‘Making an ass of himself – ‘Bottom’ by Arthur Rimbaud’
‘Bottom’ has long been seen as an amusing and enigmatic text, one of several very short
pieces in the Illuminations which appear to contain compressed meanings and elusive
secrets. One thinks of ‘Guerre’, ‘Départ’ and ‘Royauté’ which are all just as cryptic in
their brevity. The title ‘Bottom’ has been used as an interpretative key by many with the
Shakespearean link to the character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream appearing to justify
Osmond’s sense of the piece as “a sexual fiasco in three acts”. (1) Sergio Sacchi goes
down a similar path when he asserts “l’âne-Bottom rimbaldien ne séduit pas, comme le
voulait Shakespeare, la reine des fées Titania » (2) and there have been various other
readings of the poem along these lines of a reinterpretation of the Shakespearean source.
(3)
However, the purpose of my decision to revisit ‘Bottom’ is more concerned with the
question of self-presentation in the poem, this itself being intimately related to the notion
of failure in love. As we know from Une Saison en enfer, Rimbaud regularly raises the
issue of multiple lives and identities in his poetry – in ‘Mauvais sang’ he asks urgently
“est-il d’autres vies?”(4) and, very conspicuously, he links this possibility of other
existences to the idea of the human being having animal identities. Thus, in ‘Délires II’
he refers to a family as a “nichée de chiens” and to somebody else as a “porc”.(5) In
‘Mauvais sang’ he likens himself to a toad and again in ‘Délires II’ he notes in speaking
of his past that “j’enviais la félicité des bêtes”.(6) In this context, then, his decision to
cast the “je” in at least three and possibly four animal roles (bird, bear, fish, ass) in
‘Bottom’ is consistent with that perpetual desire to know himself which is advertised
everywhere in Rimbaud’s writing. Yet, the obvious additional factor here is that all these
roles are related to an impulse to present himself in degrading, embarrassing and
inadequate postures. One feels that the twin meanings of “ass” in English (both “donkey”
and “fool”) are central to the conception of this text and that the poem thus emerges as a
wry, ironic and self-deprecating depiction of the writer. Additionally, one might wonder
if the word “bottom” also has connotations of failure, anti-climax and downfall as well as
perhaps introducing a (homo)sexual code into the poem.
The very opening of ‘Bottom’ stresses personal inadequacy as the ironic “mon grand
caractère”(7) is linked to an inability to confront reality, a need to escape it and a desire
to be protected. However, the word “néanmoins” indicates that an encounter with this
difficult reality has indeed already occurred (is this where the poet begins to deride
himself as a stupid ass in persisting with doomed forays?) and the encounter takes the
form of the poet as flawed bluebird entering the chamber of Madame. This bird as
supposed emblem of love and romance is doubly flawed in its heaviness and greyness
and one recognizes instantly here the quintessential Rimbaldian pattern of flight and fall,
miracle and calamity (8) as the bird first takes wing and then comes down from ceiling to
floor in awkwardness and humiliation. There are remarkable resonances here of
Baudelaire’s ‘L’Albatros’ which speaks of the albatross as “indolent”, “maladroits et
honteux”, “gauche et veule”, “comique et laid”.(9) The key image of the bird dragging its
wing is central to both texts and the Rimbaud piece may have in mind the notion of
clumsy bird as metaphor for failed poet every bit as much as its Baudelairean antecedent.
‘Conte’, ‘Royauté’ and ‘Aube’ all show Rimbaud’s proclivity for story-telling in the
Illuminations and ‘Bottom’ unfolds in a similar narrative fashion. It is terse, understated,
ironic and self-critical and these are all features of Rimbaud’s stories in the collection.
