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Unknown Rimbaud text found in France
PARIS (AFP) — An unknown work by the French 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud has been uncovered in a newspaper back issue in his hometown in northeastern France, a local bookseller said on Thursday.
"Bismarck's dream", a prose text running to around 50 lines, was published on November 25, 1870 in the local newspaper Le Progres des Ardennes, under the name Jean Baudry.
Baudry is one of several well-known pseudonyms used by Rimbaud, who wrote the poem -- a patriotic text penned during the Franco-Prussian war and targeting the Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck -- at the age of 16.
"It is evening time. Beneath his tent, full of silence and dreams, Bismarck meditates, a finger on the map of France," it reads.
Francois Quinart, a local bookseller from Charleville Mezieres, Rimbaud's birthplace in northeastern France, said he acquired the poem -- unwittingly -- in a carton of old books and newspapers bought from an elderly woman.
He put the newspapers under plastic and carted them around bookfairs and salons until a young filmmaker who had shot a documentary about Rimbaud, Patrick Taliercio, bought them for a few dozen euros in April.
"He came back to see me two days later, saying 'Did you see that article, it's Rimbaud!'," said Quinart.
Quoted in Le Figaro newspaper, the Rimbaud scholar Jean-Jacques Lefrere confirmed the discovery.
"It's a fine, metaphorical text, showing true mastery," he said, adding that experts now hoped to find more texts buried in the local archives.
PARIS (AFP) — An unknown work by the French 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud has been uncovered in a newspaper back issue in his hometown in northeastern France, a local bookseller said on Thursday.
"Bismarck's dream", a prose text running to around 50 lines, was published on November 25, 1870 in the local newspaper Le Progres des Ardennes, under the name Jean Baudry.
Baudry is one of several well-known pseudonyms used by Rimbaud, who wrote the poem -- a patriotic text penned during the Franco-Prussian war and targeting the Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck -- at the age of 16.
"It is evening time. Beneath his tent, full of silence and dreams, Bismarck meditates, a finger on the map of France," it reads.
Francois Quinart, a local bookseller from Charleville Mezieres, Rimbaud's birthplace in northeastern France, said he acquired the poem -- unwittingly -- in a carton of old books and newspapers bought from an elderly woman.
He put the newspapers under plastic and carted them around bookfairs and salons until a young filmmaker who had shot a documentary about Rimbaud, Patrick Taliercio, bought them for a few dozen euros in April.
"He came back to see me two days later, saying 'Did you see that article, it's Rimbaud!'," said Quinart.
Quoted in Le Figaro newspaper, the Rimbaud scholar Jean-Jacques Lefrere confirmed the discovery.
"It's a fine, metaphorical text, showing true mastery," he said, adding that experts now hoped to find more texts buried in the local archives.