Amazon.com
When he was not yet 17, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91) electrified Paris's literary society with the incendiary poems that later made him the guiding saint of 20th-century rebels, from Pablo Picasso to Jim Morrison. "A Season in Hell," "The Drunken Boat," and the prose poems of Illuminations were epochal works that changed the nature of an art form--and yet their author abandoned poetry at age 21 and spent the rest of his short life as a colonial adventurer in Arabia and Africa. "He was writing in a void," explains British scholar Graham Robb. "In 1876, most of Rimbaud's admirers either were still in the nursery or had yet to be conceived." Hardly surprising, since the poet was a difficult and frequently unpleasant person to actually know. The Parisian poets who took him under their wing soon discovered that Rimbaud was ungrateful, crude, and as scornful of their precious verse as he was of the Catholic Church, bourgeois proprieties, and everything else his disapproving mother held dear. Rimbaud's stormy affair with Paul Verlaine estranged the older poet from his wife and, eventually, from most of his artistic friends as well. In Robb's depiction, the poet possessed from his earliest youth a restless, searching intellect that permitted no compromise with convention nor tenderness for others' weaknesses. The author doesn't soften Rimbaud's "savage cynicism" or gloss over his frequently obnoxious behavior, yet Robb arouses our admiration for "one of the great Romantic imaginations, festering in damp, provincial rooms like an intelligent disease." Like Robb's excellent biographies of Hugo and Balzac, this sharp, subtle, unsentimental portrait is both erudite and beautifully written. --Wendy Smith
Book Description
The poet's life was stranger than any fiction: explorer, mercenary, gun runner, and companion to slave traders. Unknown beyond the avant-garde at the time of his death, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) has been one of the most destructive and liberating influences on twentieth-century culture. During his lifetime he was a bourgeois-baiting visionary, a reinventor of language and perception, a breaker of taboos. The list of his known crimes is longer than the list of his published poems. But his posthumous career is even more astonishing: saint to symbolists and surrealists; poster child for anarchy and drug use; gay pioneer; and a major influence on such artists as Picasso, Bob Dylan, and Jim Morrison. At the age of twenty-one, Rimbaud turned his back on his artistic achievement. For his remaining sixteen years he lived in exile, ending up as a major explorer and arms trader in Abyssinia. The genius of Graham Robb's account is to join the two halves of this life, to show Rimbaud's wild and unsettling poetry as a blueprint for the exotic adventures to come. This is the story of Rimbaud the explorer, in mind and in matter.
Customer Reviews:
Undisciplined and patronizing .......2005-04-12
I found this book impossible to read.
I had hoped to find a substantive biographical narrative.
Instead I found an undisciplined, distracted and patronizing melange.
There are two problems here.
First, the author constantly changes voices. One voice is the biographical narrative. The second is gratuitous English 101 literary criticism. The third voice is even more intrusive, a psychological analysis that is apparently based on the author's politics, prejudices and enthusiasms.
The second problem is this.
When assuming the latter two voices, in particular, the text is shaded when not overwhelmed by the author's perceptions and opinions.
As a result this is neither biography nor history.
It's a personal assessment, a critique and a memoir.
I'm still looking for a good bio of Rimbaud.
Anybody know of one?
nasty and bourgeois genius........2004-12-17
Rimbaud: A Biography
Graham Robb's Rimbaud biography. Fantastic read, not enough about the poetry, perhaps, but sufficient about the life in Africa to demolish the myth of Rimbaud as anti-establishment.
Amazing how thoroughly nasty and bourgeois AR was. He stayed in Africa because he was trying to save up for a good wife. He said if he returned poor he would only get a widow. He hoped to get a college girl if he returned rich enough. While in Africa he was beaten almost to death after cutting an infibulated girl with a knife and seriously wounding her. He was not killed because Muslims dont kill madmen.
He trafficked in guns and traveled with slave caravans. He is recorded as attempting to buy two boy slaves.
The most astounding thing about AR is his, and his families, treatment of his older brother. Alfred "married a pregnant pauper" and for this terrible crime against bourgeois values he was cut off from the family as if he didnt exist. Alfred became a bus driver, had three children, but Arthur determined he would get none of his money, and the family never contacted him.
That said, I would definitely read the poems, or watch Terence Stamp or DiCaprio in the movies
Excellent, but not as good as Starkie bio........2004-05-13
This was the fourth biography on Rimbaud I'd read, and I found it the most accessible. However, the very best biography for my money, warts and all (she perpetuates a couple false myths about R.), is the Enid Starkie biography from 1961. Unlike Robb, she gives an analysis of many of his poems in the context of his life and times, while capably commenting on other personalities and poets of the era in which he lived. Still, even Robb in this biography, despite insisting on dismantling the so-called Rimbaud myths, perpetuates the "bad-boy genius" image here and there. If one reads his letters (see "I Promise to Be Good", Wyatt Mason, 2003) they will see that "...it is not generally appreciated how methodical a student of poetry Rimbaud was . . . Rimbaud made himself a poet by a long, involved, and sober study of the history of poetry."
But this is a review of Robb's book, and I do recommend it because it's the most up-to-date version of Rimbaud (as of 2003) and probably includes the most accurate chronology of all bios to date, as well as more details of his time with Verlaine, and in Africa (for which, Charles Nicholl's book, "Somebody Else: Rimbaud in Africa", 1997 is the best).
Overall, I think Robb's biography is the best modern introduction to Rimbaud (besides his poems, of course) for someone unfamiliar with him at all. His writing syle is less pedantic, and more journalistically captivating than Starkie, and others (I suppose it's a matter of taste, background, and direction, but it's probably impossible to find any dull biographies about Rimbaud anyway). Rimbaud continues to seduce and attract modern poets, wanderers, and seekers alike, and this biography is one more key to the fullest portrait possible of Rimbaud we'll ever get.
