This is where modern poetry begins. "Il faut être absolument moderne" [One must be completely modern], is how Rimbaud himself put it in his prose-poetic nightmarish reverie Une Saison en Enfer [A Season in Hell]. He was 18 at the time. The book was printed in Brussels in "a few copies ... distributed to friends" just before his birthday on 20th October, 1873.
He's quite a mine of such provocative aphorisms, in fact: "un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens" [a long, detailed and systematic derangement of the senses], as a prerequisite to the composition of "visionary" poetry, is perhaps the best known of them. "Je est un autre" ["I" is somebody else], from the same 1871 letter to his fellow-poet Paul Demeny, is even more pithy.
There's a demonic energy to much of his work, early and late. By 1875, only a few years after he began, he'd given up writing altogether, preferring the life of a wandering merchant and soldier of fortune. He died in 1891, probably of bone cancer. He was only 37.
There'd been poètes maudits [accursed poets] before him, and there were plenty still to come. At first sight, he doesn't look that different from Baudelaire or Nerval or the rebellious poets of earlier times. His precocity was what really astonished his contemporaries, but he was no flash in the pan. The first thing that strikes you about Rimbaud when you start to read him in earnest is the maturity and complexity of his thought.
That, and the fact that he seems to have been born with an innate talent for versification. Even his earliest poems are technically flawless, and when he departs from the strict rules of French prosody in his later work, it's clearly intentional.
Perhaps the easiest way to show why he seemed so extraordinary to his contemporaries - and to poets and artists ever since - is to look at one of those early poems, the ones where he still sees himself as a contributor to French poetry, rather than the dynamiter of all its pretentions.
Les poètes de sept ans À M. P. Demeny Et la Mère, fermant le livre du devoir, S’en allait satisfaite et très fière, sans voir, Dans les yeux bleus et sous le front plein d’éminences L’âme de son enfant livrée aux répugnances. Tout le jour il suait d’obéissance ; très Intelligent ; pourtant des tics noirs, quelques traits, Semblaient prouver en lui d’âcres hypocrisies. Dans l’ombre des couloirs aux tentures moisies, En passant il tirait la langue, les deux poings À l’aine, et dans ses yeux fermés voyait des points. Une porte s’ouvrait sur le soir : à la lampe On le voyait, là-haut, qui râlait sur la rampe, Sous un golfe de jour pendant du toit. L’été Surtout, vaincu, stupide, il était entêté À se renfermer dans la fraîcheur des latrines : Il pensait là, tranquille et livrant ses narines. Quand, lavé des odeurs du jour, le jardinet Derrière la maison, en hiver, s’illunait, Gisant au pied d’un mur, enterré dans la marne Et pour des visions écrasant son œil darne, Il écoutait grouiller les galeux espaliers. Pitié ! Ces enfants seuls étaient ses familiers Qui, chétifs, fronts nus, œil déteignant sur la joue, Cachant de maigres doigts jaunes et noirs de boue Sous des habits puant la foire et tout vieillots, Conversaient avec la douceur des idiots ! Et si, l’ayant surpris à des pitiés immondes, Sa mère s’effrayait ; les tendresses, profondes, De l’enfant se jetaient sur cet étonnement. C’était bon. Elle avait le bleu regard, – qui ment ! À sept ans, il faisait des romans, sur la vie Du grand désert, où luit la Liberté ravie, Forêts, soleils, rives, savanes ! – Il s’aidait De journaux illustrés où, rouge, il regardait Des Espagnoles rire et des Italiennes. Quand venait, l’œil brun, folle, en robes d’indiennes, À Huit ans, – la fille des ouvriers d’à côté, La petite brutale, et qu’elle avait sauté, Dans un coin, sur son dos, en secouant ses tresses, Et qu’il était sous elle, il lui mordait les fesses, Car elle ne portait jamais de pantalons ; – Et, par elle meurtri des poings et des talons, Remportait les saveurs de sa peau dans sa chambre. Il craignait les blafards dimanches de décembre, Où, pommadé, sur un guéridon d’acajou, Il lisait une Bible à la tranche vert-chou ; Des rêves l’oppressaient chaque nuit dans l’alcôve. Il n’aimait pas Dieu ; mais les hommes, qu’au soir fauve, Noirs, en blouse, il voyait rentrer dans le faubourg Où les crieurs, en trois roulements de tambour, Font autour des édits rire et gronder les foules. – Il rêvait la prairie amoureuse, où des houles Lumineuses, parfums sains, pubescences d’or, Font leur remuement calme et prennent leur essor ! Et comme il savourait surtout les sombres choses, Quand, dans la chambre nue aux persiennes closes, Haute et bleue, âcrement prise d’humidité, Il lisait son