Abstract: Rimbaud turned himself from a radical supporter of social reform to a modernist poet who devoted himself to poetry, innovating the French poetic tradition step by step, shifting the form of his writing from metrical poetry to prose poetry, changing the construction of his content from symbolic to meaningless, abandoning poetry altogether eventually. Every step he took along the way was modern. Rimbaud stated that “One must be absolutely modern”. To him, “modernity” does not mean catching up with time or even innovating constantly; instead, it means the pursuit of absolute progress. It is not just a progress in poetry or art, but, more importantly, a progress in society. The modernity of poetry must be subordinated to the modernity of society. Rimbaud sees promoting social progress as his only goal. That he never deviated from his principle of “changing life” with poetry makes him an “absolutely modern” poet

Key words: Rimbaud, poetry, innovation, modernity