The Man with Soles of Wind

Arthur Rimbaud, September-October 1871. Photo: Etienne Carjat

Travel books are one of my favorite genres. Reading the journey notes led me to imagine the thrill of traveling long distances with Trans Siberia, the tension of passing through the Khayber Pass in the border of Pakistan-Afghanistan, meeting with people whose language I know nothing of but could still communicate and understand each other. Perhaps because of the unfulfilled exotic aspirations of the youth, and the less opportunity and time to explore distant places in the true sense, travel books are my choice to fulfill them. 

Among my favorite writers in this genre are Jon Krakauer and Paul Theroux. From within the country, of course, Agustinus Wibowo and Sigit Susanto. From them I got the satisfaction of exploring a foreign land, tasting a completely different culture and tradition, without having to travel. “Armchair traveling,” so to speak. 

And recently I also enjoyed an unusual travel book from Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel. While taking us to explore places on earth, this book also introduces us to the world of ideas, accompanied by different guides for each chapter—Gustave Flaubert for Amsterdam, Vincent van Gogh for Provence, for example. For a sapiophilia like me, this book is very satisfying.

It was also from de Botton that I learned about Arthur Rimbaud. 

Rimbaud, who is referred to as a young genius poet whose poetry broke the barrier between reality and hallucination and shocked the establishment of the Parisian literary in the 1870s, was first known to me as a traveler rather than a great poet. In the May 1997 edition of Literary Review, de Botton writes:

Rimbaud spent very little of his life doing what we most remember him for. Poetry took up a mere five years, and then the author of "A Season in Hell" went to Africa and became a trader, a hard-headed commercial man who dealt in spices, animal skins, coffee, guns, fabrics, and perhaps even slaves. For the last sixteen years of his short life (he died at thirty-seven), the poet turned his back on the poetic genius of his adolescence, striving for anonymity in the rough commercial towns of northern Africa. When a trading colleague learned, through a chance encounter with a traveler from Paris, that Rimbaud's name  had become venerated in French poetic circles, Rimbaud told him that the poetry had been an 'ivrognerie' – just a drunken binge. It was the trading, the spices, the guns, and the coffee that mattered to him now.

Because of the uniqueness of his figure, Arthur Rimbaud is one of the poets whose life story has been most inspected and his works have aroused the interest of so many researchers and scholars at universities. Hundreds of biographies, critical works, and scientific theses have been published about him. Every aspect of Rimbaud's life, however small, has been highlighted by detailed studies. He has reached the status of a myth. Many conflicting statements were made about him, different groups claimed him as part of them.

Between 1871 and 1879, he was nicknamed by his friend "l'homme aux semelles de vent" ("a man with the soles of wind"), because he never stopped moving, never stayed long in one place. The last years of his life in the Middle East and Africa as a merchant were well documented through letters and other sources. 

But there was one chapter in his life that was missing from any biographer's note: his trip to Java. A short biography of Rimbaud written by Edmund White, the latest issue in English, inserts only two sentences for his voyage in Java.

Rimbaud in Java: The Lost Voyage. by Jamie James. 
Paperback, 128 pages. Published in 2011 by Editions Didier Millet

It was in with this background that I approached the book "Rimbaud in Java: The Lost Voyages" by Jamie James. In this book, James tells what Rimbaud might have experienced while in Indonesia.

It is known that Arthur Rimbaud joined the Dutch East Indies (KNIL) army in May 1876. He began his journey to Batavia from the Dutch port of Den Helder on June 10, 1876 aboard the ship Prins van Oranje. The ship docked on the afternoon of July 22 in Sunda Kelapa Harbor, Batavia.

Jamie James gave many details about what was done by the KNIL's first infantry battalion during a stopover in Batavia. He gave a pretty lively description of the situation and life of the people in the port city. We can hear and smell the streets of Jakarta in the 19th century from the pages of his book.

The soldiers' tram rumbled through Chinatown, where red tiles shophouses flanked a network of narrow canals, their stucco walls marbled with black mildew and furred by patches of bright green moss. Red ceramic dragons guarded the sloping roofs of the Chinese temples, tinkling with bells and smoking with incense ... The soldiers made one of their tram changes at Konigsplein, Batavia's grand central park (now Merdeka Square). 

 

Tuntangseweg bij Tuntang, Midden-Java. 1918. Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

After eight days in Batavia, on July 30, Rimbaud and his entourage continued the journey to Semarang, Central Java. Furthermore, the battalion moved from Kedung Jati Station in Semarang to Tuntang Station by train. This was followed by a journey of 8 km in the sun for two hours to their post in Salatiga, a small town on the slopes of Mount Merbabu. They were posted in a barracks near the town square. The barracks building is now the Mayor's official residence (In 1997, the French ambassador put up an inscription to remember that Arthur Rimbaud had lived there.)

There is no record of what Rimbaud did in the military barracks. Jamie James only filled the pages of his book detailing military activities that were prevalent in barracks, mentioning the names of other soldiers who were in the same unit as Rimbaud.

Two weeks after his arrival, on August 15, Rimbaud was absent from the daily morning function. The Jesuit priest named De Bruyn who led the Dionysius Chapel in the north of the city also did not see him present at the celebration of the Catholic holiday, the Assumption with a mass at the chapel. On 30 August, Rimbaud was officially deemed missing, he has deserted from the KNIL military assignment.

A risky action, of course. If caught, the punishment must be severe. There must be a very strong reason that encourages him to do that. Some wrote that Rimbaud could not bear to see the cruelty of colonialism and eventually fled into the interior of the Javanese forest. There are also those who suspect that he has thirst for adventure due to the long stay in the post and chose to run away.

Nobody knew of his whereabouts from then until December 31, when he arrived back at his mother's house in Charleville, France. This runaway episode that lasted for about six months was almost without a trace, there were no travel records, no correspondence, and Rimbaud himself never wrote a word about that period. "It is almost impossible to know with certainty which route Rimbaud returned to Charleville from Java in 1876," James wrote.

 

The soul of the poet may not be suitable for military life. Perhaps that is what made Rimbaud choose to leave, deserting his military units in Salatiga. But however the trip might have been satisfying to him, that he could go to the most remote place that might be reached at that time: the Indies, an attractive country in the east. Stepping on the island of Java even if only briefly, has fulfilled the desire to adventure. He wanted to reach his dreams to see another world, the extraordinary places he had visited in his mystical poems.

Here is a meeting point between the adventurous soul and the soul of the poet, because in A Season in Hell (1873), Rimbaud has written what will happen to him when he returns from the trip:

I shall return with limbs of iron, dark skin, a furious eyes;

from my mask, I shall be taken for a man of a mighty race.

I shall have gold: I shall be idle and brutal.

His poetry has preceded his journey.

In the end, in each journey of a real traveler, there is a soul that continuously desires to find new experiences in foreign places, and the courage to live them. They are brave people who will readily leave the known for the unknown, and brave enough to enter into an inner journey and find the meaning in their travel. 

This is the thing that amazed me, whose journey so far has always been limited to touristic travels and for works.

 

Indonesian version