roman sans cesse médité, Plein de lourds ciels ocreux et de forêts noyées, De fleurs de chair aux bois sidérals déployées, Vertige, écroulements, déroutes et pitié ! – Tandis que se faisait la rumeur du quartier, En bas, – seul, et couché sur des pièces de toile Écrue, et pressentant violemment la voile ! - Arthur Rimbaud (26 mai 1871)• Shutting her pious book, the Mother rose and kissed her little boy … what mother sees in Angel-face, his big eyes free of guile, bile and disgust tormenting the nude soul? All day long he sweated to obey; clever, quick, yet something seemed to say – little habits, tics – that this was sham. Alone in mildewed corridors, he would scream shit-fuck! clench his fists, stick out his tongue, screw up his eyes into a blood-red sun. A door opened on darkness – the backstairs, the one place he could lie and gasp for air in the dome of day a lamp hung from the night. Burnt stupid by blank waves of summer heat he hid himself inside the dank latrines; there he could breathe – sniff something that was clean. In winter, when the moon washed their back yard with icy candour, he would creep out and hide by the stream that ran inside their boundary wall; trying to see by knuckling at his eyeballs, he heard the pine-trees groan like ships at sea. Although he felt some sneaking sympathy for those trespassing kids who dropped their eyes at his approach (stink-fingers black and creased with yellow clay from damming up the creek), they turned from him like dolts and would not speak. And if his mother caught him at this game and told him off, the fact he looked ashamed fooled her into forgiveness. He was shy. Those lips were always ready with a lie. At seven he made up Westerns: wild romances set in the desert – where freedom reigns (and Dances with Wolves?); sunsets, rivers, cliffs, savannahs … Staring at naked woodcut señoritas till he turned red, he dreamt of foreign girls. So when that saucy eight-year-old, her curls bobbing, thin cotton dresses … like a squaw with soft brown eyes … came over from next door and jumped him – little beast – pulling his hair, caught underneath, he bit her on the bare bum (“wild women never put on drawers!”); then, scratched and beaten by her fists and claws, he carried the scent of her back to his room. Most of all, he feared Sundays at home, brushed clean and collared, sitting with his back straight, reading about a God he’d learnt to hate in a mould-green Bible with a faded back; the nightmares came as soon as it got dark. He loved to watch those swart, roughly-dressed men straggle home from work in the red evening ready for the distractions of the streets – his dreams were of wide prairies of ripe wheat: gold thistledown, rich scents, in the calm light of noon, till rough winds swept them out of sight. He fixated most on things that were dark and old – sitting in a cold blue room with the blinds pulled, damp dripping off the walls, mouthing the words of a story he could see inside his head full of drowned forests; leaden, ochre skies; flesh-haunted flowers; starry immensities; despair; retreat; stiff salmon-leaps; and pity! Engulfed by the vast engine-grinding city – lying in the creased haven of his bed, he bent his sails where a blind future led …
- trans. Jack Ross (7/91-18/5/97)
Oscar-winning screenwriter Christopher Hampton's brilliant early play Total Eclipse dramatises the relationship between Rimbaud and the older poet Verlaine, which culminated in the prosecution of the latter for wounding his young lover with a pistol during a drunken argument.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Agnieszka Holland's film of the story, marred as it is by poor casting (Leonardo di Caprio as Rimbaud!) and a number of embarrassingly extraneous scenes - such as the one in which di Caprio tries to induce poor David Thewlis (Verlaine) to strip naked and bound around in a field like goats.
The deadpan restraint of the original play gets lost in all this absurdity, and the result is satisfying neither to biopic aficionados or Rimbaud enthusiasts. It's hard to know what Hampton and Holland were thinking ...
In general, the moment you depart from his actual work - the poems and prose-pieces which somehow managed to survive his tempestuous life and the religious censorship of his family - you tend to run into trouble in Rimbaud studies.
In the third, 1961, version of her very entertaining book about the poet (originally published in 1938), eccentric Irish literary critic Enid Starkie finally established to her own satisfaction the precise nature of Rimbaud's relationship with esoteric and hermetic thought in his proposed establishment of a new religion with himself as Messiah - or Sun-God, if that phrasing suits you better.
