IV

Today, the old water mill is a classified monument housing the Musée Arthur Rimbaud. Spread over three floors, visitors can get a feel for the work and the life, mostly in facsimile , in paintings, sketches and a few personal belongings. Efforts are made to stress the poet’s everlasting importance by displaying artworks related to him or his work of internationally famous artists like Fernand Léger and Jim Dine. Across the street of the Moulin, one finds The Maison des Ailleurs, the former house of the poet’s family. One can wander through the empty house, where sounds, lights and a few small photographs are trying to tell you something about the man and his travels. Although in his work literal references to his background are scarce, the back garden and his own room are some of the few places where you can see something laid down by his poems. For the rest it’s an empty house.

The smell of the House Somewhere Else... Ghosts and a creaking floor… and no one else in this museum but me. These are delightful sinister drama’s, the ultimate destination. This is exiting… I love this place. Small museums with little inventory are the best: always living up to their expectations, always surprising and leaving all the enjoyment to the visitor’s own imagination. And this one is the best: a completely empty museum with bare walls and empty space. The place is filled with fabrications of the mind only... There’s the courtyard, seen through an orange plastic window cover, personating this season in hell. There is soft whispering in the rooms. I see a girlish lean boy with blue eyes scribbling Latin verses in a school notebook. He’s stamping his feet, baring his teeth. The echoes, void and smudgy ceilings are anticipating the colossal blowout… the blast, the bewildering breakaway from this house and country, and all artistic traditions in language, love and life. I want to nod to him as time will paint everything white and rivers keep on flowing. He looks up from his paper at me. He wrinkles his nose and his eyes smile…