Rimbaud's Ode to Jugurtha

Among Arthur Rimbauds earliest surviving poems is a Latin ode of eighty-three lines he wrote in 1869, at the age of fourteen, which won first prize in a regional academic competition. The students were given the theme "Jugurtha" and six hours to compose a poem on it. Jugurtha, King of Numidia, led a war of independence against Rome in the first century B.C. Sallusts history of his valiant but unsuccessful revolt was a staple of the secondary curriculum in Rimbaud's day, and thus familiar to Frenchmen who had received a classical education.

Rimbaud gave his ode a topical twist by imagining the shade of Jugurtha appearing to the infant Abd el-Kader, a hero of the Algerian struggle for independence. Captain Frédéric Rimbaud, the poet's...