Mis-Reading the Creative Impulse

Building on work by Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, and Harold Bloom, Adrianna M. Paliyenko s richly textured study revises our previous understanding of Arthur Rimbaud s (18541891) indirect artistic influence on Paul Claudel (18681955).Paliyenko s analysis answers to critical readings that rely on speculative spiritual affinities and text-surface similarities in identifying Claudel as Rimbaud s artistic follower. She traces the two writers development of the poetic subject, striving to map Claudel s "creative corrections," or revisions, of Rimbaud s work. In redirecting discussion of Rimbaud s work, she develops a Bloomian paradigm of how creative artists strive for originality by correcting or revising their predecessors."