The Professor continued his analysis. ‘There is also the language of the weather, of seascapes, of the movement of waves, of winds, that is to say the whole natural world caught up in the life and the life expectancy of the individual, and the desolation of the bereaved person. This is something that nineteenth-century French poetry often does, and very movingly, too. One thinks of Victor Hugo, for example, as perhaps the supreme exponent of this orchestration to harmonize the movements of nature with the movements of human subjectivity. To find an ordinary person doing the same thing with such skill and such élan really is impressive. For me, as a literary scholar, it is that much more moving to find literary language being used in this way, as if it were part of everyone’s patrimony, whatever questions one may ask about authenticity. So this is not just a moving personal document, it talks about the uses of literature in ordinary life in a way that is itself cogent and compelling.’

I had never thought of language in that way before and somehow his words seemed to push open an unused door for me. Through the crack I could perceive a whole new landscape of thought that I had never even known was there.

Meanwhile, the Professor was thumbing through the book he had brought upstairs with him. ‘One of the strangest of Rimbaud’s prose poems in his collection Illuminations, entitled ‘Dévotion’, uses this particular formula, which is that of a toast, raising a glass to someone.’ He read out part of the poem:

‘A l’adolescent que je fus.

A ce saint vieillard, ermitage ou mission. A l’esprit des pauvres . . .’

‘To the youth I once was. To this holy old man, hermitage or mission.

To the spirit of the poor . . .

‘I had long had a soft spot for Rimbaud. Many years ago on the Karakorum Pass between China and Pakistan, one of the highest roads in the world, I had met a man whose father was a CIA operative. I was taking the bus, he was cycling, and we were staying in an overnight hostelry. We became friends and over the years he would write to me from various hotspots in the world – Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chile. Coups and shattering events would follow wherever he cycled and I developed a theory that he had followed his father’s profession and his cycling holidays were not entirely innocent. During his travels he carried a book of Rimbaud’s poetry and, on the rare occasions when he did return, home was a boat called Rimbaud moored on the Pacific. There would always be a moment of tension as he approached the dock after an absence of months or years, the suspense of whether the boat would still be afloat, although with the advent of email he hoped someone would inform him if she ever actually sank. My friend would don a mask and swim under the keel to inspect the hull. Then he would work at varnishing other people’s boats for a few weeks and earn enough for a few links of chain or some caulking materials or whatever he most needed for his dilapidated home. Having done the bare minimum to keep her afloat, he would take off again on his bicycle around the world. As far as I knew, Rimbaud never sailed anywhere, and my friend is cycling still, but at the time the romance of his life and his reading matter had encouraged me to investigate the poet.