The Erasing of Arthur Rimbaud

Étienne Carjat—I don't know the French pronunciation—started out drawing caricatures, a big fad in France in the late 1800s. It was a sustaining source of income for many freewheeling bohemians; its practitioners included Honoré Daumier and the illustrator Gustave Doré. Once he settled on it, the artistically gifted young Carjat showed he was good at the hustle. Carjat learned photography from Pierre Petit, the photographer who turned the caricatures into cartes de visite for sale to the public. (There is a rather scary self-portrait of Petit here.) Carjat became a magazine publisher, also to capitalize on his caricatures, and published some of the famous French symbolist poets such as Charles Baudelaire, author of Les Fleurs du mal (the Flowers of Evil). Carjat was well connected in artistic circles. He was friends with the painter Gustave Courbet, and he must have been an energetic "people-person," as his portraiture included prominent artists such as Victor Hugo and the Italian opera composer Rossini. It appears Carjat's primary interest became his photographic portraiture, for which he was widely celebrated and earned many awards, but he continued his activities in publishing and drawing. Maybe the money was better.

(Carjat by Carjat—sorry, I don't know if I can reproduce this here.)

And he was a superb portraitist. He worked in the collodion process before it was mainstream, reproducing his pictures at least partially in Woodburytype, the most beautiful, but also the most elusive, of photographic processes. I'm pretty sure that the wall placard of the only Woodburytypes I ever saw in person, at the Smithsonian, stated that no one alive now knows exactly how to make them. I've seen that disputed since, but the few modern attempts I have seen didn't approach the beauty of 19th-century examples. Unlike many alternative processes (and oddly considering that Woodburytypes create a shallow bas-relief on the sheet), the beauty of the originals comes across pretty well in JPEGs, as you can see here. If you ever get the chance to see any original Woodburytypes, do not miss out.

More so than the process, Carjat's direct and honest style was what distinguished him. He worked without assistants, which was unusual at the time, and abstained from the decorative props that most photographers of the time used. His famous portrait of Baudelaire is characteristically piercing, plain, and full of personality.

Charles Baudelaire by Étienne Carjat

History sanitizes and neatens its now forever stilled participants, but when they were alive the symbolist poets and their milieu were a chaotic, unruly bunch. The legendary symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, in particular, has one of the oddest stories of all major writers, which is saying something. The son of a largely absent soldier father and a rigidly strict and controlling mother (Rimbaud called her bouche d'ombre, or "mouth of darkness"), he was an extreme embodiment of the angst-ridden teenager. He published his first poem at 15, and also appeared to have matured as a poet by that age: in that same year of his life he wrote "Ophélie," often anthologized and still considered one of his best. As a teenager he had a notorious two-year homosexual affair with the older poet Paul Verlaine, whose 17-year-old wife was pregnant when they met. Bob Dylan fans will recognize both names from the song "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" from Blood on the Tracks:

Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine have been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud's
But there's no way I can compare
All them scenes to this affair
You're gonna make me lonesome when you go

A brilliant student, Rimbaud quit school, was at one point thrown into prison for vagrancy, and at some point decided that as part of his identity as a poet he needed to purposefully effect what he called a "long, immense and rational derangement of all the senses," by which he meant a headlong descent into dissipation—rife with what would now be called "un-self-regarding behavior," vulgarity, thievery, indulgence in the favored drugs of the French bohemians such as absinthe, hashish, and opium, and flagrantly poor personal hygiene.

Then, abruptly, at the age of twenty, after finishing Illuminations, his last work, he quit writing literature, completely and forever. He spent the remaining 17 years of his short life, before dying in 1891 of bone cancer, traveling and doing his best to live a sober and steady, though still interesting, life. As an adult he lived mainly in the Middle East, and for his last 20 years slept outdoors. From those years, we have the letters. He has had an outsized influence on all sorts of artists ever since, not only Dylan, but people as diverse as River Phoenix, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Edmund Wilson, and Jack Kerouac among many others. His work, often taking the form of prose-poems, lends itself to translation and is satisfying to read in English.

He's even been cited as an influence on teenage high fashion. There is a famous poem, "Le Dormeur du Val," which lyrically describes a sleeping young soldier, revealing only at the end two bright bloody holes in his torso; he is already dead. In homage, the 21st century fashion designer Hedi Slimane created dress shirts with red wounds embroidered on them, with red sequins for blood.

Sword in a cane
There is a portrait of Rimbaud by Étienne Carjat, but there might have been more. It's one of the most famous of Carjat's works, but, as you can see, maybe not the best. For one thing, Rimbaud's school chum and lifelong best friend, Ernest Delahaye, said Rimbaud's eyes were "pale blue irradiated with dark blue—the loveliest eyes I've seen." Meaning the picture might've been better in color! Anyway, the story goes that Rimbaud and Carjat were both members of a group of artists, poets and painters called "Vilains Bonshommes" (basically, "bad company"), and, at a dinner of the group, one of the members, Albert Mérat, a poet, had brought a sword hidden in a cane. There was some sort of drunken altercation, and Rimbaud took Mérat's cane-sword and attacked Carjat with it. In a sort of symbolic retaliation, Carjat, who had actually been injured, went home and destroyed all the photographs he had taken of Rimbaud, and scraped the glass plates clean of the negative images (early glass-plate photographers often did this to re-use the glass). As a result, the portrait is known only through eight surviving prints.