She was reluctantly forced to admit that most of this could have come from journal articles and encyclopedia entries rather than the magical grimoires she originally had him poring over.
And she may well have been correct. But whether any of that assists us in understanding his work better is another question. Just sitting down and reading it still seems like the best approach. There's always an uncomfortable sense, though, with Rimbaud, that the poet is sitting in judgement on you - as he did so trenchantly with Verlaine - rather than the other way round.
•
Let's take, for example, another early poem, "Les chercheuses de poux" [The lice-hunters]. It's a wonderful evocation of the "eternal feminine" and the effect of such proximity on a precocious young boy. The intentional grounding of the whole experience in the process of picking out lice from an infected scalp might seem abhorrent to a lazy (i.e. romantically inclined) reader, but actually it serves to ground the whole poem in what Yeats called "the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart."
Desire is an animal, instinctual thing. Rimbaud knows that, as do we all. The difference is that he's able to express the whole confusion of vague visionary pre-adolescent sexuality by juxtaposing it with the intense practicality of everyday life.
Les chercheuses de poux Quand le front de l'enfant, plein de rouges tourmentes, Implore l'essaim blanc des rêves indistincts, Il vient près de son lit deux grandes soeurs charmantes Avec de frêles doigts aux ongles argentins. Elles assoient l'enfant auprès d'une croisée Grande ouverte où l'air bleu baigne un fouillis de fleurs, Et dans ses lourds cheveux où tombe la rosée Promènent leurs doigts fins, terribles et charmeurs. Il écoute chanter leurs haleines craintives Qui fleurent de longs miels végétaux et rosés Et qu'interrompt parfois un sifflement, salives Reprises sur la lèvre ou désirs de baisers. Il entend leurs cils noirs battant sous les silences Parfumés ; et leurs doigts électriques et doux Font crépiter parmi ses grises indolences Sous leurs ongles royaux la mort des petits poux. Voilà que monte en lui le vin de la Paresse, Soupirs d'harmonica qui pourrait délirer ; L'enfant se sent, selon la lenteur des caresses, Sourdre et mourir sans cesse un désir de pleurer. - Arthur Rimbaud (1871)• When the kid's forehead is full of red torments Imploring swarms of dreams with vague contents, Two large and charming sisters come with wafty fingers and silvery nails, to his bedroom. They set the kid by a wide-open window where A tangle of flowers bathes in the blue air And run fine, alluring, terrible fingers through his thick dew-matted hair. He hears the rustling of their timid breath Flower with the long pinkish vegetable honies underneath Or broken anon, sibilant, the saliva's hiss Drawn from a lip, or a desire to kiss. He hears their black eyelashes beat in that quietude And "Crack!" to break his inebriated indolences Neath their electric and so soft fingers death assails The little lice beneath their regal nails. And Lo! there mounts within him Wine of Laziness - a squiffer's sigh Might bring delirium - and the kid feels Neath the slowness of their caresses, constantly Wane and fade a desire to cry.
- trans. Ezra Pound (1957)
Rimbaud
The nights, the railway-arches, the bad sky, His horrible companions did not know it; But in that child the rhetorician’s lie Burst like a pipe: the cold had made a poet. Drinks bought him by his weak and lyric friend His five wits systematically deranged, To all accustomed nonsense put an end; Till he from lyre and weakness was estranged. Verse was a special illness of the ear; Integrity was not enough; that seemed The hell of childhood: he must try again. Now, galloping through Africa, he dreamed Of a new self, a son, an engineer, His truth acceptable to lying men.
- W. H. Auden (December 1938)
To a truly remarkable degree, this thing we call "Rimbaud" is the creation of his admirers - as well as (I should add) his detractors. Auden, here, imagines him conducting a kind of personal crusade against the falsehood and hypocrisy of late nineteenth-century colonial Europe, searching desperately for a "truth acceptable to lying men."
He seems to be speaking about himself more than he is about Rimbaud.
After all, those last few lines do rather gloss over the more unpleasant aspects of Rimbaud's later career, post-poetry. He was not, it would seem, an actual slaver, but more a gun-runner and occasional soldier of fortune. But it was not from lack of trying. There are surviving letters where he tries to negotiate the sale of slaves from reluctant mercantile contacts in Somalia and Ethiopia.
The story is told in more detail in Charles Nicholl's fascinating book Somebody Else: Rimbaud in Africa. What these repugnant facts do confirm, though, is that the more we find out about him, the less we understand him. How could the visionary poet of the 1870s have turned into the brutal, unscrupulous, unsuccessful entrepreneur of the 1880s?
