A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat

by Arthur Rimbaud, Louise Varèse (Translator)

A relaunch of the long-celebrated bi- lingual edition of Rimbaud’s A Season In Hell & The Drunken Boat — a personal poem of damnation as well as a plea to be released from “the examination of his own depths.”

Rimbaud originally distributed A Season In Hell to friends as a self-published booklet, and soon afterward, at the age of nineteen, quit poetry altogether. New Directions’s edition was among the first to be published in the U.S., and it quickly became a classic. Rimbaud’s famous poem “The Drunken Boat” was subsequently added to the first paperbook printing. Allen Ginsberg proclaimed Arthur Rimbaud as “the first punk” — a visionary mentor to the Beats for both his recklessness and his fiery poetry.

This new edition proudly dons the original Alvin Lustig–designed cover, and a introduction by another famous rebel — and now National Book Award–winner — Patti Smith.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, France, Fiction, Literature, French Literature, 19th Century

103 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1872

About the author

Hallucinatory work of French poet Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud strongly influenced the surrealists.

With known transgressive themes, he influenced modern literature and arts, prefiguring. He started writing at a very young age and excelled as a student but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away to Paris amidst the Franco-Prussian war. During his late adolescence and early adulthood, he produced the bulk of his literary output. After assembling his last major work, Illuminations , Rimbaud completely stopped writing literature at age 20 years in 1874.

A hectic, violent romantic relationship, which lasted nearly two years at times, with fellow poet Paul Verlaine engaged Rimbaud, a libertine, restless soul. After his retirement as a writer, he traveled extensively on three continents as a merchant and explorer until his death from cancer. As a poet, Rimbaud is well known for his contributions to symbolism and, among other works, for A Season in Hell , a precursor to modernist literature.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Les Poètes maudits – the Cursed Poets… And amongst them is Arthur Rimbaud.
Some lives are like songs… And some lives are like hell…

I have called for executioners; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness. 
And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot.

A Season in Hell is the diary of a Damned Soul…

I am well aware that I have always been of an inferior race. I cannot understand revolt. My race has never risen, except to plunder: to devour like wolves a beast they did not kill.

If you crave to rebel then rebel just for the sake of violence… Rebel only for the sake of killing, robbing, raping…

The battle for the soul is as brutal as the battles of men; but the sight of justice is the pleasure of God alone.

The Drunken Boat is a symbolistic poem… It is an allegory full of ominous signs and metaphors…
The boat is utterly free… No skipper and no crew… “Now I drift through the Poem of the Sea; This gruel of stars mirrors the milky sky…” And the boat is drunken with its absolute freedom…

True, I’ve cried too much; I am heartsick at dawn.
The moon is bitter and the sun is sour…
Love burns me; I am swollen and slow.
Let my keel break! Oh, let me sink in the sea!

He who sails rudderless ends up shipwrecking.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ought to have a special hell for my anger, a hell for my pride, ~~ and a hell for sex; a whole symphony of hells!
A Season in Hell ~~~ Arthur Rimbaud



I read Rimbaud in my youth. I read of the number of rock stars who were influenced by Rimbaud , & thought I better jump on this bandwagon. Being an upper, middle class, white boy of 14 I loved the imagery, but it's true meanings were lost on me. I sported a red, Rimbaud t-shirt, carried a small volume of his collected poems with me and thought I was the epitome of the cool, but tortured, artistic teenager. I really thought I got it whatever it was.

Flash forward many years later. I decided to seriously delve into Rimbaud . And this time, I got it ~~ or so I think I did ...



Rimbaud was born in Charleville, north-east France, in 1854. A gifted student ~~ he was also restless ~~ this led to his running away to Paris ~~ where he became the lover of symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. The stormy relationship, along with their hashish and absinthe fueled lifestyle, caused quite a scandal in European literary circles. Things came crashing down when Verlaine pulling a gun wounded his younger partner. It was during this time that Rimbaud was writing most of the verse for which he is remembered. His life as a poet was a short one, however, as he soon gave up writing and began wandering the world before settling into arms and coffee dealing in Africa. He died in France from syphilis and cancer, aged 37.

A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat are marked by a youthful passion and aggression. In addition, Rimbaud's writing is also rich in symbolism and metaphor ~~ Rimbaud so skilfully applies these that many poets still adopt his techniques to this day. Rimbaud presents himself as a gleeful, arrogant youth without and ounce of apology.



A SEASON IN HELL
Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.
One evening I took Beauty in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her.
I steeled myself against justice.
I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care!
I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy.
I have called for executioners; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness.
And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot.
Now recently, when I found myself ready to croak! I thought to seek the key to the banquet of old, where I might find an appetite again.
That key is Charity. - This idea proves I was dreaming!
"You will stay a hyena, etc...," shouts the demon who once crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Seek death with all your desires, and all selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly Sins."
Ah! I've taken too much of that: - still, dear Satan, don't look so annoyed, I beg you! And while waiting for a few belated cowardices, since you value in a writer all lack of descriptive or didactic flair, I pass you these few foul pages from the diary of a Damned Soul.

