>Joanna wrote: 'the Paris Commune. Rimbaud was a participant and
>wrote something non-sophomoric about it when he was 17'.
That was me. Participant might be too strong a word. Commentator? I don't know. There's a book on my list from Verso called The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, by Kristin Ross (Verso Radical Thinkers III Series) that might shed some light. Here's a review:
http://www.culturewars.org.uk/index.php/site/article/the_emergence_of_social_space1/:
Here's the poem in English:
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/French/MoreRimbaudPoems.htm#_Toc197331277
Here's the original:
http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/L%E2%80%99Orgie_parisienne/%C3%89dition_Vanier_1895