(I wonder if my copy/paste problems have to do with accented chars, or tab chars. Yes. I filtered and fixed it. will post details about the bug later)
Okay, here is what it looks like when I speculate
Ten years ago, I speculated to 377 that Sheridan chose the phrase "The Idiot's Frightful Laughter" because he identified with the author/poet Arthur Rimbaud...his life story, all sorts of bits of it.
Which EU, is why I posted that poem to DZ.com back in the day.
from my 2008 notes:
The title is "The Idiot's Frightful Laughter".
This line is apparently from the french prose (english translation) of the first prose poem in the book "A Season in Hell" by Arthur Rimbaud. it is referred to as "Once, if my memory served me well..."
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LoginThe line is:
"And spring brought me the idiot's frightful laughter."
Although different translations may use different English words. A good background of what drove Rimbaud to write "A Season In Hell" is very instructive, and Sheridan may have identified with the torment and release?
A good background of "A Season in Hell" is at
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LoginNote the Belgian connection.
" The book was published in October at the Belgian printer Jacques Poot and Co and Arthur went to Brussels to take some copies. He left one signed specimen for Verlaine in prison. He gave one to Delahaye, one to Millot, another friend of Charleville and sent 3 or 4 of them to Forain, for himself and for Parisian friends. He also went to Paris, but because of his bad reputation and the scandal of Brussels, his old acquaintances avoided him.
Back to Roche, disgusted, he burnt the last copies he has with some rough works, letters and papers, in the fireplace in front of his mother and his sister Isabelle. Being unable to pay for the printer, he abandoned the edition of his book so five-hundred other specimens were found in 1901 in the printing works warehouse by Leon Losseau, a Belgian scholar."
A nice bio of Rimbaud is here
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LoginThe Rimbaud bio seems to match Sheridan's early life, very well. Sheridan may have identified with these details. Rimbaud had a homosexual lover. Here are snippets of the bio, but all of it (above) is good
Rimbaud was born Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud in Charleville, France, near the Belgian border, on October 20, 1854. His parents were Frederic Rimbaud, an army captain, and Marie-Catherine-Vitalie Cuif Rimbaud, a landed peasant. There were three other children in the family: Frederic, born in 1853; Vitalie, born in 1858; and Isabelle, born in 1860. When Rimbaud was six years old, his parents separated, and the boy was raised by his stern, overprotective, and devoutly Christian mother. He attended the College de Charleville, where he was an outstanding student in every subject, but he was permitted no contact with other boys outside school hours by his mother who insisted on accompanying him to and from school each day. Georges Izambard, a professor at the school, befriended Rimbaud and encouraged him to read the poetry of the Romantics and the Parnassians, and to write his own poetry. Izambard left the school in 1870 at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, and over the next two years Rimbaud ran away from home on three different occasions, at least once in an attempt to find his mentor. Some critics, citing the abrupt change in the tone of his poetry during this period, speculate that Rimbaud may have experienced a traumatic event "possibly sexual abuse by soldiers" during the months he spent in Paris and Belgium. The sentimental verse of his earlier years gave way to poetry that expressed his growing cynicism and disgust with life.
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Also in 1871, he wrote to the poet Paul Verlaine, enclosing some samples of his verse. At Verlaine's urging, Rimbaud went to Paris and took up residence with Verlaine and his wife. Rimbaud's antisocial behavior and the developing sexual relationship between the two poets all but destroyed Verlaine's marriage.
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Rimbaud, who was studying Eastern religion and alchemy, existing on very little sleep, and taking hallucinogenic drugs, experienced a period of intense creative activity during this time. However, his relationship with Verlaine became more and more volatile and when he tried to end the affair, Verlaine shot him in the wrist. Rimbaud retreated to his mother's home in Roche, near Charleville, and finished Une Saison en enfer (1873; A Season in Hell), while Verlaine spent the next two years at hard labor in a Belgian prison.
Deciding to become an adventurer, Rimbaud traveled throughout Europe and Africa, finally settling in Abyssinia, Ethiopia, where he worked for many years as a gunrunner and possibly as a slave trader.
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