It's almost as if we're talking about two completely different men. But then, when one looks more carefully at the poems, the longing for exotic experience embodied in his early masterpiece "Le bâteau ivre" [The Drunken Boat] is not so hard to square with an afterlife as a kind of embodied Jules Verne hero.
The fact that it all went so badly is perhaps explicable by the fact that a vivid imagination, however useful it may be to a poet, is not really an ideal prerequisite for a hardbitten man of action.
In any case, here's the poem, together with a version of it by American poet Robert Lowell, who included a number of pieces by Rimbaud in his influential mid-career book Imitations.
Le bâteau ivre Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles, Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs : Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles Les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs. J’étais insoucieux de tous les équipages, Porteur de blés flamands ou de cotons anglais. Quand avec mes haleurs ont fini ces tapages Les Fleuves m’ont laissé descendre où je voulais. Dans les clapotements furieux des marées Moi l’autre hiver plus sourd que les cerveaux d’enfants, Je courus ! Et les Péninsules démarrées N’ont pas subi tohu-bohus plus triomphants. La tempête a béni mes éveils maritimes. Plus léger qu’un bouchon j’ai dansé sur les flots Qu’on appelle rouleurs éternels de victimes, Dix nuits, sans regretter l’oeil niais des falots ! Plus douce qu’aux enfants la chair des pommes sures, L’eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin Et dès lors, je me suis baigné dans le Poème De la Mer, infusé d’astres, et lactescent, Dévorant les azurs verts ; où, flottaison blême Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend ; Où, teignant tout à coup les bleuités, délires Et rythmes lents sous les rutilements du jour, Plus fortes que l’alcool, plus vastes que nos lyres, Fermentent les rousseurs amères de l’amour ! Je sais les cieux crevant en éclairs, et les trombes Et les ressacs et les courants : Je sais le soir, L’aube exaltée ainsi qu’un peuple de colombes, Et j’ai vu quelque fois ce que l’homme a cru voir ! J’ai vu le soleil bas, taché d’horreurs mystiques, Illuminant de longs figements violets, Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques Les flots roulant au loin leurs frissons de volets ! J’ai rêvé la nuit verte aux neiges éblouies, Baiser montant aux yeux des mers avec lenteurs, La circulation des sèves inouïes, Et l’éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs ! J’ai suivi, des mois pleins, pareille aux vacheries Hystériques, la houle à l’assaut des récifs, Sans songer que les pieds lumineux des Maries Pussent forcer le mufle aux Océans poussifs ! J’ai heurté, savez-vous, d’incroyables Florides Mêlant aux fleurs des yeux de panthères à peaux D’hommes ! Des arcs-en-ciel tendus comme des brides Sous l’horizon des mers, à de glauques troupeaux ! J’ai vu fermenter les marais énormes, nasses Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan ! Des écroulement d’eau au milieu des bonaces, Et les lointains vers les gouffres cataractant ! Glaciers, soleils d’argent, flots nacreux, cieux de braises ! Échouages hideux au fond des golfes bruns Où les serpents géants dévorés de punaises Choient, des arbres tordus, avec de noirs parfums ! J’aurais voulu montrer aux enfants ces dorades Du flot bleu, ces poissons d’or, ces poissons chantants. – Des écumes de fleurs ont bercé mes dérades Et d’ineffables vents m’ont ailé par instants. Parfois, martyr lassé des pôles et des zones, La mer dont le sanglot faisait mon roulis doux Montait vers moi ses fleurs d’ombres aux ventouses jaunes Et je restais, ainsi qu’une femme à genoux… Presque île, balottant sur mes bords les querelles Et les fientes d’oiseaux clabaudeurs aux yeux blonds Et je voguais, lorsqu’à travers mes liens frêles Des noyés descendaient dormir, à reculons ! Or moi, bateau perdu sous les cheveux des anses, Jeté par l’ouragan dans l’éther sans oiseau, Moi dont les Monitors et les voiliers des Hanses N’auraient pas repêché la carcasse ivre d’eau ; Libre, fumant, monté de brumes violettes, Moi qui trouais le ciel rougeoyant comme un mur Qui porte, confiture exquise aux bons poètes, Des lichens de soleil et des morves d’azur, Qui courais, taché de lunules électriques, Planche folle, escorté des hippocampes noirs, Quand les juillets faisaient crouler à coups de triques Les cieux ultramarins aux ardents entonnoirs ; Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre à cinquante lieues Le rut des Béhémots et les Maelstroms épais, Fileur éternel des immobilités bleues, Je regrette l’Europe aux anciens parapets ! J’ai vu des archipels sidéraux ! et des îles Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur : – Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t’exiles, Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur ? – Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes. Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer : L’âcre amour m’a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes. Ô que ma quille éclate ! Ô que j’aille à la mer ! Si je désire une eau d’Europe, c’est la flache Noire et froide où vers le crépuscule embaumé Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses, lâche Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai. Je ne puis plus, baigné de vos langueurs, ô lames, Enlever leur sillage aux porteurs de cotons, Ni traverser l’orgueil des drapeaux et des flammes, Ni nager sous les yeux horribles des pontons. - Arthur Rimbaud (Lutèce, 2 novembre 1883)• I felt my guides no longer carried me - as we sailed down the virgin Amazon, the redskins nailed them to their painted stakes naked, as targets for their archery. I carried Flemish wheat or Swedish wood, but had forgotten my unruly crew; their conversation ended with their lives, the river let me wander where I would. Surf punished me, and threw my cargo out; last winter I was breaking up on land. I fled. These floating river villages had never heard a more triumphant shout. The green ooze spurting through my centreboard was sweeter than sour apples to a boy - it washed away the stains of puke and rot-gut, anchor and wheel were carried overboard. The typhoon spun my silly needle round; ten nights I scudded from the freighters' lights; lighter than cork, I danced upon the surge man calls the rolling coffin of his drowned. Rudderless, I was driven like a plank on night seas stuck with stars and dribbling milk; I shot through greens and blues, where luminous, swollen, drowned sailors rose for light and sank. I saw the lightning turn the pole-star green, currents, icebergs, and waterspouts. One night the sunrise lifted like a flock of doves - I saw whatever men suppose they've seen. I saw the ocean bellowing on the land, cattle stampeding with their tails on fire, but never dreamed Three Marys walked the sea to curb those frothing muzzles with a hand. I saw the salt marsh boil, a whole whale rot in some Louisiana bayou's muck, cutting the blue horizon with its flukes - bon-bons of sunlight and cold azure snot! I was a lost boat nosing through the hulls of Monitors and Hanseatic hulks; none cared to gaff my wreckage from the bilge and yellow beaks of the marauding gulls. I would have liked to show a child those seas, rocking to soothe the clatter of my sails in irons on the equatorial line. Like a woman, I fell upon my knees; then heaven opened for the voyager. I stared at archipelagoes of stars. Was it on those dead watches that I died - a million golden birds, Oh future Vigour! I cannot watch these purple suns go down like actors on the Aeschylean stage. I'm drunk on water. I cry out too much - Oh that my keel might break, and I might drown! Shrunken and black against a twilight sky, our Europe has no water. Only a pond the cows have left, and a boy wades to launch his paper boat frail as a butterfly. Bathed in your languors, Waves, I have no wings to cut across the wakes of cotton ships, or fly against the flags of merchant kings, or swim beneath the guns of prison ships.
- trans. Robert Lowell (1961)
You'll notice at once the profusion of nautical and New World imagery here, but also the emphasis on merchandise and trade in the midst of all this florid, perilous exuberance.
The other thing you may spot, if not on the first run-through then perhaps on your second reading, is that Lowell has reduced the 25 quatrains of Rimbaud's original to a scant 15. If you'd like to get a closer sense of the actual meaning of the original, you might prefer to look at Oliver Bernard or Wallace Fowlie's rather more faithful renderings.
I can't help feeling that Lowell's very free retelling of Rimbaud's poem gets us considerably closer to the manic energy of the original, however. It's perhaps also worth noting that Rimbaud had almost certainly never seen the sea when he wrote these verses.
It was all in his head - or perhaps one should say instead that Rimbaud was an enthusiastic student of the profusely illustrated travel literature of the time. He envisioned, in his mind's eye, what he'd just read. His celebrated sonnet "Voyelles [Vowels]," with its fascinating description of his synaesthetic polychromatic response to the alphabet, gives some idea of the richness of that inner life.
After setting out on his career as a vagabond and tramp at the time of the 1870 Franco-Prussian war and the subsequent Paris commune, his pictures became more solidly rooted in reality. His equally famous pastoral "Le dormeur du val" [The sleeper in the valley] reminds us of the war raging around him. It's even been claimed by some (notably Enid Starkie) that he was raped by some drunken soldiers in Paris in 1871, an experience linked to his poem "Le Cœur volé" [The Stolen Heart].
