In the Realm of the Prophets: By Way of Body and Soul

Despite his methods, Rimbaud was clearly on to something. What I suspect put Rimbaud off course onto the path of the rebel is that his intense moments of creative inspiration follow a suggested sexual injury of being raped, inflicted upon him from miscreant members of the Paris Commune. This traumatic event is suggested in his poem, Le Coeur vole ("The Stolen Heart") and what we may glean from his life at the time.

Unlike Rimbaud, my intense moments of vision and creative inspiration strike in the wake of me being involved in a sexual healing, that of my wife as described in the blogs of July 21 and 22. In a highly charged moment of sexual and spiritual healing, I had the distinct sense of what Jesus saw Magdelene, attaining knowledge of the soul through a deep level of intimacy. This lends itself to further speculation but for those uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus with a penis, perhaps he only got as far as laying his hands on her and the level of trust and ecstasy was enough to induce such an event. One may touch someone lovingly but not sexually but it's a fine line. As D.H. Lawrence put it, sex is deep touch, and it's a touch that can deeply heal or deeply injure.

I speculate that Whitman had also been involved in a healing, but at any rate, his assertions of the body being inseparable from the soul rang strikingly clear to me. Lawrence, in his critique on Whitman, summarizes the position as follows, from his Studies of Classic American Literature:

Whitman was the first heroic seer to seize the soul by the scruff of her neck and plant her down among the potsherds.
'There!' he said to the soul. 'Stay there!'
Stay there. Stay in the flesh. Stay in the limbs and lips and in the belly. Stay in the breast and womb. Stay there, Oh, Soul, where you belong.