Ecopoetic Adventures in Rimbaud's 'Sensation' and 'Ma Bohème'

Abstract

The profusion of ecological matters in Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Sensation’ and ‘Ma Bohème’ of 1870 draws attention to the peculiar relationship between mankind and its surroundings in the later years of the nineteenth century. The feeling of fulfilment ensuing from the teenage poet’s communion with nature in a space beyond the confines of urban industry is associated with versificatory particularities that are suggestive of personal and stylistic evolution based on a distinctive mode of enmeshment in the non-human world. Rimbaud’s rendering of a world on the cusp of the metropolis entails a quest for personal independence outside traditional constraints. The visual and tactile evocations of the narrator’s surroundings and corporeal circumstances are complemented by auditory metaphors that emblematise a transition beyond Hugolian lyricism. The present chapter contends that the ecological framework of the poems provides an insight into the peculiar identity of the countryside in the era of industrialisation and Haussmannisation. It is conjectured that the distinctive versification of the poems (several caesurae are overridden; there are multiple instances of enjambement and unsettled rhythms; rhyming richness markedly varies from stanza to stanza) embodies increasingly significant correspondences between environmental circumstances and cultural production at a moment of accelerated change in ecological and sociocultural conditions in France.

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