The French poets who inspired Patti Smith to greatness
In 1967, Patti Smith set off to New York with little more than a copy of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations in her suitcase. “We would escape together,” she wrote in her memoir, Just Kids. Smith’s love affair with Rimbaud, the 19th-century French Symbolist poet, shaped her affection for literature and, subsequently, spurred her on to become a writer.
“Rimbaud held the keys to a mystical language that I devoured even as I could not fully decipher it. My unrequited love for him was as real to me as anything I had experienced,” Smith wrote. “It was for him that I wrote and dreamed. He became my archangel, […] His hands had chiseled a manual of heaven and I held them fast.”
Many writers and rock and roll stars were drawn to Rimbaud’s work in the ‘60s and ‘70s, fascinated by a man who had given up on writing by the age of 20, instead choosing to live a hedonistic life in Paris, engaging in a drug-fuelled, often violent relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine. Smith also cites Verlaine as an inspiration, calling him a “true poet” and a “complicated man”.
For Smith, classic French writers possess a distinctive appeal that she continuously finds herself coming back to. Talking to the Los Angeles Review of Books, Smith explained her love for Paris, “It’s a very romantic city. That perhaps has shifted, and it might not have the same deep romance. But, nostalgically, I still fall in love every time I go there, I still want to see the same things that I saw in the books.”
She added, “For me, when I was young, it was all about language. Even though I can only read in translation, there are beautiful translations of Rimbaud, and not just Rimbaud but French literature in general. […] The language within Rimbaud to me was intoxicating.”
Smith continued, “The language to me was so beautiful, and I was just drawn to it. Of course, the work was paramount, but I was also fascinated by the lifestyle of someone like Rimbaud… reading about all the lives of the poets.”
Rimbaud isn’t the only French poet that Smith loves, although he remains her ultimate favourite. She also adores Charles Baudelaire, choosing to wear black suits in the 1970s in honour of him. Baudelaire is often regarded as the first Modernist, best known for his poetry book, Les Fleurs du mal. He was a huge inspiration to Rimbaud, so it’s no surprise that Smith also loves his work.
While Smith cites a wide variety of poets and writers as significant sources of inspiration, few come close to the French poets Rimbaud and Baudelaire, who set Smith on a path towards greatness.