What are you rebelling against? the local girl asks one of the motorcyclists in the 1953 movie The Wild One. Brando drawls, Whaddaya got? And that is true too of Rimbaud ~~ it wasn't the cause that fueled his passions, it was the act enthralled Rimbaud , who revolutionized literature and then abandoned it at the age nineteen.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“And so my heartaches kept growing and growing, and I saw myself going more and more to pieces – and everyone else would have seen it, too, if I hadn’t been so miserable that no one even looked at me anymore! and still more and more I craved his affection… His kisses and his friendly arms around me were just like heaven – a dark heaven, that I could go into, and where I wanted only to be left – poor, deaf, dumb, and blind. Already, I was getting to depend on it. And I used to imagine that we were two happy children free to wander in a Paradise of sadness."

Unknown beyond the avant-garde at the time of his death in 1891, Arthur Rimbaud has become one of the most liberating influences on twentieth-century poets and of culture. Rimbaud’s A Season In Hell & The Drunken Boat is a personal cry of damnation as well as a plea to be released from the chains of his own profundity. Rimbaud originally distributed A Season In Hell to friends as a self-published booklet, and soon afterward, at the age of only nineteen, yes nineteen! quit poetry altogether. This beautifully dark composition in terms of translation is compelling and excellently done for those who are not versed in his native French. This young man was indeed 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. This short book is filled with pain and chaos, but also soaring with the energy of life. Not quite as good as Illuminations, but for the poetry connoisseur it's definitely worth reading.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will be brief.

While looking for a particular title for a friend in a box of old books today, I came across this. I hadn't read Rimbaud in, god, twenty+ years? As a painfully twee, suis generis teenager, I guess he was a bit of a hero: a drunken, libidinal monster who, well, got laid a whole hell of a lot more than I did (though I matched him drink for drink). It's dogeared and bears all the telltales of my youth, underlined passages included. The young ladies, shockingly, did not faint at the sight of the cardiganed hairfarmer reading a New Directions paperback. Turns out they had every reason not to.

Now? Well, his youth shows. "The Drunken Boat" is absolutely gorgeous, and more than a few portions of A Season in Hell are still lovelylovelylovely:

-Sometimes, I'll see endless beaches in the skies above, filled with pale rejoicing nations. A great golden vessel, high above me, flutters vari-colored flags in the morning breeze. I invented every celebration, every victory, every drama. I tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues!

It's the absolutism of youth that I find a bit grating at points (and an awful lot of talk about parents), but that's just jealousy on my part. You can afford to be a walking, vomiting, ocean-guzzling behemoth at that age because you're going to live forever.

And then one day you wake up and your fucking coccyx hurts. Seriously, how the hell does that even happen?!?

[Peiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

روزگاری
اگر حافظه‌ام وفا کند
زندگی من ضیافتی بود که در آن
دل‌ها شادمان بود و شراب‌ها روان
شبی،
زیبایی را بر زانوانم نشاندم
و او را تلخ یافتم
و دشنامش دادم
بر ضد عدالت سلاح بر‌گرفتم
گریختم
ای ساحرگان، ای تیره‌بختی، ای کینه
گنج‌هایم را همه به شما سپرده بودم
سرانجام توانستم امید بشری را یکسر در سینه‌ام محو کنم
چون جانوری سبع
بی سر و صدا برجستم و
هر گونه شادی را از هم گسستم

[Mr. James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Mr James Review: An Introduction to Hell

Intro
I broke into your Georgian house. The attic smelled like wet hair and the servants were gone. The drawing room had an impressive view of the river: northeast window. The entrance hall wallpaper is peeling off. The books in your study were warped, foxed, and ready for repair. I go to the cellar door; Hell is painted on the front. I open the door and descend.

Hell
Return. Sit on the top step, lean back against the wall and rest. You are weary, yes? Your shoes are gone and your socks are wet: remove them. They smell of vodka and urine. "That was hell?" you say, wiggling your toes, picking at the scabs on your ankles. You are weary, no? "That was hell," you say. Your palms are bleeding. "Love must be reinvented," a woman's voice says from the dark below.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surely it must be - never has a poet left so many wondering so much, over so few words ...


4 1/2





a Preface …

by Patti Smith. More an imaginative appreciation.

