Rimbaud to Roche

“This French countryside is awful! My fate depends on this book, for which half a dozen atrocious stories still have to be invented. How can atrocities be invented here?”… And yet, it was at his mother’s family farm that Rimbaud was to write one of his greatest works. Walking around Roche, you can imagine the poet in the loft of the barn, completing ‘A Season in Hell’. This masterpiece harbours both a total rejection of his past and a need for a passionate life, for an immediate life. This poem is also an adieu. Rimbaud discovers that the western world is closed. Once it had been published, Arthur left for the East, in search of absolute purity. He was to lead the life of an adventurer there.
Nothing remains of the Cuif family home but a wall. Where the loft once stood, there is now a commemorative stele of Rimbaud.