ARTHUR RIMBAUD
CITY
I am an ephemeral and not at all dissatisfied citizen of a
metropolis thought to be modern because every known
taste has been avoided in the furnishings and exteriors
of its houses as well as in the plan of the city. Here you
would never point to the traces of any monument to
superstition. Morality and language are reduced to their
most basic expression, indeed! These millions of people
who feel no need to know one another experience such
similar kinds of education, occupation and old age, that
their life-spans must be several times shorter than those
which a mad statistic determines for the peoples of the
continent. Just as, from my window, I see new specters
rolling through the thick and eternal fumes of coal fires,
—our shadow of the woods, our summer's night! —
modern-day Furies, in front of my cottage which is my
country and all my heart since everything here resem-
bles this, —Death without tears, our active daughter and
servant, and a despairing Love, and a pretty Crime
whimpering in the mud of the street.
RUTS
On the right, the summer dawn wakens the leaves and
vapors and sounds of this corner of the park, and the
embankments on the left hold within their purple shad-
ows the thousand rapid ruts of the damp road. Parade of
enchantments. Indeed: parade floats covered with gilded
wooden animals, masts and multicolored canvas back-
drops, drawn by twenty dappled circus horses at full gal-
lop, and children and men on the most amazing beasts;
—twenty vehicles, embossed, flag-draped and decked
with flowers like old-fashioned or fairy-tale coaches,
filled with children costumed for a suburban pastoral. —
Even coffins under their canopy of night brandishing
ebony plumes, fleeing to the sound of huge blue and
black mares' hooves.
WAR
In childhood, certain skies focused my seeing: all char-
acters modulated my features. Phenomena were set in
motion. —Now, the eternal inflection of moments and
the infinity of mathematics chase me across this world
where I undergo every civil success, respected by strange
childhood and abnormally large affections. —I dream of
a War of righteousness or force, whose logic will be quite
unexpected.
---It's as simple as a musical phrase.
DAWN
I embraced the summer dawn.
---Nothing was moving yet on the facades of palaces. The
water was still. Encampments of shadows still lingered
along the road through the woods. I walked, walking liv-
ing and warm breaths, and jewels looked on, and wings
arose noiselessly.
---The first undertaking, in the pathway already filled
with fresh, pale sparkles, was a flower which told me its
name.
---I laughed at the blond wasserfall disheveling itself
through the pines: at its silver summit, I recognized the
goddess.
---Then I lifted the veils one by one. In the pathway, ges-
ticulating. On the plain, where I denounced her to the
cock. In the great city she fled among the steeples and
domes, and running like a beggar along the marble
quays, I chased her.
---Father up the road, near a laurel grove, I wrapped
her in the veils I had collected, and I felt, a little, her
immense body. Dawn and the child fell to the bottom of
the wood.
---When I awoke it was noon.
from ILLUMINATIONS
ARTHUR RIMBAUD
JOHN ASHBERY (trans.)
Norton 2011
top photo: Étienne Carjat
Rimbaud (1854-1891) was known by one as a "disreputable, mean, ruthless, perverse, hateful wretch. He was also one of the greatest poets who ever lived." Ever restless, he managed to travel three continents before succumbing to cancer at age 37. Supposedly his poetry and creative life was all together done with by age 21. We say it has an eternal flame.
Rimbaud self-portrait near the end of his life