In his confessional masterpiece, A Season in Hell, Arthur Rimbaud imparts the formula for the alchemical transformation of the soul, even as he simultaneously acknowledges the futility of acting upon it. No one could exact a more brutal analysis of this sublime scrap of illuminated consciousness than the poet himself. In his own private Gethsemane he is at once savior and betrayer, extending one hand as he slyly withdraws the other. On sheets of gold he spews of the loathsome sheets where he has lain with the fallen angel, Verlaine. He beholds his ancestors; he berates his ancestors. Grappling with the civil war of his personality, he prays bitterly to be good but he is not able. He ridicules his inventiveness, his weariness, his flowering heart. But believe it! It is not a pose, but a confusion. He is nineteen years old and within his cosmology excrement and roses equally offend. As he rolls in piss and thorns he consciously offends himself. He is Hamlet, tossing off dazzling soliloquies as if they were but disgruntled mumblings. To be spent, wrung out, is his dream. And how shall he be spent? Rimbaud knows too well the unfortunate answer. The alchemist must descend within himself, a journey more terrifying than trudging the White Pass or scaling the immense, tragic cliffs of Bhutan. Only by navigating the chaos of his being can he initiate the process of mapping out this small unholy guide. Vows erupt! He shudders as he writes, generating a superb and nasty shedding of skins. Engulfed by a wave of nothingness, he is like an old man who can no longer distinguish tears from laughter. He speaks of abandoning everything, and eventually does, in concert with those who come clean, turn their backs, then burn their poems, to be purified in the flames of their folly. Ignited by the fireworks of his despair, he exhausts us with beauty, but is also the flayed youth, a hyena etc. He articulates the battlements of the besieged soul. What he fears most is to be judged a fraud by God. A Season in Hell brought him nothing but misery. In misery's company you will find him, tramping the luminous sewer of his own circulatory system with all his marvelous contradictions intact. His hell distilled – rubies strewn in hard places – he arrives, with his infernal stump, at heaven's gate bowed. Think of me he cries – and we must – immersing ourselves, as his compassionate translator Louise Varese did, in an infinite affair. We pray for him, offering love. History praises him, offering laurels. Mercy sings of him, offering absolution. Arthur Rimbaud, in his long suffering, has at last attained God's favor.

Whew! Over the top, but it captures the crazed style, the obscene rantings, the words themselves of this nineteen-year old modern (hyper-modern?!) performance in 1873. The book self-published, soon after burned, having a first life of only a few months, the young iconoclast never to write poetry again. He'd already passed his life's mid-point.


boring stuff

The slim volume pictured includes a chronology based on Enid Starkie's definitive biography of Rimbaud. Born 1854, died 1891. Such interesting events as Rimbaud's running off to Paris to join the Commune in 1871, at the age of 17.

For additional info on Rimbaud's life, see my review of Disaster Was My God, Bruce Duffy's amazing post-modern fictionalized biography of Rimbaud, undoubtedly a more exciting read than any mere biography. (Here)



poetry

The woman mentioned in Smith's preface, Louis Verese, is indeed the translator for this edition. If you read French, you can assess her translations yourself - the book has the French facing the English throughout.



the first poem


A SEASON IN HELL

Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.
One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her.
I armed myself against justice.
I fled. O Witches, O Misery, O Hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted!
I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope. On all joy, to strangle it, I pounced with the stealth of a wild beast.
I called to the executioners that I might gnaw their rifle-butts while dying. I called to the plagues to smother me in blood, in sand. Misfortune was my God. I laid myself down in the mud. I dried myself in the air of crime. I played sly tricks on madness.
And spring brought me the idiot's frightful laughter.
Now, only recently, being on the point of giving my last squawk, I thought of looking for the key to the ancient feast where I might find my appetite again.
Charity is that key. – This inspiration proves that I have dreamed!
"You will always be a hyena…" etc., protests the devil who crowned me with such pleasant poppies. "Attain death with all your appetites, your selfishness and all the capital sins!"
Ah! I'm fed up: - But, dear Satan, a less fiery eye I beg you! And while awaiting a few small infamies in arrears, you who love the absence of the instructive or descriptive faculty in a writer, for you let me tear out these few, hideous pages from my notebook of one of the damned.


miscellaneous passages and phrases.

Let's hear now a hell-mate's confession:
"O heavenly Bridegroom, my Lord, do not reject the confession of the saddest of your handmaidens. I am lost. I am drunk. I am unclean. What a life!... "
[p.35]

…Never a man had such a wish. I realized, - without any fear of him, - that he could be a serious danger to society. Perhaps he has some secrets for changing life? No, I would say to myself he is only looking for them. In short, his charity is bewitched, and I, its prisoner…
[p. 41]

Ah! That life of my childhood, the highroad in all weathers, supernaturally sober, more disinterested than the best of beggars, proud to have neither country, nor friends, how stupid it was! And I see it only now!
- I was right to despise those poor fellows who would never miss the chance of a caress, parasites of the cleanliness and health of our women, now that they are so little in accord with us.
[p. 69]

… You who declare that beasts sob in their grief, that the sick despair, that the dead have bad dreams, try to relate my fall and my sleep. As for me, I can no more explain myself that the beggar with his endless Paters and Ave Marias. I can no longer speak!
However, I have finished, I think, the tale of my hell today. It was really hell; the old hell, the one whose doors were opened by the son of man.
[p. 81]

Yes, the new hour is at least very severe.
For I can say that victory is won: the gnashing of teeth, the hissings of fire, the pestilential sighs are abating. All the noisome memories are fading. My last regrets take to their heels, - envy of beggars, brigands, of death's friends, of the backward of all kinds. O damned ones, what if I avenged myself!
One must be absolutely modern.
No hymns! Hold the ground gained. Arduous night! The dried blood smokes on my face, and I have nothing behind me but that horrible bush! … Spiritual combat is as brutal as the battle of men: but the vision of justice is the pleasure of God alone.
[p. 87]


the beginning of Le Bateau Ivre, "The Drunken Boat", written in 1871. The first person speaker is, yes, the boat itself.

