2023-06-26 17:25:29
The Italian writer Edgardo Franzosini devotes a book to a mysterious episode in the poet’s life, his stay in Milan in the spring of 1875.
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Lists of foreign words learned by the polyglot apprentice, drawings, photos found, piece of African blanket… the cult of relics remains strong among the Rimbaud people. A bristol as we said in the 19th century, a business card sent to his friend Ernest Delahaye, was part of it. Or rather a reproduction, the original having been lost. In 1875, a year of rocking in the life of the poet, it is there that he begins to turn his back on literature, Rimbaud travels. After two months in Stuttgart, he goes to Milan. He arrived on foot from Germany crossing all of Switzerland. What did he come to do in Italy? What were his resources? It looks like he was scruffy and penniless. The door is open to all guesswork. All that is known is that on the famous lost visiting card on which his name was printed, he had written in pen the address where he lived in Milan in April 1875: 39, Piazza Duomo terzo piano, Milano. According to comments made by Verlaine, it was the address of a widow with a big heart who would have hosted Rimbaud, 20 years old. Would there have been a sentimental story between them? We are once again reduced to guesswork. The poem Bottom (read below), from the Illuminations, would be the trace.
The Italian writer Edgardo Franzosini, after having studied the Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi, immortal Dracula of the 1930s, wrote a whole book on this stay in Milan. It restores well the evanescence of Rimbaud’s life from this period. And yet the ghost sometimes takes shape thanks to the scholarly research of the author. The widow’s building no longer exists. It was destroyed to make way for a department store. Did Rimbaud make a sign to his benefactress after his departure? We do not know. But the family of the poet turned merchant in Aden and Harar used this episode to try to dissipate the scandalous aura of the loves of Rimbaud and Verlaine. Paterne Berrichon, the posthumous brother-in-law, will publish an article in the Revue blanche speaking of the “pitiful”, “charmed” Italian woman – “seduced even”, he will add then. As for VItalie, Mother Rimbaud, she will have visions at the church of Charleville, and will see after her death the specter of her emaciated and amputated son behind a pillar, not far from a beautiful woman, of course the lady Milanese blackberry.
Edgardo Franzosini Rimbaud and the widow translated from Italian by Philippe Di Meo, La Baconnière, 120 pp., €17.50.
BOTTOM
Reality being too thorny for my great character, I nevertheless found myself at my lady’s house, like a big gray-blue bird swooping towards the moldings of the ceiling and trailing the wing in the shadows of the evening.
I was at the foot of the canopy supporting her adored jewels and her physical masterpieces, a big bear with purple gums and shagreen hair, eyes with crystals and silver consoles.
Everything became a shade and an ardent aquarium.
In the morning – a quarrelsome June dawn – I ran to the fields, donkey, trumpeting and brandishing my grievance, until the Sabines from the suburbs came and threw themselves at my chest.
#Rimbaud #Lady #Heart #Liberation