"Or, tout dernierement m'etant sur le point de faire le dernier couac! j'ai songe a rechercher la clef du festin ancien, ou je reprendrais peut-etre appetit."
But just lately, finding myself on the point of uttering the last croak, I thought of looking for the key to the old feast, where perhaps I might find my appetite again.
Examining the Rimbaud myth........2004-03-20
An enjoyable book-- well-written and apparently well-researched, if occasionally a little snarky in tone.
Robb has a rare talent (Mitford-esque, if I dare say so) for injecting his point of view in a way that is visible but not overly intrusive. I was glad to have him as a narrative presence throughout the book.
I haven't thought about Rimbaud in years. I read _A Season in Hell_ as a high school student, as you do, but wasn't converted. I never really made a serious effort to engage his poetry or his life. I was motivated to pick this book up after reading a review, and was not disappointed. If you would like to read beyond the tortured artist and into the life of a fascinating and important literary figure, then this is the book for you.
What interested me in reading the biography is how much Rimbaud myth I had unintentionally absorbed over the years. Robb tells the reader a lot about the Rimbaud myth, and I think that many readers are going to find that much of what they thought they knew was not true. He spends a lot of time on the and unwraps the layers for the reader. In that sense, the book also becomes a look at how narrative fictions develop about literary figures. In any case, the facts about Rimbaud are happily much more interesting than the fiction.
The book has inspired me to go back to A Season in Hell and maybe pick up the collected letters. Rimbaud becomes a great deal more interesting if you look at his entire career and not just the period before he turned 19.
Generally: A good read & worth the time.
The Tale of a Mad Angel.......2003-10-08
The best book to read on Rimbaud. Robb dispells myths, only to replace them with the even more awe-inspiring reality. His writing is perfect for this biography; it has a narrative tone, with occasional quips and asides, but most importantly it never gets in the way of understanding the fascinating life of the man behind the poetry.
Customer Reviews:
Rimbaud at his best........2006-06-14
After reading his Illuminations, I decided that I definitely wanted to encounter more of Arthur Rimbaud. I was intrigued by his creative proposition that in order to become engaged with existence the poet must place himself at variance with life. This positioning of the poet in surging counter-subjectivity to life is somewhat Hegelian in that it induces not only a creative synthesis but suffering as its essential Muse. While A Season in Hell is mature Rimbaud toward the end of his life, the Drunken Boat is clearly his finest individual poem. One discovers a symbolic clarity in this single work that summarizes his amazing thirst for life and the human condition in a brief poem of only 25 stanzas. This really is a magnificent work reminiscent of Blake with a style and a passion that transformed his genre and left him immortal. I earnestly invite you to read this telling, visually rich and important work by a major poet of immense talent. It will broaden the palette through which you perceive the brush strokes and colors of your life's impressions.
One of the greatest poets of all time........2005-06-21
The way words are used in this book is akin to the brush strokes of Monet. It doesn't get much better. I have read this book over 100 times and I still find little jems in Rimbaud's writting that give context to the times in which he lived. I recommend this book to people who love European history and want an emotional connection added to their knowledge of dates and timelines.
The subject matter of "A Season in Hell" may turn off the average reader. This is because the autobiographic tale deals with Rimbaud's liaisons with French poet Paul Verlaine. There escapades around Europe were at one time all the rage.
The painful experience gave Rimbaud (still a teenager and consider one of the greatest poets in France, if not Europe) material for this short passionate piece known as "A Season in Hell." The prose is dreamlike, like a long poem of beautiful words strung together, and yet the subject matter is more of a nightmare.
I prefer this book because it ends with "The Drunken Boat." The interpretation I get from this poem is of a young Rimbaud tired of an artists life, and longing for something more savage, and real. In his own life, he soon left France after writing this poem, and went to Africa where he made a career as a weapon's dealer.
Passionate, Painful, Agonizing and Surreal.......2004-02-06
.
What an amazing passionate book of prose and poetry! It's alive with pain, chaos and joy, screaming in anguish in streaming movement that is pouring out of the pages in utter agonizing derision and pain, flowing in surreal release of tension and expression.
The beginning of the book has a short bio and although short and concise, it vaguely talks about how scandalous Rimbaud and his companion Verlaine were in descriptive sexual analogy, refusing to use the word "sexual" and "lover."
Here was a young man who found a gay lover 20 years his senior and traveled in complete uncertainty and insecurity, a "Faustian Man," such as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road.' Rimbaud was a man who lived in the present moment of risk, spontaneity and the faith to walk in uncertainly and courageously. And this of course brings true living over the comfort zone of existing, which accompanies such an artist with intense pain, guilt, creativity, joy, hurt, anguish and exploding passions. The pages reek with chaotic artistic surrealism.
This man was a rare creator. An outcast of society, a vagabond in decadence and carousing avenging scandal, however a living man of flowing movement, unlike our dead, civilized and rational society. And for this, the man and his poetry snubbed and forgotten, only to be noticed at a later time and recognized for its aesthetic, passionate value. This is typical with almost all true creators of autonomous ability and dangerous living.