That tramp persona - the boy who walked all over Europe on his own two feet and saw life in its rawest form - has left us a number of vignettes of his experiences.
Tthe short poem "Au Cabaret Vert" [At the Green Inn] perhaps shows Rimbaud at his best and least pretentious. The poem seems simple and honest, and while there may be certain overtones in it of a boy who's still pretending to be a man, there's no reason to suppose that the poet is unaware of the fact - or of the degree to which he's pandering to such expectations.
Here it is in a number of versions, starting with Ezra Pound's celebrated "Vagabond" translation of 1918:
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Au Cabaret Vert, cinq heures du soir
- Cabaret Vert [Vagabond]
- At the Green Cabaret
- At the Green Inn, Five in the Evening
- At the Cabaret-Vert At five in the afternoon
- At The Green Inn
- Au Cabaret-Vert, cinq heures du soir
- At the Green Cabaret, five o’clock in the evening
- Arthur Rimbaud (October 1870)
Depuis huit jours, j’avais déchiré mes bottines Aux cailloux des chemins. J’entrais à Charleroi. - Au Cabaret-Vert : je demandai des tartines De beurre et du jambon qui fut à moitié froid. Bienheureux, j’allongeai les jambes sous la table Verte : je contemplai les sujets très naïfs De la tapisserie. - Et ce fut adorable, Quand la fille aux tétons énormes, aux yeux vifs, - Celle-là, ce n’est pas un baiser qui l’épeure ! - Rieuse, m’apporta des tartines de beurre, Du jambon tiède, dans un plat colorié, Du jambon rose et blanc parfumé d’une gousse D’ail, - et m’emplit la chope immense, avec sa mousse Que dorait un rayon de soleil arriéré.
- trans. Ezra Pound (1918)
Wearing out my shoes, 8th day On the bad roads, I got into Charleroi. Bread, butter, at the Green Cabaret And the ham half cold. Got my legs stretched out And was looking at the simple tapestries, Very nice when the gal with the big bubs And lively eyes, Not one to be scared of a kiss and more, Brought the butter and bread with a grin And the luke-warm ham on a colored plate … Pink ham, white fat and a sprig Of garlic, and a great chope of foamy beer Gilt by the sun in that atmosphere.
- trans. Robert Lowell (1961)
For eight days I had been knocking my boots on the road stones. I was entering Charleroi. At the Green Cabaret, I called for ham, half cold, and a large helping of tartines. Happy, I kicked my shoes off, cooled my feet under the table, green like the room, and laughed at the naive Belgian pictures on the wall. But it was terrific when the house-girl with her earth-mother tits and come-on eyes — no Snow Queen having cat-fits at a kiss — brought me tarts and ham on a colored plate She stuck a clove of garlic in the ham, red frothed by white, and slopped beer in my stein, foam gilded by a ray of the late sun.
- trans. Oliver Bernard (1962)
For a whole week I had ripped up my boots On the stones of the roads. I walked into Charleroi; Into the Green Inn: I asked for some slices Of bread and butter, and some half-cooled ham. Happy, I stuck out my legs under the green table: I studied the artless patterns of the Wallpaper - and it was charming when the girl With the huge breasts and lively eyes, - A kiss wouldn't scare that one! - Smilingly brought me some bread and butter And lukewarm ham, on a coloured plate; - Pink and white ham, scented with a clove of garlic - And filled my huge beer mug, whose froth was turned Into gold by a ray of late sunshine.
- trans. Wallace Fowlie (1966)
For a week my boots had been torn By the pebbles on the roads. I was getting into Charleroi. — At the Cabaret-Vert: I asked for bread And butter, and for ham that would be half chilled. Happy, I stretched out my legs under the green Table. I looked at the very naïve subjects Of the wallpaper. — And it was lovely, When the girl with huge tits and lively eyes, — She’s not one to be afraid of a kiss! — Laughing brought me bread and butter, Warm ham, in a colored plate, White and rosy ham flavored with a clove Of garlic – and filled my enormous mug, with its foam Which a late ray of sun turned gold.
- trans. A. S. Kline (2003)
For eight days, I’d ripped up my boots On the road stones. I’d made Charleroi. – At the Green Inn: I ordered bread Buttered, along with half-cold ham. Happy, I stretched my legs out under the table, A green one: considering the naïve prints On the walls. – And it was charming, When the girl with big tits and lively eyes, – That one, just a kiss wouldn’t scare her! – Smiling, brought me slices of bread and butter, With lukewarm ham on a coloured platter, Ham, white and pink, a fragrant garlic clove, – And filled a huge beer mug high, its foam Turned by a ray of late sunlight to gold.
