Il faut être absolument moderne (One must be absolutely modern).

Arthur Rimbaud, from Adieu (Farewell), A Season in Hell

I am intrigued by Rimbaud’s admonition.

He, the wild poet seer, who abandoned the verse at the ripe old age of 20, to become…

“modern?”

I guess what he’s really saying is that after all the existentialist poetic poppycock, one must get down to the brass tacks of becoming…

“industrious.”

Which is exactly what Rimbaud did, until he died of cancer at age 37.

After writing the above line in his parting Farewell, he never wrote another verse…

but he did make some money…

a feat he never seemed to get around to accomplishing beforehand.

I seem to have lived my life in the opposite trajectory…

passing through the industrial stage to come out the other side, some sort of existential idealist.

Even though that hasn’t aided me in the least economically, I’m thankful that my life is unfolding (so far) in this absurd reverse chronological order.

Our quest for physical comfort supersedes and eclipses any hint of idealism that might have once been a motivational flame to our backsides.

In fact, the world is dominated by men (and women, albeit, perhaps to a lesser extent) who have modernized.

These are practical and hard-nosed types who quickly abandon the ideal for the real.

For that real world that we actually live in…that we face head-on day in and day out in the epic battle to simply exceed survival.

In such a quest, how can anyone be anything but self-interested…

when there are saber-toothed tigers roaming the asphalt jungles of our daily treading?

What is that, they ask, some sort of bleeding heart notion that there’s a purpose for my life grander than me?

Rubbish!

The capitalistic machinery of our society demands modernity. It demands industrial square cogs that fit into square holes…

not amorphous shapes that serve only to muck up the works.

That we serve our individual identities best when we refrain from activities that don’t blend well with the rest…

don’t stand out…don’t color outside the lines…

and for god’s sake, don’t spend your precious and limited industrious time thinking idealistic thoughts of how you might be here to enhance the life experience of another.

Hmm…interesting…

I believe I prefer the pre-modern Rimbaud.

The one whose skin was corroded by dirt and disease, hair and armpits crawling with worms, with still larger ones crawling inside his heart.

The seer who brought a vision of the world to us with combinations of words never heard before.

The idealist who shunned bourgeois industrial modernity for a bohemian rhapsodic experience of life.

That’s when and where he made his impact.

Perhaps the same could hold true for you and me.

image credit: Philippe Gillotte via Compfight cc