Rimbaud and Jim Morrison-C

Fowlie, a leading translator of Arthur Rimbaud and professor emeritus of French literature at Duke, here attempts to trace the aesthetic affinities between the French symbolist poet and '60s rock icon and Doors lead singer, Jim Morrison. Fowlie contends that both Rimbaud, the iconoclastic young poet who at the age of 20 forsook poetry for a peripatetic life as a merchant-adventurer and Morrison, the macho, nihilistic, self-styled shaman of late-'60s acid rock, refigure the boyish archetypes of the clown and the rebel; for Fowlie, both were restive, bohemian, visionary poets who attained an extraordinary, posthumous mythical status. He prefaces his readings of Rimbaud's and Morrison's ``poetry'' with a brief memoir stressing his pedagogical aims: to recruit readers of French poetry among jaded kids who can only deal with high culture in the context of familiar pop cultural icons. Missing from this study, however, is a critical perspective of the tawdrier aspects of Morrison's fame, which sprang, in part, from his talent for turning avant-garde and multicultural tropes into psychedelic cliches. Fowlie's style is lucid and highly personal, if humorless. Readers who are not fans of the Doors may roll their eyes at Fowlie's earnest attempts to explicate their lyrics in terms of Nietzsche, Antonin Artaud and ancient mythology. (July)