While Rimbaud was pouring out in his poems his accumulated bitterness, a vital change was taking place within him and he was maturing his 'Theory of the Seer'.
These poems were the work of preparation, the breaking down of all the old barriers of decency, of discipline, of conventional morality, so that the new work could rise on new foundations. Everything had to go before the new theory could work and then, when all the past had been cleared away, Rimbaud wrote no more obscene or blasphemous poetry. Poetry was then the means of exploring the infinite; it was spiritual and mystical.

What kind of a man was Verlaine when he met Rimbaud?

During the disturbed period of the war and the revolution he (Verlaine) had slipped back into his bachelor way of life and taken once more to drink. It had been to remove him from the temptations of such associations (drinking and homosexual relationships) that his mother had married him to Mathilde Maute de Fleurville.

Mathilde's mother was proud to think that her son-in-law, Paul Verlaine, was highly spoken of in the best literary circles of the day as a poet with a future, for she had heard him praised by well established poets .....

And when Rimbaud wrote to him:

She listened with great interest when Paul Verlaine spoke of the bright new star which was rising on the distant provincial horizon of literature.

The arriving of Rimbaud to the house of Paul Verlaine's father-in-law is exactly how it was done in Total Eclipse. Maybe the real Rimbaud behaved even worse!
To give you some examples:

Rimbaud's visit was a disaster from the very beginning. Verlaine had gone to the station to meet (as a matter of fact together with another man, who was the child of Verlaine's mother in law from a previous marriage) but through some mistake they had missed him.

To a country-bred lad like Rimbaud the walk meant nothing, and finding no one to meet him he set off on foot for Montmartre and arrived alone, hot and dusty, to the consternation of Madame Maute de Fleurville and her daughter. Mathilde never forgot the amazement both she and her mother had felt when the country youth was shown into the drawing-room where they were sitting waiting for him to arrive with Verlaine, and wondering what he would be like. He was, moreover, extremely dirty and untidy; his hair was standing on end as if it had never been brushed. Worst of all, he had arrived without any kind of luggage whatsoever, no hairbrush, no change of linen.

Rimbaud had always possessed an uncanny, animal-like sensitivity to atmosphere and now he was quick to feel the impression that he was making. He sensed immediately , beneath the mannered politeness of mother and daughter, the hostility and the disapproval.

Verlaine too could not disguise the astonishment he felt on seeing a mere boy sitting in the drawing-room, when he had expected to find a man of over twenty. But above the scaggy and clumsy body of an adolescent not yet fully grown he saw a child's face, round-cheeked and rosy, with the purest and most piercing blue eyes he had ever encountered. He insists on the good looks of Rimbaud at this time and describes his extreme beauty (oh yes, perfect casting!) of face at the age of sixteen. It appears to have been only prejudice and antipathy which made Mathilde and so many others describe him as coarse and ugly.

The first dinner was a complete fiasco. Rimbaud lapsed into a gloomy silence and remained tongue-tied, answering only in mono-syllables the questions goodnaturedly put to him. ( Mme de Fleurville really did have a dog and to that dog Rimbaud says: 'Les chiens, ce sont des liberaux!'..all dogs are liberals!)

As the meal progressed Rimbaud became more awkward and insolent. Before dinner was over and coffee served, to the horror of the ladies, he drew his filthy pipe from his pocket, crossed his legs and, leaning his elbows on the table just as if he were in a low pub, moodily puffed his evil-smelling tobacco smoke over the dinner-table.

Rimbaud's visit never recovered from the failure of the first evening, and he made no further efforts to ingratiate himself with his hostess.

Rimbaud did not, however, remain long in the Rue de Buci. It is alleged that the neighbours complained to Banville of his guest's conduct, and that as a result of this he was requested to leave the house. It is said that when he first went to his new room in his verminous, filthy clothes, he could not bear the thought of defiling so fresh and clean a lodging. He then undressed and, to the horror of the people living on the opposite side of the street, stood naked at the open window to fling the bundle of dirty clothes into the thoroughfare below.

About his conduct in Paris towards the other poets:

He, on his side, made no effort to hide the scorn he felt for all those who he met, and he did not disguise from them the fact that he considered them antediluvian in their theories of art. He went amongst them with a perpetual sneer of contempt on his face.

Verlaine alone still had confidence in his friend's powers and his opinion was held of little account since it was believed that Rimbaud had cast an evil eye on him and had bewitched him.

All those who met Rimbaud thought that his conduct was particularly offensive considering his extreme youth. At the Cafe de Cluny, the meeting-place of the poets, he used to lie full length on the seats, pretending to be asleep if verses which did not please him were being read, or else emitting low grunts of disgust and scorn.