As I came down the impassable Rivers,
I felt no more the bargemen's guiding hands,
Targets for yelling red-skins they were nailed
Naked to poles.

What did I care for any crews,
Carriers of English cotton or of Flemish grain!
Bargemen and all that hubbub left behind,
The waters let me go my own free way.

In the furious lashing of the tides,
Emptier than children's minds, I through that winter
Ran! And great peninsulas unmoored
Never knew more triumphant uproar than I knew.

The tempest blessed my waking on the sea.
Light as a cork I danced upon the waves,
Eternal rollers of the deep sunk dead,
Nor missed at night the lanterns' idiot eyes!
[p. 93]


it continues for 21 more stanzas





. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Tom Paine
Random review: Doctor Copernicus Banville
Next review: The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

Previous library review: The Misanthrope
Next library review: The Fall

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

What young boy exists who doesn't want to be Rimbaud. The Grand daddy or rock n' roll - and modern literature. A combination of Peter Pan and a thug, Rimbaud wrote beautifully as well as being sharp as a broken blade.

"A Season In Hell" indeed. May I wonder in that neighborhood for a long time.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I try to be neither overly awed by nor blithely dismissive of classics. That is to say, I reserve the right to my own impressions, but context sometimes suggests that you might be missing something.

Clearly, I might be missing something here. My relative ignorance of Rimbaud’s life probably doesn’t help. I read these poems twice, but didn’t go over them with a fine-tooth comb. If I were in a poetry class with a good professor, and we broke it all down line-by-line, I imagine I’d get more out of the experience.

Of course there are memorable lines, occasionally striking images: …as avaricious as the sea; …the drunken fly in the inn’s privy…; a storm came chasing the sky away.

There’s a general sense that the material world is not what it appears, that there are mysteries we can only begin to perceive: It seemed to me that for every creature several other lives were due…With several men I have spoken aloud with a moment of one of their other lives…

A couple of the stanzas I find most beautiful are very simple:

No more tomorrows,
Embers of satin,
Your ardor is now
Your duty only.

It is recovered!
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Mixed with the sun.

In general, however, the language doesn’t inspire me to Talmudic study. By the end, we seem to be leaving hell:

And, in the dawn, armed with an ardent patience, we shall enter magnificent cities.

That’s a nice image, but it also showcases the melodramatic, pseudo-prophetic tone that began to wear on me. Not that I can really blame a teenager for writing that way. Christ, let’s look at some of my teenage poetry. Actually, let’s not.

I have similar feelings about The Drunken Boat. I found myself shrugging my shoulders at a lot of it, but there are striking, memorable moments.

In the furious lashings of the tides,
Emptier than children’s minds, I through that winter
Ran! And great peninsulas unmoored
Never knew more triumphant uproar than I knew.

And:

I’ve seen the low sun, fearful with mystic signs,
Lightning with far flung violet arms,
Like actors in an ancient tragedy,
The fluted waters shivering far away.

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laws I have never understood,
I have no moral sense.
I am a brute.

My life is threadbare, alright
Let’s sham and shirk, oh pity
And we will go on enjoying ourselves,
Dreaming monstrous loves,
Fantastic universes,
Grumbling and quarreling with
the world’s disguises.
Mountebank, beggar, artist, scoundrel, priest!

These poems are decadent 19th century Rock&Roll. Think one part Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi is Dead, another part Butthole Surfers’s The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey’s Grave, and you’ve about nailed their sensibility. They are more atmosphere than meaning, mostly thunder without rain. They are the poems of a young man (a teen, really). Angst and anger, and melodrama abound in them, as you might expect from poems written by one so young. What is beyond any reasonable expectations is that, despite this, they are of a quality to have inspired generations of gloomy young people, and are still read a century and a half later.

I rate these poems three and a half stars, rounded down. The rounding down instead of up reflects my own enjoyment of them. I liked them, but I’m no more likely to read them again anytime soon than I am to dig out an old Butthole Surfers record and blast The Shah Sleeps.

[Nate D]

Also found on the street in the middle of the night, but of substantially more literary value than UFOs and Their Spiritual Mission. I'd read it before in anthology, but probably everyone should have a copy of the Drunken Boat on hand. Arthur Rimbaud wrote frenetically, had a tumultuous affair with Paul Verlaine, and changed literature before he turned 20, only to renounced it all forever to seek wealth in business and gun running overseas before succumbing to cancer before the age of 40. Do lives like this exist anymore? Fortunately there's a detailed autobiographical note contextualizing the more directly autobiographical A Season in Hell, it's all here.