From page 23:
"Boredom is no longer my love. Rages, debauchery, madness, - I have known all their soarings and their disasters, - My whole burden is laid down. Let us contemplate undazed the extent of my innocence. I would no longer be capable of begging the solace of a bastinado. I don't fancy myself embarked on a wedding with Jesus Christ as father-in-law. I am not a prisoner of my reason. I said: God, I want freedom in salvation: how am I to seek it? Frivolous tastes have left me. No more need of devotion or of divine love. No more regrets for the age of render hearts. Each of us has his reason, scorn and charity; I reserve my place at the top of that angelic ladder of common sense. As for established happiness, domestic or not . . . no, I cannot. I am too dissipated, too weak. Life flourishing through toil, old platitude! As for me, my life is not heavy enough, it flies and floats far above action, that precious focus of the world. What an old maid I am getting to be, lacking the courage to be in love with death! If only God would grant me celestial, aerial calm, prayer, - like the ancient Saints, - Saints, giants! anchorites, artists such as are not wanted any more! Farce without end? My innocence would make me weep. Life is the farce we all have to lead."
Classic translation.......2002-10-24
This is one of the better translations of a Season in Hell. It's very faithful to the original French without compromising its poetry; many of the passages are nothing short of brilliant. Also, it's a bilingual edition for those who are either able or willing.
However, Varese struggles a bit under the poetic demands of the Drunken Boat. For example:
(Varese):
I can no longer, bathed in your languors, O waves,
Obliterate the cotton carriers' wake,
Nor cross the pride of pennants and of flags,
Nor swim past prison hulk's hateful eyes!
>> But trust me, for the superb quality of translation in A Season in Hell, this book's well worth the price.
Essential Rimbaud.......1999-10-14
This book is an essential portrayal of Rimbaud's most celebrated works. It includes a brief biography of Rimbaud. It is a great introduction to works by poets of that genre. People who enjoy this will also like Baudelaire and Verlaine. I recommend it highly.
Book Description
One of the most written-about literary figures in the past decade, Arthur Rimbaud left few traces when he abandoned poetry at age twenty-one and disappeared into the African desert. Although the dozen biographies devoted to Rimbaud’s life depend on one main source for information—his own correspondence—a complete edition of these remarkable letters has never been published in English. Until now.
A moving document of decline, Rimbaud’s letters begin with the enthusiastic artistic pronouncements of a fifteen-year-old genius, and end with the bitter what-ifs of a man whose life has slipped disastrously away. But whether soapboxing on the essence of art, or struggling under the yoke of self-imposed exile in the desert of his later years, Rimbaud was incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence. As translator and editor Wyatt Mason makes clear in his engaging Introduction, the letters reveal a Rimbaud very different from our expectations. Rimbaud—presented by many biographers as a bohemian wild man—is unveiled as “diligent in his pursuit of his goals . . . wildly, soberly ambitious, in poetry, in everything.”
I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud is the second and final volume in Mason’s authoritative presentation of Rimbaud’s writings. Called by Edward Hirsch “the definitive translation for our time,” Mason’s first volume, Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library, 2002), brought Rimbaud’s poetry and prose into vivid focus. In I Promise to Be Good, Mason adds the missing epistolary pieces to our picture of Rimbaud. “These letters,” he writes, “are proofs in all their variety—of impudence and precocity, of tenderness and rage—for the existence of Arthur Rimbaud.” I Promise to Be Good allows English-language readers to see with new eyes one of the most extraordinary poets in history.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
Above All . . ........2004-06-09
Rimbaud liked to use the phrase, "above all" in many of his early letters, which according to Wyatt Mason is indicative of his imperious personality. As one reads on, Rimbaud's demands serve a desperate purpose: he wants to improve himself through literature, and get out of town. He demands freedom.
There are some 250 letters collected here, some for the first time in English. Of these, only 30 were written during the time when he was writing poetry. This is all that has been found and collected. Additionally, a few photographs Rimbaud took while in Abyssinia are printed, along with others of Africa, including the slick cover photograph of what appears to be Rimbaud and his co-workers in Aden - never before printed as far as I know. Mason's introduction goes a long way to get to the heart of the real vs. the mythical Rimbaud, and he takes to task previous biographers for simultaneously debunking and promoting the Rimbaud myth. He goes on to compare Rimbaud's letters with those of Van Gogh (I would also include Gauguin, for they all lived & wrote in the same years). The main difference of course being that Van Gogh wrote extensively and confessionally about art and life, while Rimbaud only briefly outlined his thoughts on poetry in the so-called "seer letters". Comparing the relative "salaciousness" and quality of the artist's letters, Mason writes: "There is little of that register in Rimbaud's correspondence. Rather, a sober impatience running from first letter to last. And it is the uniqueness of this tone - a relentless striving - that so informs our understanding of Rimbaud, both as poet and trader."
For those readers unacquainted with Rimbaud and hoping for first-hand accounts of his Parisian adventures, his European travels, debauched meetings with other poets and artists, and poetical inspirations they will likely be disappointed in the long run. Those who are familiar with Rimbaud know that once he left for Africa, he stopped writing poetry. He had gained nothing positive from it, and the Verlaine affair probably pushed him over the edge once and for all. And so he sought his riches in "business"; although, quite unordinary, and therefore, interesting business as a trader in the far reaches of the French colonial empire. To enjoy these letters one must be willing to look past Rimbaud the "genius, maudit, child poet", and open their eyes to the "Somebody Else" of Charles Nicholl's 1997 titled biography. Whether or not you already have a collection of Rimbaud's poems, or intend to buy Mason's Volume I "Rimbaud Complete", Volume II: "I Promise to Be Good" is an invaluable counterpart to the poems, and are the sources for many conjectures and "facts" found in the biographies. On the other hand, if you want to stay away from biographies altogether, but still want to get closer to Rimbaud the person than otherwise possible via his sometimes illusive poems, then "I Promise to Be Good" is the most direct way to go. There is a biographical chronology, reprints of his actual handwritten letters, the poems he included as part of the letters, photographs (including the rare, unprinted cover I mentioned above), maps of his travels, and Above All . . . the letters themselves. It doesn't get much more "complete" than this.