And now, remember the 'I could object to your tie' scene:

This evening, however, Jean Aicard was reading a selection of his poems and Rimbaud, by the end of dinner more than a little drunk, was punctuating every line with the word 'merde' (shit) uttered in a loud and distinct voice so that all present could hear. Then Carjat, the photographer, took it on himself to silence the impudent boy. When Rimbaud insolently replied that he would be silent for no one, Carjat shook him roughly and told him to be quiet Rimbaud, now completely out of hand, seized hold of Verlaine's sword-stick, dashed at Carjat and would have done him bodily harm had those present not taken hold of him!

It was decided, after the events of that evening, that he was never again to be allowed to be present at the dinners of the society.

His schoolfriend Delahaye described his eyes like this: again..perfect casting...
'His eyes, were the most beautiful that I have ever seen, with an expression of courage and gallantry, as if ready for all sacrifices, when he was serious; with an expression of child-like gentleness when he smiled; and always with an astonishing depth and tenderness'

Verlaine calls Rimbaud in one of his poems: 'mon grand peche radieux'... which means 'my great and radiant sin'.

It was precisely the weeping and wailing of Verlaine, his constant confession of sin, his lamentable weakness, that, eventually, proved beyond Rimbaud's power of endurance.

Verlaine came to rely and depend more and more on him, to feel hungry and thirsty for his love, and starved if he did not enjoy it.

As love began to fade and his nerves became affected, the streak of sadism in Rimbaud's nature began to appear. He would make a mock of all the things which Verlaine admired and which were dear to him; then, when goaded into desperation, the latter would burst into tears, he would turn on him in anger and disgust, and abuse him. (the 'love' scene I always call the rape...)

Scene in the Cafe du Rat Mort:

'Put your hand on the table, I want to try an experiment.' And when his friend had complied with this request, he drew a knife from his pocket and slashed at the hands so trustingly laid before him. Verlaine immediately got up and left the cafe, but Rimbaud followed him into the street and wounded him again, in several places, with his knife.

About poor Mathilde:
One evening he (Verlaine) said to her: 'I'm going to burn your hair!' happily the match went out, singeing only the loose strands.

From 'Illuminations'

Departure

Enough seen.
The vision was encountered under all skies.
Enough had.
Noises of cities, in the evening, and in the sunshine, and always.
Enough known.
The pauses of life - O Sounds and Visions!
Departure into new affection and new noise!

'Metropolis' which is one of the 'Illuminations', the time is summer 1872, the place Paris:

As the summer of 1872 wore on Paris became unendurable to Rimbaud and he longed for the fresh air of his native Ardennes. This was the first summer that he spent in a city, for he had lived all his life in a little town on the edge of the country, with escape to the farm at Roche.
'I hate the summer,' he wrote to Delahaye, 'It kills me when it begins to flare up. I have a gangrenous thirst! The Ardennes rivers and the Belgian caves, those are what I specially miss.'

By July he felt that he could endure it no longer and he decided to leave Paris for a time and to force Verlaine to accompany him. He knew by now that he had sufficient power to influence him. He went out to Montmartre to inform him of his plans and met him in the street, just as he was leaving the house to fetch his wife's medicine from a near-by chemist. At first Verlaine, restrained by scruples, refused to accompany him. 'And my wife?' he asked. But Rimbaud answered brutally. 'To Hell with your wife!' Finally Verlaine allowed himself to be persuaded (!) and followed his friend.

After spending the day in a cafe they left for Arras where an old aunt of Verlaine's lived. This was 7 July 1872 and Rimbaud little guessed that this was the end of his literary life in Paris.....

They travelled all night, arriving in Arras in the early morning, and they behaved like two irresponsible children on holiday. To while away the time until they could suitably call on Verlaine's aunt, they sat breakfasting at the station buffet and decided that they would horrify the stolid bourgeois whom they saw drinking their morning 'cafe au lait' with such smug satisfaction. They began conversing together in simulated whispers, but so that all could hear, of the burglaries they had committed, boasting even of attempted murder, but so pleased did they become with their inventive power that they overdid the piling up of detail. Suddenly they were stopped short in their narrative by the sight of two ferocious policement whom the bar-tender had called in on overhearing their conversation. They were immediately arrrested and marched off together to the Hotel de Ville, and there they had the greatest difficulty in explaining to the magistrate that their conversation had only been a joke. The magistrate, in any case, was very suspicious as to why the two friends had come to Arras at all. The matter ended by their being led by the police to the railway station and being put into the train for Paris. On arriving in Paris they did not, however, reamin there; They took tickets for Charleville. Madame Rimbaud was by then with the familiy in the country cottage at Roche, and there was no danger of encountering her. The two friends spent a happy day drinking and when evening came they hired a horse and cart to take them over the frontier into Belgium, and once they were on Belgian soil, they took the train for Brussels.

