d'Arthur à Zanzibar

From Arthur to Zanzibar. During the last eleven years of his life (1880-1891), Arthur Rimbaud, exiled between Aden and Harar, never stopped dreaming of it. The island, with its magical assonances and its status as a major hub of maritime trade at the time, symbolized for him that “something better, a little farther away”—a pursuit he had chased in vain throughout his life.

The journey to Zanzibar was, for Rimbaud, the ultimate quest, the final word, the alphabetical endpoint of his exhausting wanderings.