8, Great College Street, London; 2nd July, 1873.
Drabber, anonymous bed-sitter. Verlaine is opening a bottle of wine, Rimbaud is lying on his bed, doing nothing.
Verlaine Any chance of you moving about at all today?
Rimbaud I’ve always liked the autumn.
Verlaine It’s supposed to be summer. Not that you can tell the difference in England.
Rimbaud How long have we been in this hole?
Verlaine Not more than five weeks.
Rimbaud God, life will never end.
Verlaine pours wine into two glasses and takes one over to Rimbaud.
Verlaine A lot can happen in five weeks.
Rimbaud A lot can happen in ten minutes. But it rarely does.
Verlaine When I got married …
Rimbaud I thought you weren’t going to mention that again.
Verlaine I was only …
Rimbaud Well, don’t.
Verlaine I’m sorry.
Rimbaud More.
Verlaine goes over and pours him out some more wine.
Verlaine There have been good times, though, haven’t there? I mean, we have been happy.
Rimbaud When?
Verlaine You know. Even you must grudgingly admit we’ve been happy sometimes.
Rimbaud I’ve told you before, I’m too intelligent to be happy.
Verlaine I remember you telling me once, when we were trying to get some sleep in a ditch in Belgium, that you’d never been so happy in your life.
Rimbaud Kindly spare us another bout of your lying and utterly revolting nostalgia.
Verlaine Why do you take such pleasure in being unhappy?
Rimbaud I assure you I get no more pleasure from pain than I do from pleasure.
Verlaine You’ve become perversely addicted to pessimism.
Rimbaud More.
Verlaine Get it yourself.
Rimbaud You’re getting a bit assertive in your old age.
Her gets up to pour himself some more wine. Verlaine wanders over to the window.
Verlaine It’s still raining.
Silence.
You’re right about old age. I shall be thirty next birthday. Thirty. What a horrible thought.
Rimbaud Disgusting.
Verlaine And you’re getting on. Nearly nineteen.
Rimbaud I begin to despair.
Verlaine Why?
Rimbaud When I was young and golden and infallible, I saw the future with some clarity. I saw the failings of my predecessors and saw, I thought, how they could be avoided. I knew it would be difficult, but I thought that all I needed was experience, and I could turn myself into the philosopher’s stone, and create new colours and new flowers, new languages and a new God, and everything to gold. Thou shalt, I said to myself, adopting the appropriate apocalyptic style, be reviled and persecuted as any prophet, but at the last thou shalt prevail.
But before long I realized it was impossible to be a doubting prophet. If you are a prophet you may be optimistic or pessimistic as the fancy takes you, but you may never be anything less than certain. And I found I had tormented myself and poked among my entrails to discover something that people do not believe, or do not wish to believe, or would be foolish to believe. And with the lyricism of self-pity, I turned to the mirror and said Lord, what shall I do, for there is no love in the world and no hope, and I can do nothing about it, God, I can do no more than you have done, and I am in Hell.
Not that I haven’t said all this before.
I have, and clearly a new code is called for. And in these last few weeks when you may have been thinking, I’ve just been lying here in a state of paralysed sloth, you’ve actually been quite right. But bubbling beneath the surface and rising slowly through the layers of indifference has been a new system. Harden up. Reject romanticism. Abandon rhetoric. Get it right.
And now I’ve got it right and seen where my attempt to conquer the world has led me.
Verlaine Where?
Rimbaud Here. My search for universal experience has led me here. To lead an idle, pointless life of poverty, as the minion of a bald, ugly, ageing, drunken lyric poet, who clings on to me because his wife won’t take him back.
Silence. At first Verlaine is too astonished to speak.
Verlaine How can you bring yourself to say a thing like that?
Rimbaud It’s easy. It’s the truth. You’re here, living like this, because you have to be. It’s your life. Drink and sex and a kind of complacent melancholy and enough money to soak yourself oblivious every night. That’s your limit. But I’m here because I choose to be.
Verlaine Oh, yes?
Rimbaud Yes.
Verlaine And why exactly?
Rimbaud What do you mean, why?
Verlaine Why exactly did you choose to come back to London with me? What was the intellectual basis of your choice?
Rimbaud This is a question I repeatedly ask myself.
Verlaine No doubt you regarded it as another stage in your private Odyssey. Only by plunging ever deeper, if I may mix my myths, will you attain the right to graze on the upper slopes of Parnassus.
Rimbaud Your attack is unusually coherent this morning.
Verlaine My theory differs from yours. My theory is that you are like Musset.
Rimbaud What?
Verlaine Rather a provocative comparison, don’t you think, in view of your continual attacks on the wretched man?
Rimbaud Explain it.
Verlaine Well, I simply mean that like Musset or one of Musset’s heroes, you tried on the cloak of vice, and now it’s stuck to your skin. You came back here with me because you wanted to, and because you needed to.
Rimbaud Well now, that’s quite original for you, even though you have made your customary mistake.
Verlaine What’s that?
Rimbaud Getting carried away by an idea because it’s aesthetically plausible rather than actually true.
Verlaine Oh, there are less subtle reasons for your putting up with me.
Rimbaud Such as?
Verlaine Such as the fact that I support you.
Silence.
Rimbaud Your mind is almost as ugly as your body.
Silence. They look at each other. Verlaine struggles with himself for a moment, then, suddenly, his face goes blank and he strides across the stage.
(uneasily) Where are you going?
Verlaine To the kitchen. It’s lunchtime.
Exit Verlaine. Rimbaud pours himself a drink rather shakily, and swallows it. He seems puzzled. A moment later, Verlaine enters again, carrying in one hand, a herring, and in the other, a bottle of oil. Rimbaud looks at him, then bursts out laughing. Verlaine scarcely responds.
Rimbaud God, you look such a cunt.
Verlaine doesn’t answer. Instead, he puts the herring and the bottle of oil down on the table, and strides across the stage, away from the kitchen.
Where are you going?
Exit Verlaine.
Where are you going? (He looks frightened and vulnerable.)
Curtain.