Book Description
Wallace Fowlie's prose translations accompany the original French texts in this, the first complete bilingual edition of Rimbaud's work in prose and poetry.
"This handsome edition, which makes France's most remarkable poet readily available in the U.S., may well be a literary landmark comparable to Baudelaire's introduction of Edgar Allan Poe in France a century earlier."—Anna Balakian, New York Times Book Review
Customer Reviews:
Good read for Rimbaud fans.......2007-01-14
I was assigned this book in a Freshman Lit class and what do ya know I really like Rimbaud.
English translation, too literal, too boring..........2005-07-28
From a person who absolutely does not understand French language, like myself, this book is a 'pain-in-the-behind' to read!
First of all, it seems like Fowlie translated 'too literally' from Rimbaud's original French text (I can sense that by noticing some words that are same both in French and English on the same line). This in turn makes the English translation to sound too 'flat' and 'unimaginative' (and 'difficult'). Most of the poems, I have to read several times to understand what Rimbaud (or should I say Fowlie) is trying to say. Worse, in some cases, I have to go to a bookstore and read other editions done by more imaginative translators to fully understand what Rimbaud's poetry is about. Now that's sad...
If you know French, this book may be good for you since you can ONLY read French text, but if you don't know jack about French, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! YOU WILL BE BORED TO DEATH! Read the ones translated by more creative authors. Rimbaud's work deserves better treatment than this! I will sell this book at an used bookstore and buy Paul Schmidt's version!
useful if you know french.......2005-02-14
This is very complete, but the english translations are pretty bad, useful if you are reading in french and forget some of the words. If you are going to read Rimbaud in english, get the Louise Varese (new directions) editions instead.
A true genius.......2003-09-05
For all who love Rimbaud's work this is the book for them. The included letters give the reader a glimpse into the boy genius that was Rimbaud. He certainly was a difficult person but there is no denying his brilliance as a poet.
Yes, but..........2002-08-19
I ... found Fowlie's over-literal translations ugly and lame. But I think this may be deliberate. The unbeautifulness of the translations forces you back to the exquisite French original. It's a joy to have these poems as Rimbaud wrote them, and a bilingual edition is a must for the non-French-reader. If you want a beautiful English translation, I recommend reading Paul Schmidt's in conjunction with this one.
Book Description
Arthur Rimbaud is remembered as much for his volatile personality and tumultuous life as he is for his writings, most of which he produced before the age of eighteen. This book brings together his poetry, prose, and letters, including "The Drunken Boat," "The Orphans' New Year," "After the Flood," and "A Season in Hell," considered by many to be his. Complete Works is divided into eight "seasons"--Childhood, The Open Road, War, The Tormented Heart, The Visionary, The Damned Soul, A Few Belated Cowardices, and The Man with the Wind at His Heels--that reflect the facets of Rimbaud's life. Insightful commentary by translator and editor Paul Schmidt reveals the courage, vision, and imagination of Rimbaud's poetry and sheds light on one of the most enigmatic figures in letters.
Customer Reviews:
Great Poetry...A Classic Book.......2007-07-25
An essential book that collects all of Rimbaud's poetry. I thoroughly enjoyed reading each poem and would like to thank Mr.Schdmit for translating the French text to English for those of us who don't speak the language of love. I believe this book contains all of his classic poems, prose and letters that the legendary and doomed poet wrote during his brief literary career. A wonderful book for all lovers of great poetry and for admirers of Rimbaud's uncompromising, daring and original style.
No longer necessary, if it ever was.......2006-08-29
I wrote an earlier review of this edition of Rimbaud back when I called myself lexo-2; I'd now amend it, if I could, to say that the only translations of Rimbaud that non-French speakers are going to need is Wyatt Mason's superb bilingual edition in two volumes for the Modern Library. Schmidt has a lovely turn of phrase, but this is really a collection of poems by Paul Schmidt inspired by the work of Rimbaud, and not in my view a translation at all.
Rimbaud, oui; Schmidt, non.......2004-11-19
The rating by no means refers to Rimbaud's poetry, but rather to Schmidt's poor translation. It is as if Schmidt is trying to "force" poems, even going so far as substituting incorrect English words simply to make the poems rhyme. He also presents them in a somewhat disjointed manner, lumping them by era or even themes.
If you want to enjoy the beautiful poems of Rimbaud, turn to Wallace Fowlie's well-respected translation (available here at Amazon.) Fowlie also presents the original French text side-by-side, so if you do have some knowledge of French you can get a better feel for the heart of Rimbaud's work.
controversial translation of a controversial poet.......2004-07-21
This book was one of the most fundamentally influential books for me as a developing poet. I think it's by far the best translation of Rimbaud, much more enjoyable to read than the Pleide edition, which seems to me outdated. It may be true that Schmidt took some creative license and his translations of these poems may not be as literal or as accurate as others, but his gift for interprettation makes the poems better than in other translations, and that to me is more important than just strict accuracy. When I read these poems, I know I'm reading Rimbaud--the imagery, the atmosphere is all his. It doesn't bother me at all if from time to time the translator must re-position a word here or adjust a phrase there, or even invent an approximate figure-of-speech for one that doesn't exist in English--the main thing is that this translation is compelling and easy to understand and has Rimbaud's poetic style and ideas down to a T.