[Adira · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know where to begin, or how to keep this short. The first thing to mention is how young Rimbaud was when he wrote this, how young he was to achieve such a transcendental standard of writing and also how young he was when he gave it up, because, according to Knausgaard, Writing would become a way to restrict his spiritual freedom. It’s as if his skill was made of pure fire and it had to be big and ground breaking like this book because it was destined to die out. It’s the quickness of his skill that makes it so good. In fact this reminds me of Clarice Lispector and Emil Cioran. I don’t want to gather my thoughts too quickly about the book though because I’m still sitting in that post reading haze where the words are still taking root in me. So I’ll leave my favorite quote below

“The world has no age. Humanity simply changes place. You are in the occident but free to live in your orient, as ancient as you please. And to live well, don’t admit defeat”

[Joseph Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere along the way Rimbaud quipped that “genius is the recovery of youth at will.”

I stumbled onto Rimbaud in 1995, just a feckless year after graduating high school. I had never heard of him. In fact, it’s doubtful that I’d ever picked up a book until then, being a notorious fuck-up in high school. I had started my coming-of-age phase with scads of misdirected energy, fond of filling voids with more voids… But the powder blue cover of his complete works caught my eye and when I opened the book, voila! It was magnetism of an almost preternatural order. Hs poetry changed my life, and still is, although it took side-streets and years to understand why that is true.

When chatting with people about literary figures I often tell anyone who will listen that Rimbaud is the only person in human history, at least that I know of, who didn’t squander their youth. It isn’t hyperbole. He wrote everything he composed in just a few short years, from late adolescence and stopped writing completely at 20.

All this talk though. It’s simple. In the poetry world there is no one who has accomplished a legacy so instrumental to the medium and then walked into obscurity with a shrug. And him, as a punk-kid who, likely as not, would piss all over your good taste and political correctness with a visceral din.

Rimbaud is a singular force. Even almost 150 years after he cashed, nothing like A Season in Hell has ever been written. Not that I have found. His language is so delicate and so thunderous at the same time. He was a master of neologism and essentially ripped the book in half and rewrote it. What I love most about him is the way he could hand you your left-brain need for preserving a fractured order of Western Intellectual Tradition in a bouquet, and then go straight for the jugular with an uncanny maelstrom of the right-brain, hurlant comme une mer. A shooting star and a genius who shaped the world for poets ever since. I love the symbol of his visionary singularity so much that I recently got his likeness in ink on my arm. I love the work of many poets, but none hold a candle to Rimbaud. Something about the synchronicity of place and time in my life way back then and even more so now is writ large in his ouvre. Although my favorite poem of his is probably The Blacksmith, below are a few lines from A Season In Hell. There’s an excellent complete reading of it on YouTube on a channel called Phil Reads. Incidentally, I didn't watch the DiCaprio film. And certainly won't.

“It is my turn. The story of one of my follies.

For a long time I had boasted of having every possible landscape, and found laughable the celebrated names of painting and modern poetry.

I liked stupid paintings, door panels, stage sets, backdrops for acrobats, signs, popular engravings, old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books with bad spelling, the kind of novels our of grandmothers, fairy tales, little books from children, old operas, ridiculous refrains, naive rhythms.

I dreamed of Crusades, of unrecorded voyages, of republics with no history, of hushed up religious wars stamped out, revolutions in customs, displacements of races and continents; I believed in every kind of witchcraft.

I invented the color of the vowels! A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. I regulated the form and movement of every consonant, and, with instinctive rhythms, I pried myself on inventing a poetic language, accessible, someday, to all the senses. I reserved translation rights.

It was at first a study. I wrote out silences and the nights. I recorded the inexpressible. I described frenzies…”

“Delivered to oblivion...growing and flowering with incense and weeds to the sullen whine of nasty flies...I loved deserts, burnt orchards, musty shops, tepid drinks. I dragged myself through stinking alleyways...General, if an old canon remains on your ruined ramparts, bombard us with lumps of dried earth. In the mirrors of luxurious stores! in parlors! Make the city eat its own dust. Oxidize the gargoyles. Fill bedrooms with the burning powder of rubies…”

“I became a fabulous opera. I saw that all beings have a fatality for happiness: action is not life, but a way of spoiling some force, an enervation. Morality is a weakness of the brain.”

“Once did I not have a delightful youth, heroic and fabulous, to be written on sheets of gold—too much luck! Through what crime, through what error did I deserve my present weakness? You who say that animals sob from grief, that the sick despair, that the dead have bad dreams, try to relate my fall and my sleep. I can no more explain myself than a beggar with his endless Paters and Ave Marias. I have forgotten how to speak!”

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent.

I am not going to lie to you. This is definitely not the kind of book I would randomly read. To be quite honest, I wasn’t even aware of its existence until I found myself reading Patti Smith’s M Train and watching Ed Harris’ Pollock in the very same week. The title, A Season in Hell, was what caught my attention at first; then there was Patti Smith’s dedication to the author and the quote Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden), Pollock’s wife, had on her wall.

This is definitely the kind of book that scares me; and yet I found myself buying a copy and reading it.

