- Turning their backs on respectable society, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine move to London to live a life of poverty, poetry, and absinthe.
- In 1872, French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine moved to London as lovers. Turning their backs on respectable society, and with hardly any money between them, they lived on absinthe, poetry, and what little they could make from offering French lessons. Their time in London was brief but intense, and was to produce Rimbaud's groundbreaking work A Season In Hell. It starts with a knife fight. As the two half-undressed men struggle, a contemporary documentary Producer sits in the corner of the room, watching and making notes into her Dictaphone. She introduces the men as Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, two poets on the run from respectable French society and stifling domesticity. Their infamous knife fights gave birth to the house's nickname: 'the house of knives'. While Rimbaud writes, the Producer becomes one of his language students, reciting his poetry and placing two crisp twenty pound notes on the table. Despite the lack of money, Rimbaud enjoys life in London, for its noise and grime, and above all the escape and seclusion it provides for his affair with the already-married Paul Verlaine. This was to be Rimbaud's most creative period. But while Rimbaud works, Verlaine languishes, bemoaning their financial situation. Their arguments are frequent and intense, and their knife fights are performed as a sort of ritual. Trying to understand the creative yet destructive nature of their relationship, the Producer finds herself increasingly drawn into Rimbaud and Verlaine's world. As a drop of blood lands on her hand during one of their fights, she is compelled to taste it. Ever more drawn in to their lifestyle, the Producer sits at a café along one of Camden's canals, sipping absinthe. Verlaine walks by in a state of distress, sent out to buy food for his demanding young lover. On his return, Rimbaud leans out of the window and hurls abuse at him, mocking the sorry state of the cheap fish that he is carrying. This is the last straw for Verlaine, who rushes up to the house and attacks Rimbaud with the fish before storming out. This ends their relationship, and they would not see each other again until their final meeting in Brussels, when Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist. The Producer, now alone in the room with Rimbaud, photographs the scene before leaving; she has enough material for her production.
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