The second of the poem’s two paragraphs stresses the disparity between the opulence of
Madame’s quarters (“bijoux adorés”, “chefs d’oeuvre physiques”, “cristaux”, “argents
des consoles”) and the hapless narrator now metamorphosed into an ungainly bear (again
the epithet “gros” is used) and seen either as a heavy, cumbersome creature incapable of
rising to the occasion (the sexual implications are obvious) and/or a rug made from
bearskin. Thematically, the poem is now insisting upon notions of physical failure in
love, infertility and impotence. The recurring impression of attempts to rise higher while
constantly falling lower may well suggest sexual dysfunction and its attendant shame and
embarrassment. Rimbaud is dramatizing his own (sexual) failure here in a masochistic
way and, as suggested before, it might not be too fanciful to suggest some uncertainty
here about heterosexual and homosexual orientation. The term “chagrin” sums up the
mood, a mood that is reinforced in the poem’s finale involving the ass running to the
fields.
Yet what might one say about the sentence “Tout se fit ombre et aquarium ardent” which
seems to act as a pivot between the first two paragraphs of the poem and its finale? It is
not clear from the manuscript whether this line is typographically separate from the finale
or incorporated into it but it acts like similar sudden intercalations in ‘Vies I’ and
‘Nocturne vulgaire’(10) This line marks the end of the nocturnal adventure, the arrival of
the dawn as a sobering return to everyday realities after the absurd posturing and
aspirations of the night and some kind of climax/anti-climax before the inevitable fall.
This has been the shortest of nights (June, midsummer), the briefest of “amorous”
encounters, the most truncated of sexual performances. As the ass runs to the fields
advertising his failure and shame which might suggest some form of sexual impotence
(the animal’s phallus is no doubt on display here too), the poet seems to find his
appropriate sexual level in the ministrations of the city prostitutes who replace the much
coveted Madame and underline the narrator’s calamitous downfall on both a romantic
and sexual level. This heterosexual fiasco might well augur a new homosexual
orientation. The failure to find a successful sexual and romantic relationship with a
woman may intimate recourse to same sex relationships. Be that as it may, one can be
certain that this little prose poem represents a very biting form of self-criticism. While we
may never properly get to the bottom of ‘Bottom’, as it were, one particular conclusion
can safely be drawn. Given the inability of the donkey to procreate and its inveterate
reputation for stupidity, we can safely say that in ‘Bottom’ Rimbaud has indeed very
deliberately, and both literally and metaphorically, made an ass of himself.
Gerald M Macklin
University of Ulster
NOTES
1. Arthur Rimbaud Illuminations, edited by Nick Osmond University of London, The
Athlone Press, London, 1976, p.153.
2. Sergio Sacchi Etudes sur les Illuminations de Rimbaud, Presses de l’Université de
Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, 2002, p.23.
3. See N Wing Present Appearances: Aspects of Poetic Structure in Rimbaud’s
Illuminations, University, Mississippi, Romance Monographs, Inc. Number 9, 1974,
pp.46-50; Adrianna M. Paliyenko Mis-reading the Creative Impulse, The Poetic Subject
in Rimbaud and Claudel Restaged, Southern Illinois University, 1997, pp.80-84; Robert
Greer Cohn The Poetry of Rimbaud, University of South Carolina Press, 1999, pp.377380.
4. Rimbaud, Oeuvres edition de S.Bernard et A.Guyaux Garnier Frères, Paris, 1987,
p.218.
5. Bernard/Guyaux, p.233.
6. Bernard/Guyaux, p.230.
7. Bernard/Guyaux, p.302
8. See Peter Broome ‘From Vision to Catastrophe in Rimbaud’s Illuminations’, Forum
for Modern Language Studies, 15, no.4, October, 1979, pp.361-379.
9. Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, I, texte établi, présenté et annoté par Claude Pichois,
Gallimard, 1975, pp.9-10.
10. In ‘Vies I’ we read ‘ – Un envol de pigeons écarlates tonne autour de ma pensée’
which acts as a pivotal moment in that poem. In ‘Nocturne vulgaire’ it is the sentence
‘Un vert et un bleu très foncés envahissent l’image’ which seems to designate a turning
point. In both cases a strong colour impression is present.