arthur rimbaud
DESCRIPTION
arthur rimbaud, poetry, poem, french romantic.TRANSCRIPT
A new translation
by
Simon Elmer & Eliot Albers
Long ago, if I remember well, my life was a feast where
all hearts were open, where all wines flowed.
One evening, I sat beauty on my knees. − She tasted
bitter. − And I spat her out.
I took up arms against justice.
I took to my heels. O witches, O poverty, O hate, I have
entrusted my treasure to you!
I purged all human hope from my mind. On every joy I
pounced silently, like a wild beast, and strangled it.
I called on my executioners, as I lay dying, to let me bite
the butts of their rifles. I called on plagues to smother me
with sand and blood. Unhappiness was my god. I stretched
myself out in the mud. I dried myself in the air of crime. And
I played sly tricks on madness.
Spring brought me the terrifying laughter of an idiot.
But recently, finding myself on the point of uttering my
last croak, I dreamed of searching for the key to the ancient
feast where I might, perhaps, recover my appetite.
Charity is the key. − This inspiration proves I dreamt it!
‘You will always be a hyena, etc. . . .’ cries the demon
who crowned me with such fragrant poppies. ‘Seek your
death with all your lusts, your selfishness, and all the
cardinal sins.’
Ah! I’ve taken too much. − But, dear Satan, I implore you,
show a less glaring eye! And while waiting for the few small
acts of cowardice still to come, you who love in a writer the
absence of descriptive or discursive faculties, for you I tear
out these few hideous pages from my notebook of the
damned.
Bad Blood
——
From my Gaulish ancestors I have inherited blue-white
eyes, a narrow skull, and clumsiness in battle. I find that
my dress is as barbaric as theirs. But I don’t butter my
hair.
The Gauls were flayers of beasts, and the most inept
grass scorchers of their time.
From them I inherit: idolatry and the love of sacrilege −
oh! all the vices: anger, lust − a magnificent lust − and
above all deceit and idleness.
I have a horror of all trades. Masters and labourers, all
are base peasants. The hand that holds the pen is no
different from the hand that holds the plough. − What a
century of hands! − I will never have my hand. Domesticity,
moreover, leads me too far astray. The dignity of begging
irritates me. Criminals digust me as if they were castrated:
I’m intact, so it’s all the same to me.
And yet! who made my tongue so false that it has
guided and safeguarded my idleness until now? Without
employing even my body in order to live, and as lazy as a
toad, I have still manged to live everywhere. I know all the
families of Europe. − I mean families like my own, who owe
everything to the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’. − I have
known the sons of every family!
———
If only I had ancestors at some point in the history of
France!
But no, nothing.
It is very clear to me that I have always belonged to an
inferior race. I cannot understand revolt. My race never
rose up except to pillage: like wolves fighting over the beast
they did not kill.
I recall the history of France, eldest daughter of the
Church. As a serf, I would have made the journey to the
Holy Land; I hold, in my head, the routes through the
Swabian plains, images of Byzantium, the ramparts of
Jerusalem. The cult of the Virgin Mary and tenderness for
the Crucified well up inside me among a thousand profane
visions. − I am seated, leprous, on broken pots and nettles,
at the foot of a sun-scoured wall. − Later, as a mercenary, I
would have bivouacked under German nights.
Ah! once more I dance the witches’ sabbath in a red
clearing, with old women and children.
I don’t remember further back than this land and the
coming of Christianity. I shall never tire of picturing myself
in that past. But always alone, without family; and what
language did I speak then? I never see myself at the
councils of Christ, nor at the councils of Lords − those
representatives of Christ.
What was I in the last century? I only recognise myself
as I am today. No more vagabonds, no more wars with
obscure origins. Everything has been taken over by the
inferior race − the so-called ‘people’: reason, the nation and
science.
Oh! science! It has reconsidered everything. For the
body and the soul − the viaticum − we now have medicine
and philosophy, old wives’ remedies and rearranged
popular songs. And the diversions of princes and games
they forbade! Geography, cosmography, mechanics,
chemistry . . .
Science, the new nobility! Progress. The world marches
on! Why would it cease to turn?
It is the vision of numbers. We are moving towards
Spirit. What I say is certain, oracular. I understand, but not
knowing how to explain myself without using pagan words,
I prefer to hold my tongue.
———
The pagan blood returns! Spirit is near, so why doesn’t
Christ help me by granting my soul nobility and freedom?
Alas! the Gospel has passed. The Gospel! The Gospel . . .
I wait for God, greedily. I am of an inferior race for all
eternity.
Here I am on the beach at Brittany. Let the cities light
up in the evening. My day is done, and I am leaving
Europe. The sea air will burn my lungs, lost climates will
tan my skin. Swimming, trampling the grass, hunting and
above all smoking; drinking alcohol as strong as boiling
metal − just as my dear ancestors did around their fires.
I will return with limbs of iron, dark skin and a furious
eye: by this mask I’ll be judged to be the member of a
powerful race. I’ll have gold. I’ll be idle and brutal. Women,
take care of these ferocious invalids returned from hot
countries. I’ll become involved in political affairs. Saved!
But now I am accursed. I loathe my country. The best
thing in life is a really pissed sleep on the beach.
———
You cannot leave. − Let’s follow the roads here once
again, burdened with my vice − the vice that sunk its roots
of suffering into me as soon as I reached the age of reason
− which ascends to the sky, batters me, throws me back
again and drags me after it.
The last innocence and the last shyness. Or so it is
said. I’ll not carry my betrayals and disgusts into the world.
Let’s go! The march, the burden, the desert, boredom
and anger.
To whom can I sell myself? What beast must I worship?
What holy image are we attacking? Whose heart will I
break? What lie must I tell? − In whose blood will I march?
Rather, save me from justice. − The hard life, simple
brutishness: − to lift the coffin’s lid up with a withered fist,
lie down and suffocate. No senility or danger for us. Terror
is un-French.
− Ah! I’m so alone that I offer my longings for perfection
to any graven image.
O my abnegation, O my marvellous charity! But here
below!
De profundis, Domine, what an idiot I am!
———
While still a child I admired the unrepentant criminal
on whom the prison door always closes. I visited the inns
and furnished rooms he had sanctified with his presence. I
saw with his eyes the blue sky and the labour of flowering
fields. I followed the scent of his fate through cities. He was
stronger than a saint, had more good sense than a
traveller, and he − he alone! − was the witness to his glory
and right.
On the road, through winter nights, without shelter,
naked and hungry, a voice clenched my frozen heart:
‘Weakness or strength: there you are, it’s strength. You
don’t know where you are going or why, so enter anywhere,
answer everything. You cannot be killed, anymore than if
you were a corpse.’ In the morning, my stare was so
vacant, my expression so dead, that those I encountered
perhaps did not see me.
In cities the mud suddenly seemed to be red and black,
like a mirror when the lamp moves about in the next room,
like a treasure in the forest! Good luck! I cried, and saw a
sea of flames and smoke in the sky; and on the left and on
the right, every kind of richness flaming like a million
thunderbolts.
But orgies and the camaraderie of women were denied
me. Not even a companion. I saw myself in front of a baying
mob, facing the firing-squad, weeping over the
unhappiness they wouldn’t have been capable of
understanding, and forgiving them! − like Joan of Arc! −
‘Priests, professors, masters, you are wrong to turn me over
to Justice. I have never belonged to this people. I have
never been Christian. I am of the race that sang under
torture. I do not understand your laws. I have no moral
sense, I am a brute. You are making a mistake . . . ”
Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am a beast, a
nigger. But I can be saved. You are false niggers, you
maniacs, ferocious and greedy. Merchant, you’re a nigger;
magistrate, you’re a nigger; general, you’re a nigger;
emperor, you old mange, you’re a nigger too: you have
drunk untaxed spirits from Satan’s still. − These people are
inspired by fever and cancer. Invalids and old men so
respectable they asked to be boiled. − The shrewdest thing
would be to leave this continent, where madness roams to
provide hostages for these wretches. I am entering the true
kingdom of the children of Ham.
Do I know nature yet? Do I know me? − No more words.
I will bury the dead in my stomach. Cries, drums, dance,
dance, dance, dance! I can’t even see the hour when the
white men will land and I will fall into nothingness.
Hunger, thirst, cries, dance, dance, dance, dance!
———
The white men are landing! The cannon! They’ll force us
to be baptised, put on clothes and work.
I have been shot in the heart by grace. Ah! I had not
foreseen this!
I’ve done nothing wrong. My days will be light and I
shall be spared repentance. I’ll not have gone through the
torments of the soul, almost dead to goodness, from which
a flame as severe as funeral tapers rises. The fate of the
family’s son: a premature coffin covered with clear tears. No
doubt debauchery is stupid, vice is stupid, and what is
rotten must be thrown away. But the clock won’t be able to
strike anything but the hour of pure pain! Am I going to be
carried off like a child, to play in paradise in ignorance of
unhappiness?
Quick! Aren’t there other ways of living? − To sleep in
the midst of wealth is impossible. Wealth has always been
public property. Divine love alone offers the keys to science.
I see that nature is only a spectacle of plenitude. Farewell
chimeras, ideals, errors!
The reasonable song of the angels rises up from the
rescue ship: it is divine love. − Two loves! I may die of
earthly love, die of devotion. I have left behind me souls
whose suffering will only increase at my going! You chose
me from among the shipwrecked, but what about the
friends I left behind?
Save them!
Reason is born in me. The world is good. I will bless life.
I will love my brothers. These aren’t childish promises. Nor
is it the hope of escaping old age and death. God gave me
strength, and I praise God.
———
Boredom is no longer my love. Rage, debauchery,
madness: I know all ambitions and disasters − all my
burden is laid aside. Let us appreciate, without vertigo, the
extent of my innocence.
I am no longer capable of asking even for the comfort of
a beating. I don’t believe I’ve embarked on a wedding with
Jesus Christ as my father in law.
I’m not a hostage to my own reason. I have said: God. I
want freedom in salvation: but how can I pursue it?
Frivolous appetites have deserted me. No more need for
devotion or divine love. Not that I regret the age of tender
hearts. Each is right, contempt and charity. I maintain my
place at the top of this angelic ladder of common sense.
As for established happiness, domestic or otherwise . . .
no, I cannot. I’m too dissipated, too weak. Life blossoms
through work, an old truth: but my life isn’t heavy enough,
it soars up and floats far above all action, that cherished
centre of the turning world.
What an old maid I’m becoming, lacking the courage to
love death!
If only God would grant me a heavenly and aerial calm
and prayer − like ancient saints. − Saints! they are the
strong ones! Anchorites are like artists who are no longer
wanted!
An endless farce! My innocence would make me weep.
Life is a farce we all must play.
———
Enough! Here is the punishment. − Forward march!
Ah! my lungs are burning, my temples are pounding!
Night descends on my eyes, even in this sunlight! My
aching heart . . . my limbs . . .
Where are we going? Into battle? I’m too weak! The
others are advancing! Tools, weapons . . . time!
Fire! Shoot me! Now! Or I’ll surrender. − Cowards! I’ll
kill myself! I’ll throw myself under the horses’ hooves!
Ah! . . .
− I’ll get used to it.
This would be the French way, the path of honour!
Night of Hell
——
I swallowed a monstrous mouthful of poison. − Thrice
blessed be the counsel that came to me! − My entrails are
burning. The violence of the poison contorts my limbs,
deforms me and hurls me to the ground. I am dying of
thirst, I’m choking, but I can’t cry out. This is hell,
eternal punishment! See how the fire rises up again! I’m
burning, as I deserve to. Come on, demon!
I caught a glimpse of my conversion to goodness and
happiness, my salvation. How can I describe this vision,
when the air of hell will not carry the sound of hymns!
There were millions of charming creatures, a sweet
spiritual concert, strength and peace, noble ambitions −
what do I know!
Noble ambitions!
And this is what we call life! − If damnation truly is
eternal! Isn’t the man who tries to mutilate himself
damned then? I think I am in hell, therefore I am. It’s the
fault of the catechism. I’m a slave to my baptism.
Parents, you are the cause of both my unhappiness and
your own. − Poor innocents! Hell has no power over
pagans. − And still this is life! Later, the delights of
damnation will be all the greater. A crime, quick, so I can
fall into nothingness, condemned by human laws.
Shut up, will you shut up! . . . Shame and Reproach
are here: Satan says the fire is contemptible, my anger
ridiculous. − Enough! . . . Errors are whispered on their
breath, spells, sickly perfumes, insipid music. − And to
think that I hold truth in my hands, that I see justice:
my judgement is sound and certain, I am ready for
perfection . . . Pride. − The skin of my scalp is dry. Have
pity! Lord, I am afraid. I am thirsty, so thirsty! Oh!
childhood, the smell of grass, the sound of rain, water
from the lake lapping on pebbles, the moonlight when the
clock strikes twelve . . . that’s when the devil is in the
tower. Mary! Holy Virgin! . . . − The horror of my
stupidity.
Aren’t there any honest souls who wish me well down
there? . . . Come on . . . A pillow covers my mouth and
they can’t hear me, they are ghosts. Besides, no one ever
thinks of others. Stay away from me. I’m sure I’m
scorched.
The hallucinations are without number. In truth, this
is what I’ve always had: no more faith in history, and a
forgetfulness of principles. I’ll keep silent: or poets and
visionairies would be jealous. I’m a thousand times
richer than they, being as greedy as the ocean.
Ah! the clock of life just stopped. I am no longer in
the world. − Theology is right: hell is definitely down
below − and heaven up above. − Ecstasy, nightmares,
sleep in a nest of flames.
What malice there is in the attention one attracts in
the countryside . . . Satan, old Beelzebub, runs around
with the wild grain . . . Jesus walks over the crimson
brambles without breaking them . . . Jesus walked on
troubled waters. The lantern showed him standing before
us, pale, with long brown tresses, beside an emerald
wave . . .
I’m going to reveal all mysteries, religious and
natural: death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony −
nothingness. I am master of the phantasmagoria.
Listen! . . .
My talents are limitless! − There is no-one here and
there is someone: I wouldn’t want to spend my treasure.
− Do you want nigger songs, houri dances? Do you want
me to disappear, to dive in and search for the ring? Do
you? I will fashion gold and remedies.
Then trust in me, faith provides relief, guides us,
heals. Come all − even small children − that I may
console you, pour out my heart − my marvellous heart! −
to you. Poor men, workers! I am not asking for your
prayers: your trust alone will suffice.
− And think of me. This hardly makes me miss the
world. Fortunately, I no longer suffer. My life was nothing
more than sweet extravagancies, it’s too bad.
Screw it! Let’s pull every face imaginable.
No doubt about it, we are outside this world. No more
sounds. And my touch has gone. Ah! my castle, my
Saxon lands, my willow grove. The evenings, mornings,
nights, days . . . How tired I am!
I should have a hell for my anger, a hell for my pride
− and a hell of caresses; a concert of hells.
I am dying of weariness. It’s the grave, I’m going to
the worms, horror of horrors! Satan, old joker, you want
to dissolve me with your charms. But I object. I object!
Give me a prod with your pitchfork, or a drop of fire.
Ah! to come back to life again! To stare at our
deformities. And that poison, that kiss a thousand times
accursed! My weakness, the world’s cruelty! My God,
have pity on me, hide me, I live so badly! − I am hidden
and I am not.
The fire rises up again with its damned.
Delirium
I
——
THE FOOLISH VIRGIN
——
THE INFERNAL BRIDEGROOM
Let’s listen to the confession of a companion in hell:
‘O heavenly Bridegroom, my Lord, do not refuse the
confession of this, the most unhappy of your servants. I am
lost. I’m pissed. I am impure. What a life!
‘Forgive me, heavenly Father, forgive me! Oh, forgive
me! What tears! And more still to come, I hope!
‘Later, I will come to know the heavenly Bridegroom! I
was born to be his slave. − But the other one can beat me
now!
‘At this moment, I’m at the nadir of this world! O my
friends! . . . no, not my friends . . . Never such delirium or
torture as this . . . How ridiculous.
‘Oh! I suffer and cry. I truly suffer. And yet, burdened
as I am with the contempt of the most contemptible hearts,
everything is permitted me.
‘Finally, let me admit this, even if I have to repeat it
twenty times over − it’ll sound just as dead, just as
insignificant.
‘I am a slave to the infernal Bridegroom, he who led
foolish virgins astray. He really is a demon. He’s not a
ghost, not a phantom. But I, who have lost all reason, who
am damned and dead to the world − I cannot be killed! −
how can I describe him to you? I no longer even know how
to speak. I am in mourning, weeping and afraid. Soothe my
brow, O Lord, if you will, if you only would!
‘I am a widow . . . I used to be a widow . . . Yes, once
upon a time I was very serious, and I was not born to
become a skeleton! . . . He was almost a child . . . I was
seduced by his mysterious delicacy. I forgot all my human
duty in order to follow him. But what a life! The real life is
absent. We are not of this world. I trail after him, I have to.
And often he rages at me, at me, a poor sinner. The demon!
He is a demon, you know, he is not a man.
‘He said: “I do not like women. Love as we know it has
to be reinvented. All women want these days is security.
Once they get it, their hearts grow cold and their beauty is
neglected: only cold disdain remains, the food of marriage
today. Or else I see women, showing signs of happiness,
who could have been close friends, being devoured by
brutes as sensitive as logs . . . ”
‘I listen to him turning infamy into glory, cruelty into
charm. “I belong to an ancient race: my ancestors were
Norsemen; they used to pierce their sides and drink their
own blood. − I’ll slice gashes over my entire body and cover
it with tattoos. I want to be as hideous as a Mongol: you’ll
see, I’ll howl in the streets. I want to grow mad with rage.
Never show me jewels, for I’d grovel and writhe on the floor.
I want my wealth to be spattered with blood. Never shall I
work . . . ”
‘On several nights, when his demon seized me, I
wrestled with him and we rolled together on the ground! −
Often, at night, drunk, he lay in wait for me in the street or
hidden in houses, to scare me half to death. − “They really
will cut my throat one day; it’ll be disgusting.” Oh! those
days when he tried to walk about with the air of a criminal!
‘At times he speaks, in a kind of tender dialect, of the
death that brings repentance, of the wretches who have to
live, of backbreaking labours and heartbreaking farewells.
In the dives where we used to get drunk, he would weep as
he watched those around us, reduced to animals by their
poverty. He used to pick up drunks in the dark streets. He
felt for them the pity of a bad mother for her children. − He
would walk off with the gentleness of a little girl going to
her catechism class. − He feigned knowledge of everything:
commerce, art, medicine. − And I went along with him, I
had to!
‘I saw the entire setting with which he surrounded
himself in his imagination − clothes, curtains, furniture: I
provided him with weapons and another face. I saw
everything that touched him as he would have wanted to
create it for himself. When his mind seemed sluggish I
followed him into strange and complex adventures − for too
long, whether good or evil: I was sure I could never enter
into his world. How many nights have I lain awake beside
his dear sleeping body wondering why he wanted to escape
from reality so badly. Never has a man had such a desire. I
recognised − without fearing for him − that he could be a
serious threat to society. − Does he, perhaps, possess the
secrets for changing life? No, I told myself, he is only
searching for them. In the end, his charity is bewitched,
and I am its prisoner. No-one else would have enough
strength − strength and despair! − to endure it, to be cared
for and loved by him. Besides, I couldn’t imagine anyone
else being his soulmate. I believe each of us sees his own
angel, never the angel of another. I lived in his soul as in a
palace that had been emptied so somebody as lacking in
nobility as myself would not be seen − that is all. Alas! I put
my trust in him. But what could he do with my despicable
and cowardly existence? He made me no better, if he didn’t
actually drive me to despair! Sometimes, sad and angry, I
would tell him: “I understand you.” He’d just shrug his
shoulders.
‘And so, my sadness increasing daily, and finding
myself gone astray in my own eyes − as in the eyes of all
those who would have liked to watch me, if I had not been
condemned forever to be forgotten by everyone! − more and
more did I hunger for his kindness. With his kisses and his
friendly embrace, it was indeed a heaven, a sombre heaven,
that I entered into, and where I would have liked to have
been left, poor, deaf, dumb and blind. I’d already grown
used to it. I pictured us as two good children, free to walk
in the Paradise of Sorrow. We got on with each other.
Amused by each other, we worked together. But, after a
passionate caress, he would say: “This will seem strange to
you, after what has happened, when I’m gone. When you
no longer have my arms around your neck, my heart to lay
your head on, or these lips pressed to your eyes. Because
there’ll come a time when I’ll have to leave, go far away.
Then I’ll have to help others: it’s my duty. No matter how
unattractive that will be . . . dear heart . . . ” Immediately I
saw myself as I would become when he was gone, overcome
with dizziness, hurled into that most terrifying of shadows:
death. I made him promise that he would never leave me.
Over and over he repeated it, that lover’s promise. And it
was as meaningless as when I told him: “I understand
you.”
‘Oh! I was never jealous of him. He will not leave me, I
thought. What would he do? He knows nothing, and he’ll
never work. He wants to live his life like a sleepwalker. But
once he’s on his own in the real world, will his kindness
and charity give him the right to do so? At times I forget the
pitiful state into which I’ve fallen: he’ll give me strength,
we’ll travel, hunt together in the desert, sleep on the
pavements of unknown cities, without cares or worries. Or
else I’ll wake up and our laws and customs will have
changed − all thanks to his magical powers; − or else the
world, although remaining the same, will leave me to my
desires, my joys and my casual ways. Oh! the life of
adventure that exists in children’s books − will you offer it
to me in recompense, to one who has suffered so much? He
cannot. I do not know what his ideal is. He has spoken of
his regrets, his hopes: but what are they to me? Does he
speak to God? Perhaps I should appeal to God. I’m in the
lowest depths of the abyss, and I no longer know how to
pray.
‘If he explained his sorrow to me, would I understand
it any more than his mockery? He belittles me, spending
hours making me feel ashamed of everything in this
world that has ever meant anything to me, and then he
grows indignant if I cry!
“ − You see this elegant young man entering that
beautiful, peaceful house over there? His name is Duval,
Dufour, Armand, Maurice − whatever. Some woman has
devoted her life to loving this miserable idiot: she is dead,
and is certainly a saint in heaven by now. One day you
will kill me, just as he has killed this women. That’s
what’s in store for us, what awaits all charitable hearts.”
Alas! there are days when all active men appeared to him
as the playthings of grotesque delirums, and he’d laugh
long and hideously. − But then he would recover his
manners of a young mother, a beloved sister. If only he
were not so wild, we would be saved! But even his
tenderness is mortal. I’ve made myself a slave to him. − I
must be mad!
‘One day, perhaps, he will miraculously disappear;
but I must know whether he is to ascend some heaven
again, so I might be present at the assumption of my
little friend!’
Strange couple!
Delirium
II
——
ALCHEMY OF THE WORD
——
My turn. The story of one of my lunacies.
For a long time I boasted of possessing every possible
landscape, and found the celebrated names of painting and
modern poetry laughable.
I liked stupid paintings, door panels, stage sets, the
back-drops for acrobats, signs, popular engravings, old-
fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books with bad
spelling, the novels read by our grandmothers, fairy tales,
little books from childhood, old operas, ridiculous refrains,
naïve rhythms.
I dreamed of crusades, of unrecorded voyages of
discovery, of republics with no history, of hushed-up
religious wars, of revolutions in customs, the movements of
races and continents: I believed in every kind of
enchantment.
I invented the colours of the vowels! − A black, E white,
I red, O blue, U green. − I regulated the form and movement
of each consonant, and, with instinctive rhythms, I
flattered myself with having invented a poetic language
accessible, one day, to all the senses. I reserved translation
rights.
At first it was a study. I wrote silences, nights, I
recorded the inexpressible. I captured moments of vertigo.
———
Far from birds, from flocks and village girls,
What did I drink, on my knees in the heather
Surrounded by a sweet wood of hazel trees,
In the warm and green mist of the afternoon?
What could I drink from that young Oise,
− Voiceless elms, flowerless grass, an overcast sky! −
Drinking from these yellow gourds, far from the hut
I loved? Some golden spirit that made me sweat.
I would have made a dubious sign for an inn.
− A storm came to chase the sky away. In the evening
Water from the woods sank into the virgin sand,
And God’s wind threw ice across the ponds.
Weeping, I saw gold − but could not drink. −
———
At four in the morning, in the summer,
The sleep of love still continues.
Beneath the trees the wind disperses
The smells of the evening feast.
Over there, in their vast woodyard,
Under the sun of the Hesperides,
Already hard at work − in shirtsleeves −
Are the Carpenters.
In their Deserts of moss, quietly,
They raise precious panelling
Where the city
Will paint fake skies.
O for these Workers, charming
Subjects of a Babylonian king,
Venus! leave for a moment the Lovers
Whose souls are crowned with wreaths.
O Queen of Shepherds,
Carry the water of life to these labourers,
So their strength may be appeased
As they wait to bathe in the noon-day sea.
———
Old-fashioned poetry played a large part in my alchemy
of the word.
I grew accustomed to pure hallucination: I saw, quite
clearly, a mosque in place of a factory, a school of
drummers composed of angels, carriages on roads in the
sky, a drawing room at the bottom of a lake, monsters and
mysteries; the title of a vaudeville conjured up horrors
before my eyes!
Then I explained my magic sophisms with the
hallucination of words!
I ended up holding the disorder of my mind sacred. I
was idle, the victim of a heavy fever: I envied the happiness
of animals − caterpillars, representing the innocence of
limbo, and moles, the sleep of virginity!
My character turned sour. I said my farewells to the
world in the form of poetic stories:
SONG OF THE HIGHEST TOWER
Let it come, let it come
The time that we will love.
So patient have I been
That I’ve forgetten everything:
Fear and suffering
Have departed for the heavens,
And an unholy thirst
Darkens my veins.
Let it come, let it come
The time that we will love.
Like the field
Left to forgetfulness,
Growing and flowering
With incense and weeds,
And the fierce buzzing
Of dirty flies.
Let it come, let it come
The time that we will love.
I loved the desert, burnt orchards, musty shops, tepid
drinks. I dragged myself through stinking alleys, and with
eyes closed I offered myself to the sun, the god of fire.
‘General, if there is still an old canon left on the ruined
ramparts, bombard us with clumps of dried earth. Aim at
the mirrors of fancy shops and parlours! Make the city eat
its own dust. Oxidize the gargoyles. Fill the bedrooms with
the burning powder of rubies . . .’
Oh! the drunken fly in the urinal of an inn, in love with
weeds and dissolved by a sunbeam!
HUNGER
If I have a taste, it is only
For earth and stones.
I always dine on air,
On rock, on coal, on iron.
Hunger, be gone. Feed, hunger,
On the field of bran.
Suck the gay venom
Of the bindweed.
Eat the pebbles you break,
The ancient stones of churches,
The gravel of old floods,
Bread scattered in grey valleys.
———
The wolf howled under the leaves
As he spat out the bright feathers
Of his feast of fowl:
Like him, I devour myself.
Lettuce and fruit
Wait only to be picked;
But the spider in the hedge
Eats only violets.
Let me sleep! Let me boil
On the altars of Solomon.
The broth runs over the rust,
And flows into the Kidron.
———
At last – O happiness, O reason – I removed from the
sky the blue that is black, and I lived, a glitter of gold in the
light of nature.
From joy I took an expression as clownish and
distracted as possible:
It is found again!
What? Eternity.
It is the sea merged
With the sun.
My eternal soul,
Observe your vow
In spite of the night
And the day on fire.
So you free yourself
From human approbation,
From common aspirations!
You fly with . . .
− Never any hope.
Nul orietur.
Science and patience,
The torment is certain.
No more tomorrow,
Embers of satin,
Your ardour
Is your duty.
It is found again!
− What? − Eternity.
It is the sea merged
With the sun.
———
I became a fabulous opera. I saw that all beings have a
fatality for happiness: action is not life, but a way of
spending your strength, an irritation. Morality is a
weakness of the brain.
To each being, it seemed to me, several other lives were
due. This gentleman doesn’t know what he’s doing: he is an
angel. This family is a litter of dogs. Standing before several
men, I spoke aloud with one moment of one of their other
lives. − In this way, I even loved a pig.
Not one sophistry of madness – the madness that is
locked up – have I forgotten: I could recite them all again, I
know the system by heart.
My health was threatened. Terror overcame me. I would
fall into a sleep of several days, and on awakening I
continued with the saddest of dreams. I was ripe for death,
and on a road of perils my weakness led me to the edge of
the world and Chimmeria, a land of shadows and
whirlwinds.
I had to travel, to dispel the enchantments that
crowded my brain. Over the sea, which I loved as if it would
wash me clean of a stain, I watched the consoling cross
rise. I had been damned by the rainbow. Happiness was
my fate, my remorse, my worm: my life would always be too
vast to be devoted to strength and beauty.
Happiness! Its tooth, sweet to death, warned me at the
crowing of the cock − ad matutinum, at the Christus venit
− in the darkest cities:
O seasons, O castles!
What soul is without faults?
I have made the magic study
Of happiness, which no one escapes.
Say hello to it, each time
The Gaulish cock crows.
Ah! I’ll have no more desires:
It has taken hold of my life.
This charm has taken body and soul
And dispelled all my efforts.
O seasons, O castles!
The hour of its flight, alas!
Shall be the hour of my death.
O seasons, O castles!
———
All that has passed. Today I know how to greet beauty.
The Impossible
——
Ah! the life of my childhood, the open road in all
weather, supernaturally sober, more disinterested than
the best of beggars, proud of having neither country nor
friends: what madness this was. − And only now do I see
it!
− I was right to despise those nice men who never lost
the chance for a grope, parasites of the cleanliness and
health of our women today − today, when they are so
distant from us.
I was right about everything I rejected: since I’m
escaping myself!
I’m escaping myself!
I’m explaining myself.
Yesterday, once again, I was sighing: ‘God in heaven!
aren’t there enough of us damned down here already? I
have been in their ranks for so long! I know them all. We
always recognise one another; we disgust each other.
Charity is unknown to us. But we are polite, and our
relations with the world are very correct.’ − Does this
surprise you? The world! Merchants, fools! − We are not
without honour. − But the elect, how would they receive
us? For there are surly and joyful people, the false elect,
since we must be bold or humble to approach them. But
these are the true elect. They are not the purveyors of
blessings!
Having rediscovered my two-pence worth of reason −
how quickly it is spent! − I see that my difficulties come
from not having realised soon enough that we are in the
West. The Western marshes! Not that I believe the light is
faded, that form is exhausted, or movement has gone
astray . . . Good! See how my spirit insists on taking
upon itself all the cruel developments that spirit has
undergone since the downfall of the East . . . My spirit
demands it!
. . . My two-pence worth of reason is over! − Spirit is
authority, and it wants me in the West. It would have to
be silenced, if things were to conclude as I would like
them to.
The devil take the palms of martyrs, the beacons of
art, the pride of inventors, the ardour of plunderers; I
returned to the East and to the original, eternal wisdom.
− But it seems this was a grossly idle dream!
Nevertheless, I hardly dare dream of the joy of
escaping from modern suffering. I wasn’t thinking of the
bastard wisdom of the Koran. − But isn’t there real
torture in the fact that, since that declaration of science
we call Christianity, man has been fooling himself,
proving the obvious, puffing himself up with pleasure at
repeating these proofs, and living only in this way! A
subtle, simple torture, and the source of my spiritual
wanderings. Perhaps nature is bored! Monsieur Pompous
was born with Christ.
Isn’t it because we insist on cultivating fogs? We
swallow fever with our watery vegetables. And
drunkenness! And tobacco! And ignorance! And blind
devotion! − Isn’t all this a long way from the home of
thought, from the wisdom of the Orient, our original
fatherland? Why have a modern world at all, if these
poisons are its invention?
Men of the Church will say: we agree! But you are
speaking of Eden. There’s nothing for you in the history
of Oriental peoples. − It’s true: I did mean Eden! This
purity of ancient races − what has it got to do with my
dream!
Philosophers will say: the world has no age.
Humanity shuffles about, that’s all. You live in the West,
but are free to inhabit your East, as ancient as you wish
it to be − and to live there happily. Do not be one of the
conquered. Philosophers, you are of your Western world.
My spirit: take care. No violent departures for
salvation. Stir yourself! − Ah! science never moves fast
enough for us!
− But I see that my spirit is sleeping.
Were it always wide awake from this moment on, we
would soon reach truth, who perhaps surrounds us with
her weeping angels! . . . Had it been awake until this
moment, I would not have given in to my weaker
instincts at a forgotten time! . . . If it had always been
awake, I would be sailing in full wisdom! . . .
O purity! Purity!
This moment of awakening has brought me the vision
of purity! − Through spirit one comes to God!
Worst luck!
Lightning
——
The labour of man! That’s the explosion that
illuminates my abyss from time to time.
‘Nothing is vanity; science and onward!’, cries the
modern Ecclesiast, which is to say, Everyone. And yet,
the corpses of the wicked and the idle fall on the hearts
of others . . . Ah! quick, come quickly, over there, beyond
the night: these future rewards for all eternity . . . will
they escape us? . . .
− What can I do? I know what labour is; and science
moves too slowly. Prayers gallop upwards and light
thunders . . . I see it well. This is too simple, and it’s too
hot; people will pass me by. I have my duty; but I’ll be
proud to set it aside, as others have before me.
My life is used up. But come on, let’s pretend, be idle.
O how pitiful! And we’ll exist by amusing ourselves, by
dreaming of monstrous loves and fantastic universes, by
complaining and quarrelling with the appearance of this
world, clown, beggar, artist, bandit − priest! On my
hospital bed the smell of incense came back to me so
powerfully; guardian of sacred herbs, confessor, martyr
. . .
I recognised my filthy childhood education there. But
what of it? . . . I’ll do my twenty years, if the others do
theirs . . .
No! no! now I rebel against death! Labour seems too
slight for my pride: my betrayal to the world would be too
brief a torture. At the last moment I’d lash out, right and
left . . .
Then − oh! − poor dear soul, wouldn’t eternity be lost
to us!
Morning
——
Didn’t I once have a happy youth, heroic and
fabulous, to be written on leaves of gold? Too much luck!
By what crime, through what error, have I deserved my
present weakness? You who maintain that animals sob
with grief, that the sick depair, that the dead have bad
dreams, try and give an account of my downfall and
present slumber. I can no more explain myself than the
beggar with his endless Paters and Ave Marias. I no
longer know how to speak!
Today, nevertheless, I believe I have finished the story
of my hell. It really was hell: the old one, whose gates
were opened by the Son of man.
From the same wilderness, in the same night, my
tired eyes always awaken to the same silver star; always,
though the Kings of life, the three magi – the heart, the
soul, the spirit – are not stirred. Where shall we go,
beyond the shorelines and the mountains, to hail the
birth of the new work, the new wisdom, the flight of
tyrants and demons, the end of superstition, to worship –
the first to do so! – Christmas on Earth?
The song of heaven, the march of peoples! Slaves, let
us not curse life!
Farewell
——
Autumn already! − But why regret an eternal sun, if
we’re committed to the discovery of the divine light − far
from all those who die with the seasons.
Autumn. Our boat, floating in the still mist, turns
toward the harbour of misery, the enormous city under a
sky stained with fire and mud. Ah! the rotten rags, the
rain-soaked bread, the drunkenness, the thousand loves
on which I was crucified! She’ll never be done with me,
then, that ghoulish queen of a million souls and dead
bodies, all of which will be judged! I see myself again, my
skin eaten away by mud and plague, worms in my hair
and armpits, and still bigger worms in my heart, lying
among ageless, unfeeling strangers . . . I could have died
there . . . An unbearable memory! I despise poverty.
And I dread winter, because it is the season of
comfort!
− Sometimes I see endless beaches in the sky covered
with white, rejoicing nations. A huge golden ship passes
over me, its many-coloured pennants fluttering in the
morning breeze. I have created all festivals, all triumphs,
all tragedies. I have tried to invent new flowers, new
stars, new flesh, new tongues. I thought I had acquired
supernatural powers. Oh well! I must bury my
imagination and my memories! What fame, for an artist
and storyteller who was easily carried away!
And I − who called myself magus or angel, free from
all morality − I am flung back to earth, with a duty to
find and crude reality to embrace! Peasant that I am!
Was I mistaken? Could charity be the sister of death
for me?
Finally, I will beg forgiveness for nurturing myself on
lies. And now, let’s go.
But not a friendly hand in sight! Where will I find
help?
———
Yes, at least the new hour is severe.
For I can say that victory is mine: the grinding of
teeth, the hissing of flames and the reeking sighs begin
to abate. Every squalid memory fades. My last regrets
scuttle off: − jealousy of beggars, bandits and the friends
of death, backward types of every sort. − All damned, if I
avenged myself!
One must be absolutely modern.
No hymns: hold fast to the ground won. A hard night!
The dried blood smokes on my face, and I have nothing
behind me except this miserable tree! . . . A spiritual
battle is as brutal as a battle of men; but the vision of
justice is the pleasure of God alone.
Nonetheless, this is the vigil. Let us welcome every
influx of vigour and genuine tenderness. And at dawn,
armed with an ardent patience, what splendid cities we
shall enter.
What was I saying about a friendly hand? One
advantage is that I can laugh now at old false loves, and
strike with shame those lying couples − I saw the hell of
women down there; − and I shall be free to possess truth
in one body and one soul.
April-August, 1873
NOTE
Une saison en enfer is dated April-August 1873, but its
writing was anything but continuous. Rimbaud had been
living in London with Paul Verlaine since September
1872, surviving on the money sent by the latter’s mother,
and frequenting the British Library to improve their
English. They were also under investigation by the police,
as much for the illegality of their relationship as for their
links to the exiled Communards. When legal proceedings
were brought against him by his wife, Verlaine left for
France on the 4th of April. Rimbaud followed shortly
afterwards, returning to his family’s newly-inherited
home in Roche, where he began work on his manuscript.
That May Rimbaud wrote to his friend, Ernest Delahaye:
‘I am writing little stories in prose, general title: ‘Pagan
Book’, or ‘Nigger Book’. It is stupid and innocent. O
innocence! Innocence, innocence, inno − curse it! . . . My
fate depends upon this book, for which half a dozen
atrocious stories are still to be invented. I am not
sending you any now, although I already have three, it
costs too much!’ Rimbaud would remain faithful to this
structure. Of the nine projected stories, the three he had
already completed would include the short passages that
make up the imaginary ancestry of ‘Bad Blood’, as well
as the absinthe-induced ‘Night of Hell’. By the 25th of
May the lovers were back in London, staying in Camden
Town and giving English lessons to pay the rent and
fund their recent conversion to opium. That June
Rimbaud wrote the two long central sections, both titled
‘Delirium’, in which Verlaine is cast in the role of the
Gospel’s ‘Foolish Virgin’, himself in the part of the
‘Infernal Bridegroom’. But after a violent quarrel Verlaine
left again, this time for Brussels, where he was joined by
Rimbaud on the 4th of July. Three days later another
quarrel ended with Verlaine shooting Rimbaud in the
wrist with a revolver. When Rimbaud tried to leave the
following evening Verlaine threatened to shoot himself,
whereupon the police were called and Verlaine arrested
and later imprisoned for eighteen months, despite
Rimbaud withdrawing charges. Rimbaud spent most of
July in hospital waiting to have the bullet removed. By
August he was back in Roche, where he spent the next
month completing the final four sections, ‘The
Impossible’, ‘Lightning’, ‘Morning’ and ‘Farewell’, as well
as the preface: − howling and stamping out their
rhythms on the floor of his locked attic room as he took
account of his past and thrashed out his future. The
book was finally printed in Brussels in October 1873, the
downpayment paid by his mother, who nevertheless
declared she understood nothing of what her son had
written (to which he responded: ‘It is to be read literally
and in every sense’). On the 22nd of October, two days
after his nineteenth birthday, Rimbaud picked up his
twelve author’s copies, leaving one to be forwarded to the
imprisoned Verlaine. The following month Rimbaud was
back in Paris, where he gave a handful of copies to his
few remaining friends; but when it became clear that the
literary world had no interest either in his book or his
genius, Rimbaud returned to Roche, where the remaining
copies, together with his rough drafts, were consigned to
the flames. The bulk of the copies, however, remained at
the printers, forgotten and undiscovered until 1901, ten
years after Rimbaud’s death at the age of thirty-seven.
Back cover: ‘The Sorcerer’, c. 13,000 B.C. Rock painting and engraving.
Caverne des Trois Frères, Montesquieu-Avantès, Ariège.