If the mystery can be reduced to one solution, it lies in a simple coincidence: Rimbaud's interest in his own work had survived the realization that the world would not be changed by verbal innovation. It did not survive the failure of all his adult relationships. He had always treated poems as a form of private communication. He gave his songs to chansonniers, his satires to satirists. Without a constant companion, he was writing in a void. Graham Robb
About This Quote

This quote is taken from Raymond Queneau’s Notebook D, which he wrote in June of 1972. Rimbaud had just begun his fourth year of imprisonment at the St. Gilles psychiatric hospital in Paris after killing a guard during his attempt to escape. During this time, he was often left alone in his room to write, and the only person who came near him was a nurse named Marie.

As he wrote in Notebook D, “The least I can do for her is to make her think I'm writing. […] If she sees my handwriting is not normal, she will no longer think that I am writing poetry. I will be able to start writing again, without having to turn everything upside down.”

Source: Rimbaud: A Biography

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