Arthur Rimbaud, six mois en enfer

Accustomed to running away to Paris, which he discovered under siege by the Prussian armies in the summer of 1870, Arthur Rimbaud, just 17 years old, left his native Ardennes once again to seek the excitement of the capital a year later. The teenager roamed the bustling streets of Montmartre, as well as its places of perdition, alongside his new friend, Paul Verlaine, who kindly took him in. His poems were soon imbued with a new trance-like quality that intrigued the poets of the Parnassus. At the monthly dinner of this relatively young movement in late September 1871, Rimbaud recited the 25 quatrains of alexandrines of what would remain one of his most celebrated poems, "Le bateau ivre" (The Drunken Boat), stunning the assembly.