Images Plurielles has just published a book tribute to Arthur Rimbaud, created by Philippe Lopparelli, entitled “ d’Arthur à Zanzibar.”
During the last eleven years of his life (1880-1891), Arthur Rimbaud, exiled between Aden and Harar, constantly dreamed of it. The magically resonant island, a hub of maritime trade at the time, illustrated for him the “best a little further away” that he had searched for in vain throughout his life. The eeparture for Zanzibar was, for Rimbaud, the ultimate quest, like the final word, the alphabetical term for his exhausting wandering.
In a letter dated August 24, 1887, to his mother, posted from Cairo, where he was resting to forget the arms trafficking fiasco that had ruined him, Rimbaud had never been closer to leaving. From the hypothetical “if I leave this region (Harar), I would probably go to Zanzibar” (March 12, 1881), to “Perhaps I will go to Zanzibar, from where one can make long journeys into Africa” (Cairo, August 23, 1887), then comes this assertion, which serves as a final decision: “Now it happens that I must take the Zanzibar boat from Suez around September 15th.” As far as we know, on September 15, 1887, Rimbaud never went to sea.
Philippe Lopparelli : « d’Arthur à Zanzibar »
Images Plurielles
Photos by Philippe Lopparelli
Preface by Marie Pierre Losfeld
Poems by Arthur Rimbaud
45 black and white photos
80 pages Hardcover
Size: 22 x 22 cm
ISBN: 978-2-919436-71-2
Print run of 500 copies
Retail price: €30
www.imagesplurielles.com