In the meantime, in Paris, Mathilde Verlaine was left in a state of great anxiety on her husband's behalf, for she had received no news of him since the moment when he had gone to the chemist, meaning to be absent no more than a few minutes.

She starts looking for him everywhere but then:

Finally, a few days later, a letter arrived from Brussels, a pathetic letter, which shows how much Rimbaud had Verlaine under his influence:

"My dear Mathilde, don't be distressed. Don't grieve and don't cry! I'm in the middle of a nightmare! I'll return one day!"

On receiving this letter, she decided that she would make one further effort to win her husband back from the scoundrel who had bewitched him. In company with her mother she set off for Brussels to find him and to persuade him to come back to her.

Verlaine writes a poem about their meeting. When he sees her:

He was suddenly overcome with love and remorse and his feeling of nervousness and apprehension vanished. He forgave her the trap she had set for his senses (Mathilde lying naked on the bed!) and only thought of his love and her beauty. But when she was dressed again and the lover vanished as the staid wife reappeared in her conventional clothes, with her innocent and spontaneous gaiety gone, then all the problems rose up, and he knew what his fate was to be.

It is said that he confessed to her the nature of his relations with Rimbaud, but she did not, at the time, fully understand what he meant.

They would go away, she thought. They would go away, just the two of them, to New Caledonia, and her mother would look after the baby in her absence. They would both grow strong again and forget the past;

After meeting his wife and mother-in-law Verlaine allowed himself to be persuaded to return to Paris with them but he begged to be permitted to say goodbye to Rimbaud in order to explain everything to him verbally, and he promised that he would meet them at the station. When he arrived at the train, the two women realized immediately that he was no longer in the same gentle frame of mind, that he was intoxicated and in a bad temper. However, he entered the carriage with his wife and mother-in-law, but sat himself down in the corner and remained sunk in gloom and despondency, refusing to answer a word when spoken to. At the frontier they were obliged to leave the carriage for the customs examination, but, in the flurry of the moment, the two women lost sight of him, and did not notice what had become of him. Just as the train was about to leave they saw him standing at some distance, on the platform:

They asked Verlaine to jump in, but:
Verlaine only shook his head in answer, and the train steamed out of the station without him. This was the last time that Mathilde Verlaine was ever to see her husband....

Verlaine and Rimbaud remained for two months in Belgium, wandering around the country (uncorking bottles with shoulderblades!!), then, in September, they crossed over from Ostend to Dover.

London:

At first the two friends felt lonely and homesick. 'A flat black bug, that is London,' Verlaine wrote. They missed the light stimulating air of Paris, the welcoming cafes on the boulevards with their tables set out on the pavement; they missed above all the friendly waiters, with their cheeky humour and their skill at pouring the icy water on the green absinthe, drop by drop, to turn it into a snowy liqueur.....('Absinthe, two please....!')

But when they've settled down a bit:

By degrees Verlaine and Rimbaud sank into the French atmosphere of the Soho quarter. There were there, at the time, many Parisian refugees who, after the Commune, had fled from France.

The lot of these refugees was wretched in the extreme for they found it almost impossible to obtain work. Amongst these poor wretches Verlaine and Rimbaud with their dishevelled and disreputable appearance seemed in their element.

After they had settled down to a more or less regular life, Verlaine was completely happy in London and wished that this existence could continue for ever; He was able then to finish his lovely collection of poems 'Romances without Words'.

Verlaine and Rimbaud spent the greater part of their time learning English as they wandered from pub to pub, chatting with all manner and classes of people. They gave French lessons when they could find pupils, but unfortunately these were rare.

Remember the scene when Rimbaud is trying on the top hat in the street? And they look in the mirror together?: In order to inspire confidence in his prospective employers, Rimbaud bought a top hat of which he was inordinately proud. It remained for some years his symbol of riches and respectability, and he wore it proudly on his return to Charleville.

In London Verlaine and Rimbaud made no attempt to disguise the nature of their friendship and it is said that they openly boasted of it, so that even the refugees were somewhat shocked. Eventually rumours of their behaviour trickled back to Paris and to Mathilde Verlaine's lawyer, who was collecting material for the demand for separation, so that these rumours were welcome evidence.

