Rimbaud running off to Africa
to look for gold and finding
an incurable case of syphilis;
Beethoven gone deaf;
Pound dragged through the streets
in a cage;
Chatterton taking rat poison;
Hemingway's brains dropping into
the orange juice;
Pascal cutting his wrists
in the bathtub;
Artaud locked up with the mad;
Dostoevsky stood up against a wall;
Crane jumping into a boat propeller;
Lorca shot in the road by Spanish
troops;
Around 1849, Dostoyevsky was condemned to death for his involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle (a gathering of intellectuals). A last minute order from Nicholas I reduced his sentence to 4 years of hard labour.
What they want