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ARTHUR RIMBAUD: A SEASON IN HELL
Edited and translated by Andrew Jary
A new translation of Arthur Rimbaud's extraordinary poetic statement, written in 1873. The sensual, violent and anguished emotion in Rimbaud's visionary 'alchemy of the word' remains startling, and continues to inspire poets.
Printed with the French text facing the translation.
For a time, when he was a teenager until he was 19, art was crucial for the psychic well-being of the restless Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891). The young would-be rebel Rimbaud escaped from the bland provincial town of Charleville in Northern France to wander the streets of Paris in poverty. After writing his Illuminations and A Season in Hell, some of the most extraordinary poems of all world literature, Rimbaud renounced it all for a hellish and apparently boring life in Aden. 'Mortel, ange ET demon, autant dire Rimbaud,' as Rimbaud's lover, Paul Verlaine wrote ('Mortal, angel AND demon, that is to say Rimbaud'.)
Arthur Rimbaud is the tornado of world poetry. He out-blasts just about every other poet. For poets, he is more significant than the so-called 'founding fathers' or influential philosophers of modern times: Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and Einstein. For poets, he is 'everybody's favourite hippy', a Communard, a 'precursor of the current movement of subversion of Western notions of self, society, and discourse', and a savage mystic.
About the author
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was a visionary French poet from Charleville who dreamed of reinventing love and changing life with his poetry. At the age of sixteen, he traveled to Paris at the invitation of poet Paul Verlaine, ten years his senior, and exploded onto the literary scene with "The Drunken Boat." In the ensuing years, Rimbaud further confirmed his place in literature with the spiritual autobiography "A Season in Hell" (the only work Rimbaud had printed himself) and forty-four scintillating prose texts that were later published as "The Illuminations." As notorious for his life as he was for his poetry, Rimbaud had a productive but tumultuous relationship with Verlaine, who shot him in the wrist in Brussels. After abandoning literature at the age of twenty-one, Rimbaud enlisted in the Dutch colonial army in order to travel Java, deserting four months later and returning to France. In 1878, he traveled to Cyprus and worked as a foreman at a stone quarry. Two years later, he was living and working in Aden, Yemen, and then in Harar, Ethiopia, for an export agency. In 1885, he negotiated an arms deal with Menelik, the King of Shoa. A great walker all his life, Rimbaud developed a tumor in his right knee and soon returned to France in excruciating pain. His condition worsened, requiring doctors to amputate his right leg. Rimbaud died at the Hôpital de Conception in Marseille in 1891 at the age of thirty-seven; his body was returned to Charleville and buried in the Charleville-Mézières cemetery. Rimbaud's life and work have inspired countless writers, artists, and musicians, including the French Symbolists, the Beat generation, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and Jim Morrison.
