'At 16, Rimbaud was the archetypal provincial youth who had long outgrown his family and

his
hometown; he couldn't wait to get away. The chaos created by the Franco-Prussian War externalized his
fury and gave him an opportunity to test himself. That winter, he ran away from home, and, two months
later, his fantasies become real, as the capital city's poor rose up with thousands of students and
workers in the short-lived Paris Commune. For a brief period in April and May 1871, anarchists were in
charge of the capital, and young poets ran the police force. Rimbaud was one of only thousands of
young vagabonds who focked to revolutionary Paris like moths to a fame.'