David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"
Ugh.......2002-03-30
Really quite terrible. If one were approaching Rimbaud only to "read some poems" or to enjoy oneself, then this would be an adequate if slightly fey rendering of the texts. But I think Rimbaud has earned a place beside the likes of Dante, Whitman (who I detest) and Blake, as men who are read as much for their person and ideas as for pleasure, and as such deserves the respect of a faithful rendering by the translator. The reader would be better advised to explore either Fowlie's "Complete Poems", Louise Varese's "Season In Hell" & "Illuminations", or Wyatt Mason's "Complete Works", which despite being resolutely inferior to Fowlie's, does display a number of additional poems previously available only in the original French.
Average customer rating:
- An edition good enough for gift giving
- Brilliant
- The hell within
- Anguished and Brilliant
- Anguished and Brilliant
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A Season in Hell
Arthur Rimbaud
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ASIN: 0821224581 |
Customer Reviews:
An edition good enough for gift giving.......2007-08-04
There are several editions of this book published. They have been thoroughly reviewed, so I will just review this edition, not the material itself.
As you can see by the photograph, it has a red cover and black spine. On the front cover and the title page there is a picture of a shirtless horned man. This book contains black and white photographs, by Robert Mapplethorpe, placed just about at the beginning of every section. I do not like them and I think they are a distraction from the text.
This is a very well constructed book. The pages are made out of a high grade thick paper. On the left side of the book is the original text in French. On the right side is the translation in English, which is done by Paul Schmidt. Since I can not read French, I completely enjoyed the English version.
Brilliant.......2003-02-02
This is a brilliant encapsulation of the rage of the artist. He has a contempt for mankind, society, it's progress, and yet can't escape society. He can be a "..." as artists where called back then, refuse to live a middle class existence, live a life of drunken debauchery, and yet that is just another societal role.
His imagery is powerful, his language self-deprecating and insanely sincere. It draws you in with its suffering.
At the end he finds his life as an artist, his passion, empty. It all ended with the gunshot to the hand that ended his affair with Verlaine. In short, he equates his artistry and homosexual affairs with hell, and a return to society redemption. This explains how he became a materialist later on in his life, a trader, even considering trading slaves.
It is a sad fate for someone who had such a poetic gift.
I still enjoy reading A Season In Hell, even after having read it many times. Ultimately, the work is flawed; it has a little too much affected insanity, angst, the sign of an adolescent work, but it is also full of pure poetry and promise.
The hell within.......2001-02-24
These are the brilliant and mystical hallucinations of the original "enfant terrible" and his visionary raptures about poetry, innocence and guilt. Verbal deliriums suffused with pain and hatred, remorse and desperation, but also with a parodic, pathetic and fatalistic megalomania. The "mystical rage" transformed into pyromaniac wording. Poems in prose, of very high quality, which reflect the fury of the love-hate relationship of Rimbaud with life and Universe.
Anguished and Brilliant.......2000-10-01
In the collection of prose poems and verse fragments that make up the short book A Season in Hell, begun in April 1873 in an outbuilding at Rimbaud's family farm at the village of Roche and completed by the end of August, he looks back in despair over his life as a poet. In one of the fragments, titled "Ravings number two" he talks about "the history of one of my follies." "I invented the colors of the vowels!" he claims, and goes on: "I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible...to all the senses...I expressed the inexpressible. I defined vertigos...I ended up regarding my mental disorder as sacred."
Rimbaud draws a picture of his affair with Verlaine in cynical terms, painting Verlaine as a weak and foolish virgin and himself as an "infernal bridegroom," a monster of cruelty. It wasn't far from the truth.
The last chapter of A Season in Hell is titled "Farewell." It has an air of exhaustion and relief about it. "I have tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues. I believed I had acquired supernatural powers. Well! I must bury my imagination and my memories. A fine fame as an artist and story-teller swept away! I! I who called myself magus or angel, exempt from all morality, I am given back to the earth, with a task to pursue, and wrinkled reality to embrace. A peasant!" A Season In Hell was finished in August 1873. Rimbaud somehow persuaded his thrifty mother to pay to have the book printed in Belgium. He sent his six author's copies to his friends and to men of letters in Paris. Many people see this manuscript as his farewell to literature. It certainly reads like that, although Enid Starkie believes that it was Rimbaud's farewell to a certain kind of literature--visionary, mystical, growing out of the selfish and hallucinatory lifestyle that had crashed to a halt only a few months before with his shooting and the jailing of Verlaine--and a commitment to something more humble and realistic. "Well, now I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies," Rimbaud wrote. He hoped that the French literary world would offer him the forgiveness that he was now prepared to seek, and give his book favorable reviews. He the proceeded to Paris to see how his book had fared.
Favorable reviews? He must have been mad. To those literary men, the dilettantes Rimbaud had mocked and despised a year or two earlier, Rimbaud was the insolent catamite who had destroyed their old friend Verlaine: sponged off him, wrecked his marriage, corrupted his soul and ruined his life, and then, when he had used him up, had turned him in to the police to face hard labor in a Belgian jail.
We have an eyewitness account of Rimbaud on the day when the last door in Paris had been slammed in his face, at the moment when he realized that the literary career he'd embraced so passionately was over. It was the evening of the first of November, 1873, a holiday, and the cafés and restaurants were crowded. The poet Poussin had joined some writer friends at the Café Tabourey. He noticed a young man alone in a corner, staring into space. It was Rimbaud. Poussin went over and offered to buy him a drink. "Rimbaud was pale and even more silent than usual," he later recalled. "His face, indeed his whole bearing, expressed a powerful and fearsome bitterness." For the rest of his life Poussin "retained from that meeting a memory of dread."
