Here was the clairvoyant, the first seer who operated through the passionate analysis of that classic 19th century Parisian emotion: Remorse. He was such a theological innocent, that he did not hesitate to discover himself on the cross, broken and exalted. Gautier told me of his ‘interior camera eye’ which he deemed manly. “Pitiless to others, he nailed himself as well.” First he would help the soldiers put up the unrepentant thieves, then he would ascend himself to the nexus of suffering consciousness.
The great erotic roarings for that slut, Jeanne Duval! A circus of sex and sin, the clasp of bodies ignorant of death. And yet, no man was more intensely aware of his ultimate demise; the disposition of his eternal estate was, for him, a constant pressure he continually sensed, as if mercury were filling the room, squeezing his lungs, shining at his lips ….
Oh, I saw it all myself with Rimbaud! Arthur! Strapping and lambent. Unable to be comforted. Risking, and willing to risk all of that penetrating intelligence to discover a single tingling truth that no thought could unseat. His facility to apprehend made him suspiscious of his every apprehension. And he did not trust God to care for what he had created….
“The work is… difficult…. My comfort is that it is useless.”
And then, after enough years had passed, he would no longer smile, even at his own evil wit.
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