Rimbaud Formulates the Derangement of the Senses
Poet involved
What happened
In his historic 'Lettres du Voyant' (Letters of the Seer) sent to Georges Izambard and Paul Demeny, the seventeen-year-old French poet Arthur Rimbaud declared that a poet must become a seer through a long, immense, and rational 'dérèglement de tous les sens' (derangement of all the senses). Rimbaud sought to consciously induce a waking dream state, using exhaustion, alcohol, and isolation to bypass his rational ego and tap directly into a universal poetic consciousness, famously writing: 'Je est un autre' (I is someone else).
Literary impact
Rimbaud's manifesto detached poetry from conscious craftsmanship and turned it into an existential psychological experiment. His prose poems in 'Illuminations' and 'Une Saison en Enfer' shattered traditional syntax, mimicking the pure, unfiltered juxtaposition of images found in deep hypnagogic and dream states, directly inspiring the Surrealist movement.
Source: Wikipedia
