Abstract: The goal of this essay is not so much to dress a catalogue of the various influences by which Rimbaud was either formed as a poet as it is to delve into the question of influence, a signifier that is nothing if not ladden in the nineteenth century. In so doing, it proposes a reading of the ways in which Rimbaud deployed the notion or problem of “influence,” most notably in the so-called “Seer Letters” (13 and 15 May, sent to Izambard and Demeny, respectively).