When the café closed, Rimbaud--who hadn't spoken to anyone all evening--set out to walk home through the late autumn countryside. It took him about a week. When he got to Charleville he built a bonfire and burned all his manuscripts. He didn't bother to collect the remaining five hundred copies of his book from the printer--they moldered there until they were discovered by a Belgian lawyer in 1901. That should have been the end of it. But Rimbaud couldn't quite let go. The following year in London he carefully copied out his prose poems, gathered under the title Illuminations. The year after that he tried to get them published. For the anguished but brilliant Rimbaud, giving up poetry must have been akin to weaning himself from a potent drug.
Anguished and Brilliant.......2000-09-28
In the collection of prose poems and verse fragments that make up the short book A Season in Hell, begun in April 1873 in an outbuilding at Rimbaud's family farm at the village of Roche and completed by the end of August, he looks back in despair over his life as a poet. In one of the fragments, titled "Ravings number two" he talks about "the history of one of my follies. I invented the colors of the vowels!" he claims, and goes on: "I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible...to all the senses...I expressed the inexpressible. I defined vertigos...I ended up regarding my mental disorder as sacred."
Rimbaud draws a picture of his affair with Verlaine in cynical terms, painting Verlaine as a weak and foolish virgin and himself as an "infernal bridegroom," a monster of cruelty. It wasn't far from the truth.
The last chapter of A Season in Hell is titled "Farewell." It has an air of exhaustion and relief about it. "I have tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues. I believed I had acquired supernatural powers. Well! I must bury my imagination and my memories. A fine fame as an artist and story-teller swept away! I! I who called myself magus or angel, exempt from all morality, I am given back to the earth, with a task to pursue, and wrinkled reality to embrace. A peasant!" A Season In Hell was finished in August 1873. Rimbaud somehow persuaded his thrifty mother to pay to have the book printed in Belgium. He sent his six author's copies to his friends and to men of letters in Paris. Many people see this manuscript as his farewell to literature. It certainly reads like that, although Enid Starkie believes that it was Rimbaud's farewell to a certain kind of literature--visionary, mystical, growing out of the selfish and hallucinatory lifestyle that had crashed to a halt only a few months before with his shooting and the jailing of Verlaine--and a commitment to something more humble and realistic. "Well, now I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies," Rimbaud wrote. He hoped that the French literary world would offer him the forgiveness that he was now prepared to seek, and give his book favorable reviews. He the proceeded to Paris to see how his book had fared.
Favorable reviews? He must have been mad. To those literary men, the dilettantes Rimbaud had mocked and despised a year or two earlier, Rimbaud was the insolent catamite who had destroyed their old friend Verlaine: sponged off him, wrecked his marriage, corrupted his soul and ruined his life, and then, when he had used him up, had turned him in to the police to face hard labour in a Belgian jail.
We have an eyewitness account of Rimbaud on the day when the last door in Paris had been slammed in his face, at the moment when he realized that the literary career he'd embraced so passionately was over. It was the evening of the first of November, 1873, a holiday, and the cafés and restaurants were crowded. The poet Poussin had joined some writer friends at the Café Tabourey. He noticed a young man alone in a corner, staring into space. It was Rimbaud. Poussin went over and offered to buy him a drink. "Rimbaud was pale and even more silent than usual," he later recalled. "His face, indeed his whole bearing, expressed a powerful and fearsome bitterness." For the rest of his life Poussin "retained from that meeting a memory of dread."
When the café closed, Rimbaud--who hadn't spoken to anyone all evening--set out to walk home through the late autumn countryside. It took him about a week. When he got to Charleville he built a bonfire and burned all his manuscripts. He didn't bother to collect the remaining five hundred copies of his book from the printer--they moldered there until they were discovered by a Belgian lawyer in 1901. That should have been the end of it. But Rimbaud couldn't quite let go. The following year in London he carefully copied out his prose poems, gathered together under the title, Illuminations. The year after that he tried to get them published. For the anguished but brilliant Rimbaud, giving up poetry must have been akin to weaning himself from a potent drug.
Book Description
Enduring icon of creativity, authenticity, and rebellion, and the subject of numerous new biographies, Arthur Rimbaud is one of the most repeatedly scrutinized literary figures of the last half-century. Yet almost thirty years have elapsed without a major new translation of his writings. Remedying this state of affairs is
Rimbaud Complete, the first and only truly complete edition of Rimbaud’s work in English, translated, edited, and introduced by Wyatt Mason.
Mason draws on a century of Rimbaud scholarship to choreograph a superbly clear-eyed presentation of the poet’s works. He arranges Rimbaud’s writing chronologically, based on the latest manuscript evidence, so readers can experience the famously teenaged poet’s rapid evolution, from the lyricism of “Sensation” to the groundbreaking early modernism of A Season in Hell.
In fifty pages of previously untranslated material, including award-winning early verses, all the fragmentary poems, a fascinating early draft of A Season in Hell, a school notebook, and multiple manuscript versions of the important poem “O saisons, ô chateaux,”
Rimbaud Complete displays facets of the poet unknown to American readers. And in his Introduction, Mason revisits the Rimbaud myth, addresses the state of disarray in which the poet left his work, and illuminates the intricacies of the translator’s art.
Mason has harnessed the precision and power of the poet’s rapidly changing voice: from the delicate music of a poem such as “Crows” to the mature dissonance of the Illuminations,
Rimbaud Complete unveils this essential poet for a new generation of readers.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Content - Unpleasant Translation.......2007-01-12
The book contains the complete works of Arthur Rimbaud in chronological order, in both English and French. There is an excellent short introduction to Rimbaud, along with a very nice explanation of the translation process, and the difficulties inherent in translating poetry.
