Charleville-Mézières. Is it the sound of the double name, the mists of the Meuse, the industrial past? The evocation of this city sometimes causes a skeptical pout, even mockery. in an episode of Plus belle la vie, in 2015, two Marseille teachers dialoguated, About a school stay: “dragging them to Charleville -Mézières in the middle of winter, it’s mistreatment. – Well what? It’s very pretty, the Ardennes!” The little -known prefecture deserves the trip, even from Marseille.
The most literate will say “Rimbaud”, the tormented poet, who was born there in 1854, lived, wrote. He himself hated the notables compasse with agreed ideas and the Carolomaconian “parish life”. “My hometown is superiorly silly between the small provincial towns,” he wrote to his teacher Izambard.
Charleville is not resentful. The bookstore bears the name of Rimbaud, just like a Quai de la Meuse and the college where the poet studied. The media library was called “vowels”, like the poem, the bistros offer the “Arthur cuvée”, a craft beer, and a real estate agent has made the famous photo of the eternal kid of 17 years his logo.
“To say that Rimbaud did not like Charleville is a cliché”, wishes to rectify Carole Marquel-Morelle, director of the Ardenne Museum. “It is neither false nor true, it depends on the moment of her life,” she says. The poet, between two distant trips, has continued to return to Charleville. “I regret this atrocious Charlestown,” he wrote to a friend in 1873.
love-haine
Despite this singular love-hate, Charleville has become the home port of the “Rimbaldians”. Notice to those who do not belong to this literary elite, following the “Rimbaud course” is an excellent way to discover the city.
Upon arrival at the station, we come across the bar in the universe, where the young poet liked to remake the world. Further on, at the Rimbaud museum, the author is presented soberly, using writings of his contemporaries, personal objects, suitcase, watch or cards, some rare manuscripts and his iconographic posterity celebrated by Picasso, Cocteau or warhol. On a white wall spread out a few aphorisms: “I am another”, “you have to be absolutely modern”, “Love is to be reinvented”.
In front of the museum, one of the buildings where the Rimbaud family lived is now the “house of elsewhere”, these destinations traveled by the artist , materialized by city plans drawn on the old parquet.
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