Abstract
Patrick White acknowledged that he was ‘soaked in Rimbaud’. Five poems in his novels are linked to Rimbaud. Their main themes are ones important also in Rimbaud’s poems: the need to escape a constrictive mother by fleeing into the freedom of the imagination, followed by a fear of that very freedom. It is as if Rimbaud and White feared the power of the imagination to take control of the mind, for they abandon their fantasies when these are freest, and choose instead failure and frustration. Ultimately both writers yielded in defeat to the stronger figure of their mother. After a final tribute to his mother, White turned to other subjects; Rimbaud abandoned poetry altogether.
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