To whom shall I hire myself out? What beast should I adore? What holy image is attacked? What hearts shall I break? What lies should I uphold? In what blood tread?

Rimbaud’s writing feels… restless. At first there seems to be a sort of chaos, like he has happened upon a world that sees contradictions as twins in the same womb, sharing one beating heart, instead of distant cousins. He seems to be drowning in an ocean of everything and nothing. You can almost hear his breathlessness, which seems tainted not by wonder, awe, but by adrenalin.

As someone who used to write things, I think I recognize the conflict. I would say that writing poetry is not something someone does lightly. Once you put something down, it truly feels like there’s no turning back, no deleting. What’s done is done. With Rimbaud, it’s as if he’s going through some sort of catharsis, like he has decided to write everything… and then be done with it for life. It’s fascinating how he seems to have gone through all this process before even reaching the age of twenty. And his writing! It’s quite extraordinary.

He made it twenty times, that lovers’ promise. It was as vain as when I said to him: ‘I understand you’.

I am sure I will have to revisit this book later on. First, though, I feel like I need to read more about the author and perhaps some of his other work as well.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

initially i wrote this off as the drunken masturbatory ramblings of a privileged white boy in france. which it is. but once i shook off my distaste for that particular trope, i kinda started liking his bad-ass shtick.

i really hated the intro although it's somewhat a necessity- some dude blathers on in a horribly biased way about rimbaud for like 15 pages. he fails to directly acknowledge hardships, queerness, blablablablabla, mostly trying to figure out how to get the whole of his body into rimbaud's ass. i definitely would have appreciated a short biography that seemed a little more reflexive and unslanted. the film total eclipse kinda helped correct some ideas i had about rimbaud. the movie itself is pretty mediocre, but worth it if you want to know more.

it reads kinda like a novel (a season in hell more than the drunken boat, one better than the other, respectively). rimbaud somehow matures by the end of a season in hell- all 17 years of him or whatever. the grumpiness i had from talk of wallowing in his own crapulence and fastuous self pity waned towards the end and i almost liked the guy. parts were almost kinda beautiful. almost kinda touched ya... fucking poetry. this shit is fucking french as all hell, too.

[David Lentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading Rimbaud's Une Saison En Enfer after probably 25 years:

At first it was an experiment. I wrote silences, I wrote the night. I recorded the inexpressible. I fixed frenzies in their flight.

I was rather awestruck by the Blakean imagery and eschatological defiance. This a potent portent for the rereading project. Rimbaud the subaltern becomes a human trafficker and arms dealer.

[prashant]

how are you racist, french and write shit poetry like pick a struggle

[Mohammad Ali Shamekhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

این اثر پر است از اشعار و نوشته های مبهم - تا بدان حد که مرا آزار می داد. در میان این مبهم گویی ها قطعات زیبا و حتی درخشانی نیز به چشم می خورد. اما به طور کلی حس من این بود که باید قبل از ورود به آن درباره اش خواند؛ وگرنه ورود به دنیایش حداقل برای من با خواندنش میسر نشد

بخشی از فصلی در دوزخ، با نام " هذیان ها (1) " برایم جذایت خاصی داشت. توصیف رابطه ای مرموز و افسون گر و در عین حال کشنده و جانکاه. به گمانم شاهکاری بود این بخش. آنچه مرا وا داشت به جای دو ستاره، سه ستاره به این اثر بدهم همین بخش بود

در آغاز بهتر بود مترجم مقدمه ای برای ورود به جهان رمبو می نوشت یا ترجمه می کرد. جای چنین مقدمه ای واقعا خالی است

سپانلو در آغاز در اشاره ای کوتاه به ترجمه ی قبل تر حسن هنرمندی از این قطعه، آن را فاقد دقت در ترجمه می شمارد و حتی آن را دچار خطای فاحش می شمارد. اما من در آن چند جمله ای که در پاورقی از ترجمه ی هنرمندی نقل کرده، بعد از مقایسه با ترجمه ی خودش، چنان خطایی ندیدم که آنقدر فاحش باشد

رمبو فصلی در دوزخ را با یک تغییر آغاز می کند. می گوید در آغاز زندگیم عجین با زیبایی و خوشبختی بود، اما بعد روزی زیبایی را روبروی خود نشاندم و در یافتم که چقدر تهوع آور و نفرت انگیز است. این چرخش به معنای ورود به ساحتی دیگر بود، ساحتی که در آن پلشتی و دیگرگون بودن ستایش و خوشبختی و آداب - خصوصا آداب فرانسوی ها - به سخره گرفته می شود. این اثر در آغاز با این ادعا آغاز می شود که روزنی به سوی آن کودکی از دست رفته بیاید. روزنه ای به سوی خوشبختی - و شاید هم خدا.

