New York Times Travels to Rimbaud's Hometown

For the New York Times's Travel section, Norimitsu Onishi checks out Charleville-Mézières, France, where Arthur Rimbaud was born and buried. Central to Onishi's visit is Bernard Colin, the caretaker of the city's cemetery, who, 27 years ago was told that no one visits Rimbaud's grave, and now collects "a few letters every week, from as far away as South Korea and Japan, addressed to Rimbaud, the poet who wrote classics like 'The Drunken Boat' and 'A Season in Hell,' and died in 1891. They are left on his grave in Charleville-Mézières, Rimbaud’s hometown — along with poems and train tickets." Picking up from there: 

The caretaker has also caught couples getting overly friendly at the site, conveniently shaded by the thick, verdant foliage of a couple of conifers.

“Their offspring,” he said, “will all be named Arthur.”

How did Rimbaud — a longtime staple of the high-school curriculum in French schools — become, as Mr. Colin put it, the “Jim Morrison of poets?” To his fans, his grave in a little cemetery in this obscure corner of northern France has become a shrine, just as the rock star’s grave draws daily tourists in the famous Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

“Arthur, it has been so difficult to come here, but at least here I am,” a pilgrim from Italy named Silvia wrote in English on one note.

“Before coming I thought this was the only way I could come nearer to you,” she wrote. “Now I discovered it’s not true. You’re already here, in my heart, I had already found you and you have always been my guiding light. There are so many things I want to ask you, so many things u still tell me. Please keep on shining on me, je t’aime.”

Read more at NYT.