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    A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Other Poems
    A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Other Poems
    A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Other Poems
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Other Poems

    By Arthur Rimbaud

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    Arthur Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell" is a prose poem loosely divided into nine parts. In one part of the poem the poet portrays quite transparently his own relationship with French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. The two had a brief alcohol and drug fueled affair which finally came to end when Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist in a drunken rage. "A Season in Hell," which has been referred to as a pioneering example of modern symbolism, is included in this collection along with "The Drunken Boat," a fragmented first-person narrative which vividly describes the drifting and sinking of a boat lost at sea. It is probably the best known work from the representative selection of early poems by the writer presented here in this volume. Also included in this edition is a selection of poems from Rimbaud's masterpiece "Illuminations." What is most remarkable about Rimbaud's poetry is that it was produced almost entirely between the ages of seventeen and twenty, when Rimbaud would abruptly give up writing entirely in favor of a more steady working life. His writing he contended was a product of his reckless lifestyle to which he was resolved to abandon.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781420950311
    A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Other Poems

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      Book preview

      A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Other Poems - Arthur Rimbaud

      cover.jpg

      A SEASON IN HELL, THE DRUNKEN BOAT, AND OTHER POEMS

      BY ARTHUR RIMBAUD

      TRANSLATED BY JAMES SIBLEY WATSON AND LIONEL ABEL

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5030-4

      eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5031-1

      This edition copyright © 2014

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      A SEASON IN HELL

      Bad Blood

      Night in Hell

      Delires I. Foolish Virgin——The Infernal Bridegroom

      The Impossible

      The Lightning

      Morning

      Adieu

      EARLY POEMS

      FAUN'S HEAD

      MY BOHEMIAN

      RAGAMUFFINS

      THE POET AT SEVEN

      THE POOR IN CHURCH

      THE STOLEN HEART

      THE HANDS OF JEANNE-MARIE

      THE DRUNKEN BOAT - First Translation

      THE DRUNKEN BOAT - Second Translation

      THE LICE PICKERS

      VOWELS

      Selected Poems from ILLUMINATIONS

      VERTIGO

      TEAR

      BANQUETS OF HUNGER

      COMEDY OF THIRST

      SONG OF THE HIGHEST TOWER

      MEMORY

      DAWN

      BOTTOM

      DEMOCRACY

      BARBARIC

      INTRODUCTION

      The whole of Arthur Rimbaud's work, on which poets have fed, to use the term of Paul Valéry, for some sixty-five years, was completed in four years of adolescence, between the ages of sixteen and twenty.

      So Rimbaud was almost magically precocious. However it is not necessary to credit the claim of his brother-in-law and most foolish biographer, Paterne Berrichon, that Rimbaud proceeded to distinguish himself almost immediately after he was born. Such myths should really be discredited; they can only serve to trivialize a life that has become a legend insofar as whatever was extraordinary in it was also meaningful. Precocity was essential to the characteristic genius of Rimbaud; for that very reason it should be taken seriously and not assimilated, as by Berrichon, to nursery lore. Rimbaud, bear in mind, was not simply an exceptional poet considering his youth—like say Chatterton—he was much more remarkable than that. Somehow he was able to utilize his youthfulness and innocence of the world as principles of discovery and origination, as other poets have utilized their experience of life, as Goethe exploited his wisdom, Villon his crimes.

      Rimbaud was born in Northern France, in the provinces of the Ardennes. At fifteen, a prize-winning scholar at the Collège de Charleville, with a thorough training in Latin and French literatures, he began to write verses. At sixteen he was already an original poet with a fully developed attitude of antagonism for the values of his environment. He was for poetry, revolution, Paris, against religion, the bourgeoisie and the provinces. The temper of his mind at that time can be seen from the letter he wrote to his schoolmaster, George Izambard, when news came of the first French reverses of the Franco-Prussian war. Rimbaud had nothing but contempt for the agitation of the good bourgeois of the Ardennes. The blessed people! he wrote, these bravos who go about with pat phrases on their Ungues act otherwise than the besieged of Metz and Strassbourg. They are frightful; these retired grocers who don their uniforms again. It is sickening, it simply stinks the way these notaries, glaziers, collectors, carpenters, and all those fat bellies with rifles go playing at super-patriotism around the gates of Mezières. My country rises up! Personally I should prefer to see her sitting down. Don't shift your feet, that's my motto. . . . Paris doesn't care what happens to us—not a single new book! This is deadly. . . . A fine spot to be in! I am an exile in my own country!

      He was also an exile in his home. The father, a retired infantry officer of the French colonial army, had abandoned the family and Rimbaud could have seen little of him. The mother, Vitalie Rimbaud, who took charge of the household, was a descendant of great landed proprietors of the provinces, a woman intensely proud and masterful, bigoted, avaricious, and with a horror of bohemianism which was doubtless augmented by her husband's desertion. She had no use for daydreaming, idleness or poetry, and naturally was continually at odds with her son. She even kicked up a row because Izambard lent Rimbaud a copy of Les Misérables, a book on the Index. She was a strong-willed countrywoman, but in will at least her son resembled her. Rimbaud sold his armful of academic prizes for twenty francs and went off to Paris.

      He was arrested on his arrival at the Gare de l'Est and sent back. But he did not stay for long. He was off again shortly, first to Brussels and then twice to Paris. All of these trips ended ignominously in repentant returns to Charleville.

      On the last of these journeys, which Rimbaud undertook on foot and without a penny in his pocket, it may have been his intention to enroll in the Commune. A few days before his departure he wrote to Izambard: I am going to become a worker. This perspective comforts me when rage and fury urge me towards the battle in Paris where so many workers are dying even while I write to you. But to work now? Never, never! Now I am on strike. Rimbaud had not read Marx but he was familiar with the writings of Rousseau, Helvetius, Mably, Morelly and Babeuf, and according to Delahaye he was engaged at that time in drawing up a constitution for the future communist state. It is not known whether he got to Paris on this trip, and

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