An unknown work by Arthur Rimbaud has been discovered, written during the Franco-Prussian War.
“Bismarck’s dream”, a prose text running to around 50 lines, was published on November 25, 1870 in the local newspaper Le Progres des Ardennes, under the name Jean Baudry.
Rimbaud and his era was a fascination of mine about 20 years ago, about the time that Barnaby Conrad’s coffee table book on absinthe was published. The Franco-Prussian War has been another minor fascination lately. I recently found several small portraits of Prussian soldiers from this era and framed them. They now hang above my DVD shelf. I also recently discovered the probability that one branch of my family (my paternal great great grandmother) immigrated to the US from Prussia just before the war.
-Stephen Lee Canner