Arthur Rimbaud at 17 by Étienne Carjat

Not that it would have survived anyway. Like photographers as disparate as Carleton Watkins and Jacques Lowe, Étienne Carjat's work is now known only through the surviving examples that were disseminated during his lifetime, in Carjat's case as cartes de visite and as prints. The great portraitist died in 1906, at the age of 77, in Paris. Years after that, in 1923, his archive of photographic works was sold to a "Mr. Roth," and that was the last of it—none of it was ever seen again.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Comments

[Jim Arthur]

Laura Veirs has an amazing song on her July Flame album named “Sleeper in the Valley” that is adapted from the Rimbaud poem.

[NikoJorj]

Verlaine lesser as Rimbaud? Or is it that Verlaine is more difficult to translate?

Btw, Carjat is pronounced [kaʁʒa] from his wikipedia page (as a French, I wasn't completely sure the final T is not pronounced, it could sometimes be in southern France).

[olivier]

Paul Verlaine, a lesser poet?

[I changed it to "older." --Mike]

[William Lewis]

Reminded me of this country/punk song. One of my favorite underknown singer-songwriters.

https://youtu.be/GMLGB1Yjo4g?si=quDwEj63DsXN-mSX

[Patrick Dodds]

Great post Mike thank you.

[Bob G.]

Amazing story! Loved the historical background. It’s always great to read what was going on in the times when a picture was made… even more difficult so far back into photography history. Nice work.

[Kye Wood]

Old photographs of people convey a somber life being lived.

I wonder if times were as joyless as they appeared. Given that some literature from the same era had humour in abundance.

[In the 19th century it was considered normal for adults not to smile in photographs. Children smiled; adults were too, well, adult. --Mike]

[robert e]

Will definitely be on the lookout for Woodburytypes now. They do look exquisite. And they're ink! Really something like an intaglio print.

But after skimming the Getty Museum's article on it https://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/pdf/atlas_woodburytype.pdf I can see why it disappeared despite its beauty--it sounds very demanding of labor, time and resources, requiring equipment like dessicator boxes and a hydraulic press, not to mention lead.

That was a great Sunday read. Thanks!

[Charles Rozier]

Very informative and enjoyable post, thanks-

[Sharon]

Woodburytype is gorgeous!

Great read, thanks.

[Peter F]

Such a fascinating meander.

[Gary Nylander]

Thank you for your very interesting essay.

[Kelvin Skewes]

Carjat by Carjat image is Public Domain so you can reproduce it (it says right below it on The Met website you linked).

[Sean]

When I opened the link to the Woodburytype, I gulped at seeing a man looking at me as though I was over a century late. When I closed the link I had this uneasy feeling that he'd be checking his pocket watch until I return

When the taken there, meets the waiting there.

[Gary]

Fascinating. Thank you.

[Farhiz Karanjawala]

"History sanitizes and neatens its now forever stilled participants."
Oooh!

[Jim Fulwider]

One of your best postings. Highly informative with good illustrations.

[Hans Muus]

I have read more than one time that the serious (or joyless) faces on 19th century photographs were mainly the result of the long shutter speeds being used - try to keep your face in a happy grin for thirty seconds … Although I don’t doubt that in those days people were also not so much trying to sell or advertise themselves as a success are we (as a culture) are inclined to do now.

[AndrewV]

Here's a video from the Eastman house, showing the Woodburytype process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOqsaCu-_yw

[DZ]

This is your métier.

[Andy Holman]

Rimbaud actually spent most of his time from 1880-1891 in Harar Ethiopia not the Middle East. Harar has an excellent museum dedicated to his life including some photos taken by him. It is a walled city which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a fantastic place to have the feeling of going back in time and great for photography.

[Thanks Andy. There's a limit to the amount of research I can do when I research and write something in one day! --Mike]

[David Bennett]

In an episode of The Simpsons, Milhouse and Bart are talking, lying on the sidewalk if I remember.

Milhouse is telling a cautionary tale.

He describes to Bart the ascent to fame and adulation, and then the descent into debauchery and dissolution of a rock star.

As Milhouse describes it, we see the pictures unfolding in Bart's imagination, ending with a picture of the rock star wasted in the gutter.

And Bart says 'Cool'.

[Anton Wilhelm Stolzing]

Wow - one of your best articles, and that means a lot. And spine-tingling as well! Thanks also to Andy Holman though I probably will not ever visit Ethiopia.

[Dillan]

The photo of Charles Baudelaire is one of the best portraits I have ever seen, in my humble opinion. This was very interesting!

[Darko Hristov]

Fantastic post!