- trans. George Lang (2019)
For a whole week I’d been wearing out my soles tramping down rocky paths. When I got home I headed to the Cabaret-Vert, ordering rolls with butter and a slab of lukewarm ham. At peace, I stretched my legs out, admired the simple patterns on tapestry hung on the wall. Then the girl served up the desired buns, her tits big, bright eyes so young — not likely would she shy away from a peck! The pink ham with its rim of white fat bedecked with pungent garlic sat on a fancy dish. With it she brought a stein topped with froth, spume glistening in the sun. In truth, there was little more I could ever wish.
- trans. Bir Cevap Yazın (2025)
For eight days, I’d worn my boots, shred by shred On the pebbles of the roads. Into Charleroi I strolled – At the Green Cabaret: asked for buttered bread And a helping of ham that was half cold. Blissful, I stretched my legs under the green Table: at the very naive figures I gazed Of the tapestry. – It was a charming scene When the girl with enormous tits, with eyes that blazed, That girl, it’s not a kiss that makes her heart flutter! Laughing, she brought me warm bread and butter, Lukewarm ham, upon a colored plate, Pink and white ham, scented with garlic broth, And filled the huge mug, with its bubbling froth, Gilded by a sunbeam, lingering late.
It's interesting that the first of these translations reads as if it should go last: Ezra Pound sounded more modern in 1918 than virtually any of the later translators. You could say that they chose to be more obedient to the accidentals of Rimbaud's sonnet, but it really comes out to your conception of what a poetry translation is (or should be).
A lot of it hinges on how these various writers deal with that crucial line "Celle-là, ce n’est pas un baiser qui l’épeure". "That girl, it’s not a kiss that makes her heart flutter!", says Bir Cevap Yazın. It's a bit clumsy, but not too bad. It does at least get across the idea that it's not a mere kiss that's going to frighten this girl. She's far too experienced for that.
It's important to note here that, as Emad Noujeim has explained on Quora:
According to Le Grand Robert dictionary, the French verb baiser, which usually means “to kiss”, acquired the meaning of “to have sex or intercourse with” in the sixteenth century ...In other words, Rimbaud was perfectly aware of the double-meaning of the word "baiser" in his sentence. It could, in fact, be quite legitimately Englished as "That girl, she's not afraid of a fuck!" All the translators must be aware of this. How could they not be? And yet most of them tiptoe through the line with various degrees of timidity:
The verb embrasser initially meant “to embrace or to hug”. It began to be more and more used with the meaning “to give a kiss or kisses” at the beginning of the twentieth century, as the verb baiser was increasingly used in the sense of “to screw (sexually or otherwise)” or “to fuck”.
This ... usage was still regarded as abusive by the lexicographer and encyclopedist Pierre Larousse in 1870 ... and was viewed as a ... neologism as late as the end of the nineteenth century.
Characteristically, Ezra Pound sees no reason not to be frank about the double-entendre:
Not one to be scared of a kiss and moreRobert Lowell almost over-emphasises it with his:
no Snow Queen having cat-fits at a kissLiteralist Oliver Bernard is pretty evasive about it:
- A kiss wouldn't scare that one! -Wallace Fowlie is a bit more idiomatic, but still not direct enough:
— She’s not one to be afraid of a kiss! —A. S. Kline contorts the English language unmercifully with his:
– That one, just a kiss wouldn’t scare her! –And, last and very probably least, George Lang obliges us with:
— not likely would she shy away from a peck!That's not to say that it's easy to translate a sonnet by Rimbaud, even one as seemingly straightforward as this. There are subtleties in every word, in every shade of description - and yet it all adds up to that paradisal sense of relief at a cold beer and a sandwich after a long tramp!
Pound gets that across. Do any of the others? Perhaps Lowell and Fowlie. The jury's out on the others, I'd say.
One thing's for certain. If you have any desire at all to understand modern poetry, it's probably best to begin with Arthur Rimbaud. His attempts to modernise his contemporaries met with - let's say - somewhat mixed success, but his influence on posterity has been immense.
When Pound and Eliot set out to revolutionise English-language poetry shortly before the First World War they had a number of French poets to choose from. Baudelaire, Laforgue, Lautréamont, Mallarmé - all contributed something. But behind them stood Rimbaud's "bâteau ivre" - and that book of prose poems Les Illuminations ...