در آغاز او به خون گلی - یعنی فرانسوی - خود اشاره می کند و در این اشاره هم به دوران کافرکیشی پیشامسیحی نظر دارد و هم تاریخ کلیسایی. طغیان گری و پلشتی کافرکیشان مسحورش می کند و از تاریخ فرانسه و کلیسایش احساس دوری می کند. بعدتر گفتارها در ابهام ادبی غرق می شود و برای من غیر قابل فهم می گردد

در فصلی دیگر به نزاع شرق و غرب می پردازد. از عقلش و روحش سخن به میان می آورد، عقلش گریز از غرب و جهان مدرن را فریاد می کند اما روحش که میراث انسان غربی و دردهایش را - در حالتی خودآگاهانه - به دوش می کشد، او را به ماندن ترغیب می کند. اشارات تا آخر اثر مؤید این گرایش روحیند. اینکه باید ماند و رنج کشید

در آخر گویی روزنه ای گشوده شده است اما من اصلا متوجه نشدم که این روزنه چیست، حتی آن تمایز میان کودکی و جوانی در ابتدای اثر در هم می رود و سردرگمی بر سردرگمی می افزاید. خلاصه آنکه در پایان به آنجا می رسد که باید ماند و قلم را بر زمین گذاشت. شاید چون آن توصیفی که باید از این فصل دوزخی می شد با این اثر به انجام رسانیده شده و باقی جز غرقه شدن در رنج این دوزخ چیزی نیست. شاید هم حضوری از خدا امید روزنی را ایجاد کرده است. مفهوم احسان که چندبار معدود در ابتدا و انتهای اثر بدان ها اشاره شده شاید کلید این حضور باشد. شاید این احسان همان فیض مسیحی باشد. فیضی که در میانه ی پلشتی غرقه شدگان ناامید را نجات می دهد

همچنین به نظرم نباید از روابط ورلن و رمبو غافل بود. مثلا آنجا که می گوید من در یک تن و روح باید مسیر را ادامه دهم. شاید دعواهای او و ورلن در این ستیزه جویی ها و انزواطلبی ها بی تأثیر نبوده. البته من در مورد صحت و سقم این ادعا از نظر تاریخی بی خبرم

[od1_40reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

I friggin’ love Rimbaud. I love his work, I love his story - the extraordinarily talented rebel teen; the ‘Sid & Nancy’ style affair with Verlaine, their drunken, romantic, vagabond escapades; and I love many of the artists since who’ve been influenced and inspired by him, too many to list, but certainly including Dennis Cooper and David Wojnarowicz.

This collection ‘A Season in Hell’ marks a break from his earlier poems much influenced by the likes of Victor Hugo. In his biography, Edmund White writes:

“These are gnomic, intensely private poems of a young man licking his wounds, feeling rejected, abandoning hope, longing for his lover. In ‘O Seasons, O Castles’, Rimbaud seems clearly to be envisioning a surrender to Verlaine, the man who will take charge “of my life”– unless the whole poem is to be read as a monologue placed in the mind and mouth of Verlaine. Rimbaud would soon be inventing such speeches for his older lover, ‘The Foolish Virgin’ [contained in this collection] in his extended prose poem ‘A Season in Hell’.”

However much I proclaim to love and enjoy Rimbaud’s work, it must be said that it isn’t always the easiest to crack, certainly for me at least. Reading White’s biography has helped me immensely, and also Diarmuid Hester’s excellent critical bio on Dennis Cooper, ‘WRONG’, helped me to gain access to the poet himself, which goes a long way towards interpreting his work.

Also a tip, for anyone like me new to Rimbaud’s work and has to read English translations, make sure you still get copies that include the original French. Even if you don’t understand much French, it’s so damn beautifully written and absolutely must be read alongside the English translations. The English language sadly does little justice to Rimbaud’s stunning prose.

[Miss Ravi · Rating 3 out of 5]

کاش بیاید، کاش بیاید
عصری که همه در آرزویش بودند

آنقدر انتظار کشیده‌ام
که همه‌چیز را فراموش کرده‌ام
ترس‌ها و رنج‌هایم
رهسپار آسمان شده‌اند.

و عذاب تشنگی
خونم را تباه کرد
کاش بیاید، کاش بیاید
عصری که همه در آرزویش بودند
چونان چمنزاری
دستخوش فراموشی
که می‌گسترد و می‌شکفد
با بخور و گندنا
با وزوز پلیدِ
آلوده‌ترین مگس‌ها.

کاش بیاید، کاش بیاید
عصری که همه در آرزویش بودند.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two of my favorite works by Arthur Rimbaud. I have read the complete works several times and always enjoy reading new translations of Rimbaud. This one has a marvelous introduction (which really illustrates where Rimbaud was at during the period of his life when he wrote "Une Saison en Enfer" -- particularly concerning his tumultuous relationship with Paul Verlaine) and it has some strengths in terms of language choices and clarity. The opening lines of "A Season in Hell" dance memorably across my mind and are, to me, some of the finest opening lines in any work. Although I enjoy the translations by Wallace Fowlie and Wyatt Mason better than Louise Varese's, her translation is still very beautiful: "Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed." I prefer "if my memory serves me well" over "if I remember well." My other complaint is that "l'ennui" was translated here as "boredom" (which it often is), though I feel ennui is something more intense than boredom, something more encompassing and debilitating, but this may be owed to my readings of Baudelaire.