Sadly, the translations presented in this volume do a grave injustice to Rimbaud. In his efforts to render an accurate contemporary translation, Mason removes nearly every vestige of poetic rhythm and rhyme from his poems. Even though my French is inadequate to enjoy Rimbaud in his original language, I found myself turning frequently to the French versions of the poems, as I tried to understand how a poet of Rimbaud's reputation could possibly write so poorly. In poem after poem, the French version was more readable than Mason's translation even though I could only understand about a third of what I read.
I ended up exchanging the book for a version translated by Paul Schmidt, which was much more readable. Ironically, Mason offers criticism of Schmidt's translation in his book.
While this book might be a worthwhile addition to the library of someone already familiar with Rimbaud, I would recommend that any person seeking an introduction to his poetry look elsewhere for a translation.
climb aboard the drunken boat.......2006-11-25
Rimbaud is treated well at the hands of Wyatt Mason: the original's fine sense of line and form is well respected, the English is clear and concise.
If you have not done so, you should absolutey read Rimbaud immediately, along with Baudelaire. Not only will your friends drool in envy of your knowledge of obscure French artistic movements but you will immediately become better looking and capable of mythic feats of romance.
Rimbaud - Influence on Kerouac, Dylan & Patti Smith.......2006-05-10
Interestingly enough, one of the films that Leo DiCaprio made before Titanic was a film about Rimbaud entitled Total Eclipse. You can probably find it on tape or DVD if you want a quick background in film. It's an OK film.
Rimbaud was a genius -- not just in poetry, but he was probably one of maybe the 10 smartest kids in France at the time -- I'm just guessing -- but he was very smart.
That's one of the more interesting aspects of his life as a poet -- he stopped writing at age 19 -- yet he is one of Frances most famous poets!
I read a recent biography that examines his entire life and goes into much more detail regarding his life in Africa. He died in his late 30s if my memory serves me correctly.
On a superficial level he talked about using drugs for the total derangement of the senses --as a way to reinvent oneself as a new being. But his influence on Kerouac et. al. really goes beyond that. While Baudelaire was seen in many ways as the father of modernism, Rimbaud already started to foreshadow postmodernism. By postmodernism I mean an ultra-awareness of history, a kind of feeling of being outside of time, of looking down on time from a lofty perch.
He rebelled against all the institutions of the time -- the Church, the State, the family, etc...
It is the rebellious spirit that has captivated so many who have come since.
If I started quoting his work, I'd be here all night, but I have noticed (and purchased) a new complete collection of his work edited and with an introduction by Wyatt Mason, Modern Library Press. Its in all the stores in the States -- don't know if it's available in the UK and elsewhere, but it includes letters and other goodies.
Perry
Hail Rimbaud!.......2004-05-15
This is said to be the most complete collection of Rimbaud's works ever collected in English and includes some of his early schoolwork, rough drafts, incomplete writings notes & ideas. To a Rimbaudophile such as myself this is an incredible resource; and perhaps the last great addition to the study of Rimbaud and his poetry ever, unless, miracle of miracles, the lost manuscript of "La Chasse Spirituelle" were to be discovered in some dead French book collector's attic. Alas! Until then we must be satisfied (and grateful) with being able to read and compare early drafts of A Season in Hell, or some early texts translated into English for the first time. In addition to this volume, Mason has also collected Rimbaud's correspondence in "I Promise to be Good" (2003). This companion volume includes a previously unpublished photograph of Rimbaud in Abyssinia (on the cover & inside as well) and reads like an autobiography of sorts.
I've put Wyatt Mason's translations of Rimbaud on my best books of all time list ("Heavy Hitters, Inspiration, & Enlightenment") because Rimbaud's poetry was revolutionary in its time and influential in our own. Mason's goal is to ". . . find common, rather than middle, ground between the two poles represented by Fowlie and Schmidt," (other translations worth comparing) and his focus is on how Rimbaud "might have written" were he writing in English. I suppose it all comes down to what concepts of translation you prefer; for the most part I like Mason's style and the rhythm and structure of the originals seem to be there. It is always interesting to see different authors, and especially poets, interpret original texts in a foreign language. The fact is not everyone will be pleased with the results (cf. critical reviews on Amazon). The solution? Learn French and read the texts in the original. Short of that, or in addition, read multiple translations (I recommend Oliver Bernard's prose translations in the Penguin paperback for a more direct approach) and come to your own conclusions. Better yet, translate Rimb's poems on your own! In the end, Rimbaud is difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate regardless of whether or not you understand French). To read Rimbaud is one thing, but to see and feel him is quite another. Mason does his best.
This latest addition to the long list of Rimbaud translations and biographies proves that Rimbaud belongs to no individual biographer or translator, but rather to the seekers, wanders, poets, and workers of the world searching for that "I is an other" sense of themselves, settling for nothing less than a total reinvention of love. In the end, what the poems mean to you and how you choose to incorporate them into your life will be the most important factor in deciding whether or not you'll buy into the fruits of Wyatt Mason's own poetic endeavors, and ultimately, Rimbaud's. I for one, think this is an indispensible addition for any student of Rimbaud's life and works.
Skip the Introduction.......2004-05-11
Much of the introduction is about Rimbaud's life and the conflicting stories, as well as translation and why he translated Rimbaud the way he did. My advice is to you is to buy the book and skip Mason's Introduction altogether... and go straight to the actual poems. This book offers the most complete version of Rimbaud that I've found. I own other versions of Illuminations and A Season in Hell. I truly enjoyed reading Rimbaud's earlier poems letters. They show his boldness... his progression into a visionary poet... and his excitement towards writing.
