‘Easter’: Patti Smith’s ode to her ultimate literary idol
In the world of Patti Smith, punk and poetry don’t just go hand in hand; they’re one and the same. There is no one form without the other. Her love for literature is utterly inseparable and intrinsically intertwined with her love for listening to and making music. In her eyes, rockstars and poets are akin to gods, and on ‘Easter’, she praises the most mighty of them all.
It’s 1969. A fresh runaway from a boring life in her small hometown, Patti Smith landed in New York and, on her first day there, met Robert Mapplethorpe. The pair were creative soulmates as they not only learnt how to survive in the Beatnik city together but wholeheartedly encouraged their creative endeavours. Smith encouraged Mapplethorpe’s art and photography. Mapplethorpe encouraged Smith’s writing, supporting her all the way to Paris as she briefly left the city for a trip with her sister, seeing the journey as a pilgrimage and the place as a Mecca.
Paris is heavy with literary ghosts as each street feels imbued with the legacy of great writers and thinkers that came before it. Smith wanted to be amongst them but out of all the icons leaving their influence there, she was tuned into one in particular; Arthur Rimbaud.
If there could only be one singular influence picked out as the most important inspiration to Patti Smith’s creative world, it would be Rimbaud. While the likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Verlaine, Mapplethorpe and countless other peers and idols are essential, it’s Rimbaud who powers her. Writing and working in the late 1800s, the two are separated by centuries, but as Rimbaud left behind a legacy of abstract and surrealist works that pioneered a style way ahead of his time, it feels like the two are directly connected.
By the time she landed in Paris, Smith had read all his works. When she ran away to New York, a book of his poems was one of the only essentials she took with her. Inspired not just by the literal way that he pieced words together, his abstract approach to fragmented storytelling or how he formed emotions through complex metaphors, Smith was inspired by his rebellion. Back in his own era, Rimbaud was so ahead of his times that he was a true Libertine, working against the pack until he found his own group of peers who would together mark a moment in literary history as they shared artistic thought and work in Paris.
With little to no money, Smith funded her trip by stopping on the streets of the city to recite his poems, performing them to a gathering crowd. It was then and there that she realised how close to being a rockstar and a performing poet were, moving her to return to New York and find a stage there. In homage, she titled her first-ever performance ‘Rock and Rimbaud’.
By 1978, just under a decade later, she’d positioned herself as the Rimbaud of the New York punk scene, finding her own group of inspiring peers but also standing out as something different and more abstract. As she put her poetry to music, it was as if the French writer gathered a rock band around him. Always carrying his legacy with her, on her third album, she decided to put that onto tape with an ode to his memory.
‘Easter’ is that ode. Suitably abstract for the subject matter, the verses flit around contemplations on childhood and religion. But amongst the images, she calls out the names of “Isabelle” and “Vitalie”, his sisters, and “Frederick”, his father. She honours him in the artwork for the album, and this song gives its name as the insert to the LP reproduces a First Communion portrait of Rimbaud and his father.
Finishing the song with a holy sermon-like reading, she spends the whole track conflating Rimbaud with images of God as a nod to the fact that, to her, they’re one and the same as she pays homage to her ultimate icon and biggest influence.