Rimbaud is a poet that I enjoy revisiting often. I first read his works four years ago ("if MY memory serves me well")and have read him at least once a year since. His use of language is so masterful and original, taking the reader on a magical mind-trip that one does not quickly forget; it is very easy to get lost in the images he paints with his words ("I thought of us as two good children, free to wander in the Paradise of sadness"; "It is recovered!/What? Eternity./It is the sea/Mixed with the sun" -- these are just two examples).

On this last (re)reading of Rimbaud I really picked out the biographical elements in the work, and could really sympathize with his despairs throughout "A Season in Hell." I also enjoyed the bibliography of works in English by (translations) and about Rimbaud, and would like to read some of these in the near future.

[Frankie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Illuminations but not so much this one, perhaps for its prose aspect. Patti Smith's foreword is fun to read, though rather excessive in style and vulgarity. Keeping Rimbaud's amazing literary story in mind, you can understand the "farewell message" quality. His strongest themes of sacrilegious denial and mourning for his lost love for Verlaine go hand in hand. Some of his imagery is brilliant, amazingly modern for its time, and yet some is immature and unfocused. He was 19 when he wrote this and his writing career nearly finished.

Already, on page 11, he proves himself the first of modernists, when he questions the progress of modernity itself. "Oh! Science! Everything has been revised. For the body and for the soul, – the viaticum, – there are medicine and philosophy, – old wives' remedies and popular songs rearranged." And later, on page 73, "Is it not because we cultivate fog! … And drunkenness! and tobacco! and ignorance! … Why a modern world if such poisons are invented[?]!"

Homosexuality is an underlying theme, though understandably subdued enough to slip through 18th century publishing. He compares the societal ban on his homosexuality to the hypocrisy of holding African tribesmen to European colonist law. He cites Joan of Arc and her denial of obeying a religion that wasn't hers.

He concludes the work, particularly in "Lightning Flash", with the theme of human labor, industrialization and productivity. He applies the same philosophy as with most of his societal theories – how can progress reward the lazy? This subject seems apt to end on, as his move to a non-literary career follows.

I really enjoyed "The Drunken Boat", also included in this edition, a sort of Melville-esque travel journal in verse. As in passages of Illuminations, the cadence and meter are translated well.

[Clara Mundy · Rating 3 out of 5]

reading this book dissuaded the mormon missionaries who were walking towards me in pease park so i’ll forever be grateful to it for that

“No other soul would have enough strength—strength of despair!—to endure it, to be protected and loved by him. Moreover, I never imagined him with another soul: one sees one’s own Angel, never the Angel of another—I believe. I was in his soul as in a palace they had emptied, so that no one should see so mean a person as oneself: that was all. Alas!”

3.5/5

[Keith [on semi hiatus] · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glorious.

[oriana 🎀 · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[bella · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love you Rimbaud

[Victoria Nicholson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Drunken Boat is written from the viewpoint of a sunk sad ship thats
led a exciting life.This poem protests the law of the market, slavery,
war, etc. It is visionary.It has gorgeous imagery such as "the northern
lights rising like a kiss to the sea" and "swells that batter like terrified cattle". Rimbaud a child prodigy ran away from home as a teen
and lived on the streets including a experimental commune.When the commune was forced closed by elite French soldiers , these soldiers
gangbanged Rimbaud. Arthur Rimbaud then became a lover to Paul Verlaine.Finally disillusioned he quit literature and had adventures
in Africa.The Drunken Boat is my favorite poem by Rimbaud.I also like
quotes by him like "Loves got to be reinvented" and "I saw the hell
of women ... I shall be free to exspress it in one body and one soul".
Rimbaud got me intrested in synesthesia and the blending of the arts.
I appreciate the music of Vincent Van Goghs brushstrokes because of
Arthur Rimbaud.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work would be so cheapened by only dispensing the well-worn cliché that Arthur Rimbaud represents the 'ultimate, quintessential rebellious teenager', even if it is 100%, absolutely true.

He was angry, he was wild, and he ingested a steady diet of drugs—yes. But he also helped give birth to what one might call 'modern' poetry. Frankly, his writing is not only astoundingly blasphemous, but lush with furious anger, thankfulness, and deep regrets.

Naturally, like many that came before me, I don't believe I have anything terribly worthwhile to say, other than that his writing is electric, his beautiful fires are sincere, and his fascinating audaciousness seems to know no bounds. But put even more succinctly: he has produced a harsh, strange, and violently enthralling classic that demands to be read.

[Damion · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book and was fired up. I read it in college after finding out about him from the beat writers i was reading.

I remember being blown away by the young writer. This book actually made me want to be a writer. I identified with the author. I carried a notebook with me, and wrote in my notebook after work.
I wrote many poems and drank and walked the streets of my city observing things and people like Rimbaud once did.

the writing was very emotive yet clever and intellectual at the same time.

Don't know now how it would read to me after almost twenty years?

I just remember it impressed me then.