Rimbaud & Verlaine: Toxic Boyfriends of French Poetry (feat. Robert St Clair)

What happens when a teen prodigy meets a drunk poet with a pistol in his pocket (the gun kind, not the fun kind)?

Answer: extremely gay chaos.

This week on Historical Homos, we’re diving into the doomed romance of Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine—the most sensationally toxic boyfriends in the history of French poetry.

With our guest this week, Robert St. Clair, we’ll unpack:

• The social revolution of the 19th century: just a fun little reminder of where class warfare was born!
• Rimbaud and Verlaine’s poetry: because toxic people can be great artists too
• The couple’s love letters, extortion notes, and pornographic sonnets: including a gorgeous reading of 1872’s “To the Butthole”
• The Brussels Incident™: in which our drunken hero pulls a gun, fires wildly with his eyes covered, and somehow manages to shoot his boyfriend in the wrist
• Courtroom dick reports. in which forensic "doctors" examine the hero’s hole and pole to “prove” he was gay, because it turns out science is just as toxic as poetry
• Their legacy. Rimbaud stopped writing at 20, Verlaine went to prison for love and revolution – and both still managed to change poetry forever.

It’s toxic. It’s fascinating. It’s, how you say, very fucking French

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Episode Credits

Written and hosted by Bash

Edited by Alex Toskas

Produced by Dani Henion

Guest host: Robert St. Clair, Associate Professor of French, Dartmouth College