forth. And Lawrence’s was certainly a curious version of inverted egoism, which had a habit of reverting to its former state – hence his frequent ‘backing into the limelight’.

Rimbaud in his later years seems to have had neither the egoism, nor the false modesty, of Lawrence. And none of the game-playing, the schoolboy role-playing et cetera. What he did, he did for real.

PS: During the time I spent in the Merchant Navy, the old tramp steamer I was on sailed the Red Sea, called in at Aden and travelled along the Ethiopian coast – all very much the ground Rimbaud covered when he gave up poetry and left France to become a trader. I was there in the early 1960s when Aden was a tacky duty-free port, a flea-bitten outpost of the Empire. But then just over half a century earlier Rimbaud had considered it much the same.

Later, I travelled to Ethiopia with my daughter, and we visited Harar, the city where Rimbaud made his headquarters in the interior. The old city remained virtually unchanged from how it had been in Rimbaud’s time, and even from the time of Sir Richard Burton, who was the first European non-Muslim to stay there in the 1850s. Rimbaud seems to have been one of the first, if not the very first, who actually lived there on a permanent basis. On the other hand, there were a few Europeans who passed through as traders, and also an Italian explorer, all of whom encountered Rimbaud.

By coincidence, my daughter is descended from Burton through her mother’s side. In Harar there was a resident French priest who acted as local historian and he was as interested in finding out about Burton as we were in finding out about Rimbaud. His enthusiasm and knowledge gave us access to all kinds of places and information that might otherwise have eluded us.

PS: There was a rather grand wooden building known in those days as the ‘Rimbaud House’, a photo of which often used to appear on the cover of French editions of his biography and poems. This proved not to be authentic. It was partly constructed out of leftover railway sleepers from the Djibouti to Addis Ababa railway, which was only started in the late 1890s, a decade or so after Rimbaud had left Harar. However, we were shown where Rimbaud had actually lived – a much more nondescript place with a large dusty courtyard in front of it. A photo of this house, dating from 1888 and featuring a large ostrich, has since been discovered. Peter Porter wrote a poem about the photo, ‘Rimbaud’s Ostrich’, which can be found on the Internet.

Later we travelled down to Djibouti, on the coast, where there was even a Rimbaud Museum of sorts, albeit permanently closed and empty. There was, though, one incident which Rimbaud would have appreciated. The only way we could get into Djibouti from the interior was on a small plane, where we were the sole passengers. The dozen or so other seats were filled with large sacks of , the local drug of choice, which was flown down to the coast every day, quite legally. When chewed, the leaves of this plant provide a mild narcotic effect. On arrival in Djibouti the regular plane-load of would be rapidly distributed throughout the town, with sprigs being pilfered at every opportunity. The airport guards and the customs men happily brandished their sprigs while on duty. By the time the was fully distributed, around noon, everyone was chewing away at their sprig of leaves, and within the hour the entire male population – and some females, so we were told disapprovingly – lay stretched out on beds, or on steps or in doorways, in a pleasant daze. All trade, all activity of any sort, ground to a halt. Rimbaud himself almost certainly partook of this ritual when he was on the coast, and probably when he was in the interior too. He may have given up poetry, but he never gave up drugs.

We also travelled to Tadjoura, which was the old port of the Djibouti region. Rimbaud is said to have started from there with his caravans on several occasions during his voyage into the interior. This meant crossing one of the worst deserts on earth, an inhospitable region inhabited by the Afar, one of the least welcoming tribes on earth. They would attack anyone who ventured into their territory and would cut off the penis of their victim. This would then be hung on a string around the waist. No Afar was permitted to marry unless he could sport such a trophy. Hence, competition was quite fierce.

I did discover one remnant of Rimbaud’s time which was still in use. The earliest universally accepted foreign trading currency in this region, and throughout East Africa, was the Austrian silver thaler, the so-called ‘Maria Theresa’. This was so trusted that the Arabs and most other traders would accept nothing else. Being suspicious of forgeries, they would scrutinise any proffered coin in some detail. It had to have the image of the Empress Maria Theresa, and it also needed to be dated no later than 1780. Naturally, these coins were in increasingly short supply after Maria Theresa’s death. Consequently the British began minting forgeries, taken from an original die, and these soon became more numerous in Africa than the real thalers. In the market in Harar I came across several ‘genuine forgery’ Maria Theresas and managed to buy one, which I still have on my wall.

Rimbaud certainly traded in the forgeries, and he would store his accumulated coins in a leather belt which he kept strapped to his person at all times, as he had nowhere else safe to keep them. He had learned this lesson the hard way, when someone had discovered where he was hiding his coins. But the weight of this belt – which he wore, as I say, all day and without relief – certainly contributed to his ill health.

PS: The Rimbaud biography by Enid Starkie was still the main source in English when I started to write the novel. There were, of course, a number of academic and popular works in French which were far more reliable. Even so, Starkie provides a good romantic angle. The main literary sources, naturally, were Rimbaud’s poems, especially and . My translations of certain sections and quotes are woven into the text of the novel. Though I don’t believe in prophecy as such, these proved highly prophetic in a psychological sense.

‘Je est un autre’

PS: Yes, the ‘’ idea was, of course, vital. And I switched between first and third person to keep in line with this. I felt that it also emphasised the ‘impersonation’ element. And the third-person passages stressed the notion that these events actually happened to a real historical figure.