THE EARLY POEMS

Les Etrennes des Orphelins

This is the earliest of Rimbaud's published poems and the first poem in verse we have of his aside from the Latin exercises. It appeared in the Revue pour tous in January 1870, having been written in Rimbaud's fourteenth or fif teenth year. Various influences have been discovered: Reboul's "L'Ange et l'enfant" (which was the subject given in his school for a Latin verse-composition: Rimbaud's "Ver erat") ; Coppée's "Enfants trouvés," Hugo's "Pauvres gens." The following lines from Hugo's "La Prière pour tous" (Les Feuilles d'automne ) seem to me to have impressed young Rimbaud even more:

    C'est l'heure où les enfants parlent avec les anges


    * * *

    Et puis ils dormiront. — Alors, épars clans l'ombre,
    Les rêves d'or, essaim tumultueux, sans nombre,
    Qui naî't aux derniers bruits du jour à son déclin


    * * *

    Viendront s'abattre en foule à leurs rideaux de lin.


    * * *

    Ainsi que l'oiseau met sa tete sous son aile,
    L'enfant clans la prière enclort son jeune esprit.

The poem has been described as a pastiche (of Coppée, among others), but the self-pitying sincerity of it strikes one even more than whatever ironic intention. This is the earliest of the many references Rimbaud makes to his abandoned state. It is a typical fantasy of nostalgia for nest- or womb-warmth and the lost "happy family" — one is aware of many such sentimental evocations in literature, for example, Dickens' David Copperfield, Charles Kingsley's Water Babies. Whether we regard it as shallow, sentimental pathos or the expression of tragically profound deprivation may depend on how defensive we ourselves are: knowing what was behind it, in Rimbaud's case, I find it suggestive of genuine pain in certain passages.

The poem is useful to us because it presents numerous important themes in simple forms which can help us to see through some very complex imageries.

2. De deux enfants le triste et doux chuchotement.

The presence of two conspiratorial children lightens the orphan burden somewhat, puts the poem in the realm of gentle pathos, the mood of "triste et doux." Richard would call this fadeur — I find that to be a too systematic and condescending approach to such Verlainian moods.

4. Sous le long rideau blanc qui tremble et se soulève ...

The "rideau" is the bed-curtain, by context; like the lovely presence of air lifting and billowing out window-curtains, the "tremble et se souleve" delicately hints at the ghostly hovering of absent and dreamed-of ("reve" in line 3) parents or of some such consoling notion: "il y avait des visions derriere la gaze des rideaux" (second "Lettre du voyant").

5. — Au dehors les oiseaux se rapprochent frileux; Leur aile s'engourdit sous le ton gris des cieux;

As in "Les Effarês," there is an ambivalent tone of warmth and cold which dominates the poem; it exists mainly in a mid-realm-something like a delightful shiver-between the pleasure of nostalgia and indoor snugness versus deprivation and external cold. The birds, victims of the outer chill, are associated with the deprivation as are the poor worker's children in "Les Poètes de sept ans," "Les Effarés." The double mood is carried on in:

9. Sourit avec les pleurs, et chante en grelottant ...

12. Ils ecoutent, pensifs, comme un lointain murmure ...
Ils tressaillent souvent a la claire voix d'or
Du timbre matinal, qui frappe et frappe encor
Son refrain...