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Henriego Fantin-Latour: Arthur Rimbaud (1872)Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud
[Arthur Rimbaud]
(1854-1891)
Books I own are marked in bold:
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Published poems:
- "Les Étrennes des orphelins" [1869]. La revue pour tous (2 January 1870)
- "Première soirée" [1870]. [aka "Trois baisers" & "Comédie en trois baisers"]. La charge (13 August 1870)
- "Le Dormeur du val" [1870]. Anthologie des poètes français (1888)
- "Voyelles" [1871 or 1872]. Lutèce (5 October 1883)
- "Le Bateau ivre", "Voyelles", "Oraison du soir", "Les assis", "Les effarés", "Les chercheuses de poux" (1870–1872]. Les Poètes maudits. Ed. Paul Verlaine (1884)
- "Les corbeaux" (1871 or 1872]. La renaissance littéraire et artistique (14 September 1872)
- "Qu'est-ce pour nous mon cœur..." [1872]. La Vogue (7 June 1886)
- "Les mains de Marie-Jeanne" [1871]. Littérature (June 1919)
- Une Saison en Enfer [1873] (Brussels, October 1873)
- Illuminations [1872–1875] (1886)
- Reliquaire – Poésies. Ed. Rodolphe Darzens (1891)
- Poésies complètes. Preface by Paul Verlaine (1895)
- Album Zutique [1871]. Littérature (May 1922)
- Oeuvres: Édition illustrée. Ed. Suzanne Bernard. Classiques Garnier (1960)
- Oeuvres: Édition illustrée. Ed. Suzanne Bernard. 1960. Classiques Garnier. Paris: Éditions Garnier Frères, 1975.
- Oeuvres Poétiques Complètes. Collection Bouquins (1980)
- [with Charles Cros / Tristan Corbière / Lautréamont]. Oeuvres Poétiques Complètes. Ed. Alain Blottière, Pascal Pia, Michel Dansel, Jérome Bancilhon. Préface de Hubert Juin. 1980. Collection Bouquins. Ed. Guy Schoeller. Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont S.A., 1989.
- "Le rêve de Bismarck". Le Progrès des Ardennes (25 November 1870)
- Rapport sur l'Ogadine. Société de Géographie (February 1884)
- Narration: "Le Soleil était encore chaud..." [1864–1865] (1897)
- "Lettre de Charles d'Orléans à Louis XI" [1869 or 1870]. Revue de l'évolution sociale, scientifique et littéraire (November 1891)
- "Un coeur sous une soutane" [1870]. Littérature (June 1924)
- "Les Déserts de l'amour" [1871–1872]. La revue littéraire de Paris et Champagne (September 1906)
- "Proses évangeliques" [1872–1873]. La revue blanche, September 1897 / Le Mercure de France (January 1948)
- Lettres de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud – Égypte, Arabie, Éthiopie [1880–1891]. Ed. Paterne Berrichon (1899)
- "Lettres du Voyant" [13 & 15 May 1871] (1912 / 1928)
- Illuminations and Other Prose Poems. Trans. Louise Varèse (1946)
- Illuminations and Other Prose Poems. Trans. Louise Varèse. 1946. Rev. ed. NDP56. New York: A New Directions Paperbook, 1957.
- Collected Poems: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. Trans. Oliver Bernard (1962)
- Collected Poems: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. Ed. & trans. Oliver Bernard. 1962. The Penguin Poets. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
- A Season in Hell. Trans. Oliver Bernard (1962)
- A Season in Hell. Trans. Oliver Bernard. 1962. Penguin 60s Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
- Complete Works, Selected Letters: A Bilingual Edition. Trans. Wallace Fowlie (1966)
- Complete Works, Selected Letters: A Bilingual Edition. Trans. Wallace Fowlie. 1966. Rev. Seth Whidden. Chicago: The University Of Chicago Press, 2005.
- Nicholl, Charles. Somebody Else: Rimbaud in Africa, 1880-91. 1997. Vintage. London: Random House UK Ltd., 1998.
- Starkie, Enid. Arthur Rimbaud. 1961. Faber Paper Covered Editions. London: Faber, 1973.
Collections:
Prose:
Letters:
Translations:
Secondary:
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William Roberts: The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel (1961-62)Modern Poets in English
- C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933)
- Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)
- Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)
- Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
- Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)
- Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)
- Eugenio Montale (1896-1981)
- Federico García Lorca (1898-1938)
- Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968)
- Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)
- Paul Celan (1920-1970)
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