A Season In Hell

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I consigned to the devil the martyrs’ palm-leaves, the light of art, the pride of inventors, the ardour of looters; I returned to the East and primal eternal wisdom – It seems that’s a dream of gross idleness! Yesterday, I was still sighing: ‘Heaven! There are enough of us damned down here! I’ve already spent too long, myself, amongst this crew! I know them all. We’ll always recognise each other; we find each other disgusting. Charity’s unknown to us. But we’re polite; our relations with people are perfectly correct.’ Is it surprising! People! Merchants, fools! – We’re not dishonoured – But the elect, how would they receive us? For there are pugnacious and joyous folk: a false elect since we need neither audacity nor humility to approach them. They are the sole elect. They never bless others! A Season in Hell & Illuminations is a journey in which Arthur Rimbaud serves as poet, visionary and madman. Rimbaud's journey, the words and images he uses, is evocative and always speaks to me (even in translation). This doesn't mean I fully understand how Rimbaud's poetry should be interpreted or how each person should approach the poems. Still, there is no doubt that they are powerful. While I'm more drawn to A Season in Hell, I've read both parts multiple times and find something different each time. Morning ( Matin) – this short section serves as a conclusion, where the narrator claims to have "finished my account of my hell," and "can no longer even talk". Il primo studio dell’uomo che vuole essere poeta è la conoscenza di sé, intera; egli cerca la propria anima, la investiga, la saggia, la impara. […] Ma si tratta di rendere l��anima mostruosa. Immagini un uomo che semini e coltivi verruche sulla propria faccia. Dico che bisogna essere veggente, rendersi veggente. Il poeta si rende veggente attraverso una lunga, immensa e ragionata deregolamentazione di tutti i sensi. Tutte le forme di amore, di sofferenza, di follia; egli cerca se stesso, attinge in sé tutti i veleni, per conservarne solo la quintessenza ».

Now, just lately, finding myself on the point of uttering the last croak, I thought of seeking the key to the old feast, where I might perhaps find my appetite again! I accustomed myself to pure hallucination: I saw quite clearly a mosque instead of a factory, a college of drummers consisting of angels, a salon in the depths of a lake; monsters, mysteries; a vaudeville title conjured up terrors before me. Arthur Rimbaud: Une Saison en Enfer/Eine Zeit in der Hölle, Reclam, Stuttgart 1970; afterword by W. Dürrson, S. 106.Stamattina devo aver appoggiato il piede sbagliato sullo scendiletto. Altrimenti non si spiegherebbe perché la mia testa abbia associato una tazza di latte coi cereali (la crusca, detesto la crusca) ad Arthur Rimbaud. Non si spiegherebbe perché sono entrata in punta di piedi nella stanza-studiolo, ho aperto l’anta dell’armadio-libreria con un timore quasi reverenziale e ho tirato giù dallo scaffale il volume grosso e blu che giace lì da tempo immemore. In copertina, lo scatto in bianco e nero del nostro diciassettenne terribile, gli occhi grigietti, l’espressione tra assorta e beffarda. Diğeri de sembolizm ancak Baudelaire kadar etkin-etkileyici kullandığını söyleyemem (yahut diğer sembolistlere nazaran). kendini öznellikten uzak tutmaya çalıştığı için olabilir bu.

For Wallace Fowlie writing in the introduction to his 1966 University of Chicago (pub) translation, "the ultimate lesson" of this "complex"(p4) and "troublesome"(p5) text states that "poetry is one way by which life may be changed and renewed. Poetry is one possible stage in a life process. Within the limits of man's fate, the poet's language is able to express his existence although it is not able to create it."(p5) [6] According to Mathieu: "The trouble with A Season in Hell is that it points only one way: where it's going is where it's coming from. Its greatest source of frustration, like that of every important poem, is the realization that it's impossible for any of us to escape the set limits imposed on us by 'reality'." [1] :p.2 Wallace in 1966, p5 of above-quoted work, "...(a season in Hell) testif(ies) to a modern revolt, and the kind of liberation which follows revolt". Arthur Rimbaud: Une Saison en Enfer/Eine Zeit in der Hölle, Reclam, Stuttgart 1970; afterword by W. Dürrson, p. 105.Men of the Church say: ‘Understood. But you really mean Eden. Not for you, the history of eastern peoples. – It’s true: it was Eden I dreamt of! What has that purity of ancient races to do with my dream!

the stanza L'epoux infernal is evidently about his former lover Paul Verlaine, like Rimbaud's own more exalted version of the jottings I and countless others gradually make in screeds and MB, so as to trap thought balloons containing relics of some lost one. Much else, though is a nebulous cluster of beautiful or anguished images. The prose poem is loosely divided into nine parts, of varying length. They differ markedly in tone and narrative comprehensibility. The only route to its antithesis, of living an authentic life, of non-existence, is to break from life itself as a source of intrinsic value; it can be pursued, according to Rimbaud, by rebelling against the excesses of your very soul. General, if there’s one old cannon left on your ruined ramparts, bombard us with chunks of dried earth. Fire on the windows of splendid stores! Into the salons! Make the city eats its own dust. Oxidise the gargoyles. Fill the boudoirs with burning powdered rubies...” I became a fabulous opera: I saw that all beings are fated for happiness: activity is not life, but a way of wasting strength, an enervation. Morality is a weakness of the brain.

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I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault." Delirium I: The Foolish Virgin – The Infernal Spouse ( Délires I: Vierge folle – L'Époux infernal) – the most linear in its narrative, this section consists of the story of a man (Verlaine), enslaved to his "infernal bridegroom" (Rimbaud) who deceived him and lured his love with false promises. It is likely a transparent allegory for his relationship with Verlaine. a b c d Mathieu, Bertrand, "Introduction" in Rimbaud, Arthur, and Mathieu, Bertrand (translator), A Season in Hell & Illuminations (Rochester, New York: BOA Editions, 1991). A Season in Hell” is infinitely more meaningful, and powerfully sad, after having read the details of Rimbaud’s life and exit from crafting poetry—which he considered himself a failure and reject among his peers at doing. Edmund White’s bio of Rimbaud shows him in full portrait—a restless, rebellious genius known for drinking absinthe and bashing around in cities for weeks on end, and lesser known for his solo travels on foot, walking through war-torn France and Africa hundreds of miles at a time to thrive in business, one time receiving a diagnosis from a doctor that he had walked so much “it caused his ribs to tear through his skin.” I inhibited his heart as one might a palace: it was empty, precisely so no one would learn that a person as ignoble as you were there: and there it is. Alas! I needed him. But what did he want with me, drab and lifeless as I was? He didn’t make me a better person, and he didn’t manage to kill me! Sad, angry, I would occasionally say, ‘I understand you.’ He’d just shrug his shoulders." (p14)