The following selection of poems and writings have been translated from 'Rimbaud - Collected Works , Selected Letters' by Wallace Fowlie.
These writings are of a young, a very young man, whose life evolved in no particular place; without a mother, without a country, indifferent to everything that is familiar, avoiding all moral pressure, just like several other pitiful young men. But this fellow was so bored and disturbed that he led himself to death, as to some terrible and fatal bashfulness. Not having loved women - although passionate ! - his soul and his heart and all his strength were trained in strange, sad errors. From the following dreams - his loves ! - which came to him in his bed or in the street, and from their continuation and their ending, pleasing religious considerations may, perhaps, be derived. But this unusual suffering possessing a troublesome authority, one must sincerely hope that this soul, wandering about among us all, and who, it would seem, wants death, will encounter at that moment, serious consolations, and be worthy.
To Theodore de Banville, 24 May 1870 (age 15) We are in the months of love : I am seventeen. The age of hope and dreams, they say - and now I have begun, a child touched by the finger of the Muse - excuse me if this is banal - to express my good beliefs, my hopes, my sensations, all those things dear to poets - and I call this the spring. I am dying, I am decomposing in dulness, in paltry wickedness, in grayness. What can I say ? - in a terrible way I insist on worshipping free freedom, and so many things that I am to be pitied, isn't it true ? I was to set out today. I could have done so. I had new clothes on. I would have sold my watch, and long live freedom ! - But I stayed back ! I stayed back ! - I will want to leave many more times. - Let's go, hat, coat, my two fists in my pockets, and we're off ! But I will stay. I will stay. I did not promise to ! But I will do so to deserve your affection You told me this. I will deserve it.
i] We aren't serious when we're seventeen The lindens smell good in the good June evenings ! ii] There you can see a very small patch of darkblue, framed by a little branch, Night in June ! Seventeen years old ! - We are overcome by it all. iii] Our wild heart moves through novels like Robinson Crusoe, when, in the light of a pale street lamp, a girl goes by attractive and charming under the collar of her father's terrible collar... And as she finds you incredibly naive, while clicking her little boots, she turns abruptly and in a lively way... iv] You are in love. Occupied until the month of August. That evening you return to the bright cafes, you ask for beer or lemonade...
In the Winter, we will leave in a small pink railway carriage with blue cushions. We will be comfortable. A nest of mad kisses lies in each soft corner. You will close your eyes, in order not to see, through the glass, Those snarling monstrocities of black demons and black wolves. Then you will feel your cheek scratched... A little kiss, like a mad spider, And you will say to me : "Get it !" as you bend your neck. And we will take a long time to find that creature,
I went off, my fists in my torn pockets, my coat too was becoming ideal. My only pair of trousers had a big hole. And I listened to them, seated on the side of the road, in the good september evenings when I felt drops of dew on my brow, like a strong wine. Where, rhyming in the midst of fantastic shadows, like lyres I plucked the elastics of my wounded shoes, one foot near my heart !
Jeanne-Marie has strong hands, dark hands the summer tanned. Did they get their dark cream colour on pools of voluptuousness ? Have they drunk from barbaric skies, calm on charming knees ? On the burning feet of Madonnas have they tosses golden flowers ? Are they hands driving the diptera with which blueness of dawn buzzes, toward the nectars ? Oh ! What dreams has held them in pandiculations ? These hands have not sold oranges, nor turned brown at the feet of the gods, these hands have not washed the diapers of heavy babies without eyes. They are benders of backbones, hands that do not harm, more fatal than machines, stronger than a horse ! They would strangle your necks, o evil women, they would crush your hands. The beauty of those loving hands turns the heads of ewes ! A stain of populace turns them brown like a breast of yesterday. They have paled, marvelous, under the great sun full of love, on the bronze of machine-guns, throughout insurgent Paris ! Ah ! sometimes, o sacred hands, at your wrists, hands where tremble our never sobered lips, cries out a chain of clear links ! And it is a strange tremor in our beings, when at times,they want to remove your sunburn,
The young man whose eye is bright, whose skin is brown, the handsome twenty-year-old body that should go naked, and that his brow circled with copper, under the moon, would have been worshipped in Persia by an unknown Genie ; Impetuous, with virginal and dark softness, proud of his first stubborness, like young seas, tears of summer nights, that turn on beds of diamonds ; The young man, facing the ugliness of this world, shudders in his heart deeply irritated, But o woman, heap of entrails, sweet pity, you are never the sister of charity, never. Unawakened blind woman with immense irises, all our embracing is but a question : Your hates, your fixed torpors, your failings, and your brutalities suffered long ago, Ah ! endlessly thirsting for splendor and calm, abandoned by the two implacable sisters, But black alchemy and sacred studies are repulsive to the wounded man, He feels marching toward him a terrible solitude.
i] May Banners In the bright branches of the lindens dies a sickly hunting call. Nothing at all deceives me. ii] Song of the Highest Tower Idle youth enslaved to everything, through sensitivity I wasted my life. I said to myself : stop, let no one see you. I have been patient so long that I have forgotten everything. Thus the field given over to oblivion, grown up, and flowering with incense and tares, Ah ! the thousand bereavements of the poor soul who has only the image of Our Lady ! Idle youth enslaved to everything, through sensitivity I wasted my life. iii] Eternity It has been found again. Sentinel soul, let us whisper the confession of the night so void and the day on fire. From human approval, from common impulses here you free yourself. Since from you alone, embers of satin, duty breathes without any one saying : at last. Here, there is no hope, no orietur. It has been found again. What has ? - Eternity. iv] Golden Age One of the voices, always angelic - It is about me - openly expresses itself. Those thousand questions which spead about bring in the end only intoxication and madness. Recognise this trick so cheerful, so easy : It is only wave and flower, and it is your family ! Then it sings, o so cheerful, so easy, and visible to the naked eye... Recognise this trick, so cheerful, so easy : It is only wave and flower, and it is your family ! And then the voice - how angelic it is ! - it is is about me, openly expresses itself. And sings at this moment a sister of breath : with a german tone, but ardent and full : The world is given over to vice; if that surprises you ! O ! pretty castle ! I too sing : Many sisters !
A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue : vowels,one day I will tell of your latent birth : A, black hairy corset of shining flies which buzz around a cruel stench, gifts of darkness; E, whiteness of vapors and tents, lances of proud glaciers, white kings, quivering flowers; I, purples, spit blood, laughter of beautiful lips in anger or penitent drunkeness; U, cycles, divine vibrations of green seas, peace of pastures scattered with animals, O, supreme Clarion full of strange stridor, silences crossed by worlds and angels: - O, the Omega, violet beam from His Eyes !
[i] Sunday Problems put by, the inevitable descent of heaven and the visit of memories and the assembly of rhythms occupy the house, the head of the world of the spirit. -A horse scampers off on the suburban track and along the tilled fields and woodlands, pervaded by the carbonic plague. A miserable woman of drama, somewhere in the world, sighs for improbable desertions. Desperados pine for strife, drunkenness and wounds. -Little children stifle their maledictions along the rivers. Let us resume our study to the noise of the consuming work that is gathering and growing in the masses. [ii] Sonnet Man of ordinary constitution, was not the flesh a fruit hanging in the orchard; O child days; the body, a treasure to squander; O to love, the peril or the power of Psyche? The earth had slopes fertile in princes and in artists, the lineage and race incited you to crimes and mournings : The worlds, your fortune and your peril. But now, that labour crowned, you and your calculations, - you and your impatiences - are only your dance and your voice, not fixed and not forced, although a reason for the double consequence of invention and of success, Might and right reflect your dance and your voice, appreciated only at present. [iii] Twenty Years Old Instructive voices exiled... Physical candor bitterly quelled... -Adagio. -Ah! the infinite egotism of adolescence, the studious optimism: how the world was full of flowers that summer! Airs and forms dying... -A choir of glasses, of nocturnal melodies... Quickly, indeed, the nerves take up the chase. [iv] You are still at Anthony's temptation. The antics of abated zeal, the grimaces of childish pride, the collapse and the terror. But you will set yourself this labour: all harmonic and architectural possibilities will surge around your seat. Perfect beings, never dreamed of, will present themselves for your experiments. The curiosity of ancient crowds and idle wealth will meditatively draw near. Your memory and your senses will be simply the nourishment of your creative impulse. As for the world, when you emerge, what will it have become? In any case, nothing of what it seems at present.
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