Rimbaud asked his mother to obtain papers from the Maute the Fleurville family that belonged to him:

On her arrival in Paris Mme Rimbaud called on old Madame Verlaine and the mothers soon understood each other perfectly. Both disapproved of the nature of their sons' friendship, but each was, at first, inclined to blame the son of the other. Eventually they commiserated with one another and struck up a friendship, both of them agreeing to dislike the Maute the Fleurville family. Madame Verlaine gave Madame Rimbaud a letter of introduction to Madame Maute de Fleurville, but the mother of Verlaine's 'Evil Genius' was badly received by the mother of his injured wife. They wished to have no dealings whatsoever with any member of the Rimbaud tribe!

They would not discuss the question of the rumours concerning Verlaine and Rimbaud and how these were to be checked and they refused to hand over any papers that were in their possession. Amongst these papers was the most famous lost poem 'La Chasse Spirituelle' and some poems in verse and prose. (True' Rimbaldians' are able to cry over the loss of 'La Chasse...'!)

Madame Rimbaud wrote to Arthur telling him of her lack of success and of what the Maute de Fleurville family intended to do. She advised him to return immediately to Charleville if he did not wish to be implicated in the proceedings which Mathilde was about to take against her husband.

Rimbaud followed his mother's advice; he left Verlaine in London and went back to Charleville for Christmas 1872. Verlaine however, alone in London and deprived of his friend, became gloomy and depressed. Alone and lonely he composed one of the poems from 'Romances without Words'

Verlaine was alone for Christmas and he wrote to a friend: '....... I'm very sad and alone. Rimbaud, ......, whom I alone perhaps fully understand, is no longer here. There's a horrible emptiness and all the rest is nothing to me.'

Then he falls ill, just the flu, but he exaggerates it, writes to his mother that he is dying, and asks her to 'send a couple of pounds to Rimbaud so that he too could come and bid him a last farewell before the end.'!!

Madame Verlaine and a niece set off immediately for London and Rimbaud followed two days later; he had been gone scarcely a month........

As soon as Verlaine's health was restored the two friends took up once more their life of pub-crawling and debauch which Verlaine was later to call 'our shameful life in London in 1873'.

Rimbaud used to drag Verlaine away to visit the Docks.

This was his first experience of big ships and they brought back to Rimbaud, with a new poignancy, the dreams of his childhood - before he had embarked on his spiritual mission - when, in his imagination, he had travelled to the ends of the earth, and had only needed his mother's rolls of linen cloth to feel that he was on his Bateau Ivre (drunken boat). Perhaps it was then that he began to wonder whether a life of action might not be, after all, preferable and more worth living than a life of contemplation and mystical experience.

The sight of the weight of misery in this modern metropolis moved Rimbaud to a new form of compassion and charity, not merely compassion towards the individual but for the struggling and submerged masses.

It is said that Verlaine and Rimbaud visited the Chinese dens in the east-end by the docks, and learned to smoke opium.

Whether Rimbaud succeeded for a time in his art, or failed to achieve his aim, is not here in question. He certainly believed that he had failed, and that it was general rout for him. Then he sold up, at bankrupt prices, all his former spiritual and artistic stock, all his dreams, his beliefs and his aspirations. He was ready now to start on something else, on a new venture:

Sensations..by Arthur Rimbaud

In the blue summer evenings, I will go along the paths,
And walk over the short grass, as I am pricked by the wheat:
Daydreaming, I will feel the coolness on my feet.
I will let the wind bathe my bare head.

I will not speak, I will have no thoughts:
But infinite love will mount in my soul;
And I will go far, far off, like a gypsy,
Through the country side - joyous as if I were with a woman.

A lot of the biographers claim that Rimbaud left Verlaine in London in February 1873 and returned to Charleville, where he was in March, and from where he made several journeys to Brussels to find a publisher for his work, and that it was returning from one of these trips that he arrived at his mother's farm at Roche on Good Friday. But it is highly improbable that, having been home from Christmas 1872, and back again in London in January 1873 at Verlaine's request, he should have returned home in February, to remain there, and only making a trip to London on 25 March to apply for a permanent Reader's Ticket at the British Museum. On that date he signed the register in company with Verlaine, stating, although he was only eigheen at the time, that he was over twenty-one!

It is probable that it is after some days spent in Brussels with Verlaine that Rimbaud returned unannounced to Roche on Good Friday, 11 April.

Whenever Rimbaud wished for solitude for his writing he was obliged to retire to the barn of Madame Rimbaud's little eighteenth century farmhouse!

Another biographer describes the poor state of health of Rimbaud at this time, which did not show any improvement until nearly autumn: His complexion had become grey and livid and on his cheek-bones stood out two red patches of colour. His eyes, which had always been of a startling vivid blue (!), seemed now to have faded, and the pupils were constantly dilating and contracting so as almost to disappear, giving them a vague, dying appearance. For hours he used to lie stretched on his bed, with half-open eyes, not saying a word.