Mason's translations of the Illuminations and A Season in Hell are quite solid... and they alone make this book worth purchasing.
Book Description
The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content.
Poems: Rimbaud contains selections from Rimbaud's work, including over 100 poems, selected prose, "Letter to Paul Demeny, May 15, 1871," and an index of first lines.
Customer Reviews:
Youth can be a season in hell.......2006-07-14
This is the work of the original, the authentic, the one and only "enfant terrible". A powerful and magical ability to create images at the same time beautiful, repulsive and apocalyptic. The demoniac genius of Rimbaud shows up since his first poems and in his prose, notably the included "A Season in Hell". Rimbaud incarnates rage, suffering, the rebellious nature of every youth who is at the same time intelligent and sensitive. He gives and takes no quarter. He is not a complaining grunge type. He is mad at the gods, and human to the bone. He makes subsequent rock stars look like sissies. He travels dangerous ground and comes through very much alive and kicking. Some of my favorites: "Sun and Flesh", "Ophelie", "Venus Anadyomene", "Sleeping in the Valley", "The Crows", "Seven-year poets", of course the mesmerizing "The Drunken Boat", "What is that for us, my heart" (a dark presage of terrorism), "Memoire", and the wonderful "Comedy of Thirst", which includes these wonderful verses:
Peut-etre un soir m'attends
ou je boirai tranquille
en quelque vieille ville
et mourrai plus content:
puisque je suis patient.
Poetry & Prose: An honest vision of a tortured life........2003-12-03
Arthur Rimbaud's Poems and Prose speak a dark truth of life.
Rimbaud does not shield you from the realities of his time or his life. He writes of all the things he encountered as a child, soldier, poet, lover, and vagabond.
His poems are of his youth and his prose are of his life. The poems do not depict a romantic childhood but of one with struggle and cynism that he carried all his life. To read his poems is to experience his youthful assurance that the world was flawed. You will be affected by his dark perception of the world and awed by his realistic and symbolic style.
As for his prose, he writes of a tortured existence and bohemian lifestyle steeped in a wild reality that was his life.
My favorit passages from this book of poems and prose:
"One evening, I sat Beauty in my lap. - And I found her bitter. - And I cursed her." from A Season in Hell
"It is found again. What? Eternity. It is the sea, Gone with the sun." from Eternity
I very much enjoyed this book and thought Rimbaud changed modern poetry and writing and brought us into a new realistic age in writing. He opened the doors for some of the great 20th century writers.
A beautiful vision of youth in the mind of a genius.......1999-05-12
Rimbaud is one of the most impressive poets of all time, never compromising himself to the drudgery of the world around him. If at any point in your life you have begun to feel like a free spirit, read Rimbaud's youthful verse and be prepared to percieve life transcedentally. Within his surrealistic vision you will find the vulnerability of weakness with the demonic anger of a pocessed soul. There are poems that stir every feeling of what it's like to be young, and free and drunk on the pleasures of life. A true poet.
We are not serious when we are 17..........1997-09-23
We are not serious when we are 17...but are we more serious at 18 or later?
He was so young, so sensitive; he wanted to find life, find a place, the place.Like Baudelaire, he was searching his own way, but not in a dark state of mind. The keywords to go through his works are: rebellion,youth and innocence...He is sometimes cruel but I think it's to hide his fragility...I like his childish way of creating; direct but full of hidden love he couldn't give.Read him and you'll probably find that we are not serious at 17 , but that although he found himself not serious, he was so intelligent and receptive to world despite his innocence...
Book Description
This excellently translated collection of witty, sarcastic, and expressive works includes the complete version of Rimbaud's autobiographical A Season in Hell, his entire Illuminations, a large selection of early verse poems, and "The Drunken Boat," considered by many to be his masterpiece.
Customer Reviews:
Good translation of Rimbaud's works.......2007-05-14
Rimbaud's poetry is shaped by powerful events in his life.
The translations are, on the whoe, well done.
Book Description
The enfant terrible of French letters, Jean-Nicholas-Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91) was a defiant and precocious youth who wrote some of the most remarkable prose and poetry of the nineteenth century, all before leaving the world of verse by the age of twenty-one. More than a century after his death, the young rebel-poet continues to appeal to modern readers as much for his turbulent life as for his poetry; his stormy affair with fellow poet Paul Verlaine and his nomadic adventures in eastern Africa are as iconic as his hallucinatory poems and symbolist prose.
The first translation of the poet's complete works when it was published in 1966, Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters introduced a new generation of Americans to the alienated genius—among them the Doors's lead singer Jim Morrison, who wrote to translator Wallace Fowlie to thank him for rendering the poems accessible to those who "don't read French that easily." Forty years later, the book remains the only side-by-side bilingual edition of Rimbaud's complete poetic works.
Thoroughly revising Fowlie's edition, Seth Whidden has made changes on virtually every page, correcting errors, reordering poems, adding previously omitted versions of poems and some letters, and updating the text to reflect current scholarship; left in place are Fowlie's literal and respectful translations of Rimbaud's complex and nontraditional verse. Whidden also provides a foreword that considers the heritage of Fowlie's edition and adds a bibliography that acknowledges relevant books that have appeared since the original publication. On its fortieth anniversary, Rimbaud remains the most authoritative—and now, completely up-to-date—edition of the young master's entire poetic ouvre.
Customer Reviews:
Love Edgar Allen Poe, Love Rimbaud.......2007-02-24
If you love Poe, you will love Rimbaud. He isn't as insane as Poe but his writings as dark and mysterious. He shouldn't have died at age 19.
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Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library Classics)
I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (Modern Library Classics)
Time of the Assassins a Study of Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (Perennial Classics)
Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition
