Rimbaud and Lautreamont

My writing projects, the poet says. The Dane wants to know about my writing projects. About my writing tasks. My God, a writing task … a writing project … Do you have no idea at all? A writing task … Only the Dane could have a writing task! Only the Dane a writing project! A state-sponsored writing project!

My writing projects. Do you think I ever had a writing project? Do you think I could dream of a writing future? As though writing deserved any attention! As though writing was in any way important! I will never understand that, as a Dane, the poet says, the way in which writing is unimportant, even contemptible. Writing should come last of all in your concerns. Last, bottom of the list. Writing is the least of things, the poet says, the very least.

In Indian traditions, you are supposed to have lived a full life as a householder before you can become a wandering ascetic, a sanyasin. A full life: you will have worked and married and raised children, and seen them through their education and their marriages, and only then can you contemplate the wandering life, the life of a mendicant on a holy mission.

Of course, there are some, like Adi Sankara, who forewent the life of a householder. As a young man, he begged his mother's permission to become an ascetic, and as a young man, he wandered forth, a sanyasin and a scholar.

When do you think you should begin to write? When you have lived a full life? When you have experienced things you can now recount? Write about what is closest to you, they tell you. Write about what you know. Then you should wait until you know something before you write. Until you know something of life!

Do I suppose he, the poet, knows something of life? Do I suppose that he led a full life before he wrote? Am I expecting pearls of wisdom from my lips? Insight into the writing process? Into the mechanisms of creativity? – What? What wisdom am I looking for? What do I want to learn?

Why is the Danish government funding his interview and translation project, the Dane? Why are Danish tax-dollars being used for such an endeavour? As though he had lived through something, and had something to share, the poet says. As though he had lived a life, a real life, before he began to write.

In truth, he's never lived, the poet says. He never lived and never had a sense of what it was to live. He's been waiting, the poet says. He waited too long, and now he knows there is nothing but waiting.

There's no such thing as life, the poet says, that's what he's learned. That's his wisdom. Life is unbearable, and there is no such thing as life: tell that to the Danish government, he says. Tell that to Danish tax-payers, My God.

Writing projects. What does he know of writing projects?, the poet says. Writing spasms, yes. Writing surges, yes. Making a real mess on the page, oh yes. Soiling the page, yes. Soiling himself on the page, yes. Soiling others with what he's written on the page, yes to that, too.

He's a soiler of pages! A vandal! A besmircher! Luckily, it affects almost no one. Who's interested? Do you think anyone out there is interested? – 'Are you interested, really, Dane? Is the Danish government really interested? Are the Danish tax-payers really interested?' No, no one's really interested, and that's what saves him, the poet says. Poetry means nothing at all over here, he says, and that, for him, is a relief.

Nothing at all! Nothing to anyone! Who reads, really reads poetry? He can't read it, the poet says. He has no idea how to read it. Admiring his poetry collection, yes. Reading translators' notes and editors' introductions, why not? But reading poetry on the page? Reading poetry – just poetry?

He hasn't got the patience, he says. He hasn't the right experience of time. No one has, except perhaps in Mitteleuropa. In Mitteleuropa, Old Europe, real Europe, people are still reading poetry. It matters, poetry. They eat black pudding and read poetry. They drink beers in taverns and read poetry. They bump into each other on the street and talk poetry.

It's part of their lives, the poet says, in a way we cannot imagine. To the Mitteleuropean, poetry is part of life, part of breathing. It's a right, a need. You have to read, and poetry. Everyone must read poetry, and have his opinion about poetry. There are even fevered debates about poetry, about this poet or that poet.

We can't imagine it. He can't imagine it, him, the so-called poet who is really only a non-poet. I travelled in the wrong direction with my Danish tax-dollars, the poet says. I should have traveled East and nor West. South and not along. Mitteleuropa! I should have flown into Vienna, and caught the train from there to Slovenia, or something. To Macedonia. To Hungary – above all, to Hungary. I should have strode off across the Great Hungarian Plain in search of poetry, he says.

But instead, what happened to me? Where did I come? To Manchester, of all places. To his door, of all places. To where the fire of poetry has long burned out. To where the ashes are scattered, completely scattered. There is no fire, the poet says. Perhaps there never was a fire, he has no idea. We come not so much after poetry as after the aftermath of poetry. After any idea there was any such thing as poetry. He has no idea of anything about poetry, the poet says. He above all!

Once there were Sankara-like poets, the poet says. Once there were poets who plunged straight into writing. Rimbaud, the poet says. The divine Rimbaud. Lautreamont. I must know the names, at least. They had exhausted life! They'd already lived it! Sankaras all. Do you think they were interviewed? Did Danish interviewer-translators follow them about?

They were spared that, at least, the poet says. Ah, they were already old, they'd already lived and died. The sanyasin is not reborn in life, but dies to it. A funeral pyre is built, but not lit. The would-be sanyasin climbs upon it and closes his eyes. He's dead. Dead to the world, to himself, to his family. He leaves nothing behind. His possessions have long been given away. His marriage was annulled. He has bid goodbye to his children. He is a dead man, alive in his death. He'll wander the world as a dead man.

So Rimbaud – dead-in-life at thirteen. So Lautreamont - dead-alive at nineteen. They wandered the world, and wandered the page in poetry. They were writing-wanderers, already dead. We can't imagine it, the poet says. Great prodigies appear and disappear in our midst, and we hardly know it. Rimbaud. Lautreamont. He repeats the names like a mantra. Rimbaud, Lautreamont. My God, Dane, have you any idea … His voice trails off. Do you have any notion …

'How indecent we are', the poet says. 'How lacking in discretion. We do not know enough to be silent. We have no idea how to keep wisdom. We talk and talk – listen to me, talking and talking, when what we need is silence. We need time', the poet says, 'and silence. Only then might we read. Only then – perhaps, perhaps – might we even write. Writing, writing, what can it mean to us?'

He imagines Rimbaud in Africa, disembarking at Aden, heading out to Harar on the train, then travelling by pony and cart, unfamiliar languages being spoken all around him. He imagines Lautreamont arriving in Paris, sitting in a cafe, half-listening to the swell and surge of speech around him.

He carried silence with him, the poet says. He had silence in his pockets and on his tongue. He kept his mouth shut, and his hands still. He didn't need to write. He had no concern with writing. If he wrote – if he deigned to jot down a few lines – it was after everything else, at the end of the day, when there was nothing left to do. Nothing left for a dead man to do.

So he wrote, he set down a few lines, he amused himself as a god would amuse himself, neglectfully, half-caringly. He played with words. He let them play. His writing hand glided over the page. My God, he could write anything at all! He was a God in writing. He was a demi-God, a demi-urge. The power of creation surged through him, but it was nothing to him.

He wrote in perfect neglect. Wrote as a child might yawn. Wrote like a man wading through long grass. Wrote like a mother swift feeds its young on the wing. It was ease itself. Grace. All light. It was lightness. It was a fire balloon, rising. It was the haze above summer meadows. Summer midges. Grasshoppers' song.

He wrote like a child singing to itself. It was lightness on the page. He wrote because he could, like a God. He made. He shaped. He recast his poem-prose. Paragraphs lined up. And there it was: a book. A book, one book: what did it matter? What did his life matter?

And if he wrote another book, it was only to say the first did not matter, and that nothing mattered, and that he was a God and he was a dead man and that it was time to lie down, to lie down for a second time, this time, perhaps, really dying; this time, really lighting the flames.

'How foolish we are', the poet says. 'We're idiots, idiots …' His voice trails off. To think he, the poet, the non-poet, wrote! To think he thought he could write, the desecrator of poetry! He should have read, instead. Should have bent his efforts upon reading. Should have tried to read, instead.

Rimbaud. Lautreamont. But he wrote, he wrote. What a sin! He wrote, never having lived, and never having died to life. He wrote even before he could become a householder. Even before he married and raised children and seen them married in turn.

He never lived!, said the poet. Somehow or another, he forgot to live. Won't I shoot him in the head? Won't I hang up a noose for him, at least? It would only be right. Only fair. Enough, the poet says. It's enough. But the dictaphone's running, and he's still speaking. He can't shut up. He talks and talks, like an idiot.

Kill me now, that's what he's really saying. Kill me, can't I hear it? Won't I take his neck in my Scandinavian hands and squeeze it tight? Won't I crack his windpipe? Won't I butt my great head into his and smash his nose and smash out his teeth?

Rimbaud and Lautreamont, he says. Rimbaud and Lautreamont.