Rimbaud
Selected Poems
Une Saison En Enfer
and Extract from the ‘Voyant’ Letter
A. S.
Kline © 2002 All Rights Reserved
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Contents
Extract
from the ‘Voyant’ Letter
(Une Saison en Enfer: Mauvais Sang)
I’ve the whitish blue eye of my Gallic ancestors, the narrow skull, and the awkwardness in combat. I find my clothing as barbarous as theirs. But I don’t butter my hair.
The Gauls were the most inept flayers of cattle and burners of grass of their age.
From them I get: idolatry and love of sacrilege: - oh! all the vices, anger, lust - magnificent, the lust - above all lying and sloth.
I’ve a horror of all trades. Masters and workers, all peasants, ignoble. The hand with a pen’s the same as the hand at the plough. - What an age of hands! - I’ll never get my hand in. Anyway service goes too far. The honesty of beggary upsets me. Criminals disgust me like eunuchs: me, I’m intact, and it’s all one to me!
But! Who made my tongue so
deceitful that it’s guided and safeguarded my laziness till now? Without even
using my body to live, and more idle than a toad, I’ve
lived everywhere. Not a family in
*
If only I’d forerunners at some time or
other in the history of
But no, nothing.
It’s obvious to me I’ve always belonged to an inferior race. I don’t understand rebellion. My race never rose up except to pillage: like wolves round a beast they haven’t killed.
I
recall the history of France, eldest daughter of the Church. As a peasant I’d
have made the journey to the Holy Land: I have all the roads of the Swabian plains in my head, all the views of Byzantium, the
ramparts of Suleiman: the cult of the Virgin, tenderness for the crucified,
wake in me among a thousand profane enchantments. – I sit, a leper, among
broken pots and nettles, at the foot of a wall ravaged by the sun. – Later, a
mercenary, I’d have bivouacked under German
Ah! Again: I dance the Sabbath in a red glade, with old women and children.
I don’t remember anything further off than this country and Christianity. I’d never be finished with viewing myself in this past. But always alone: without a family: what language, even, did I speak? I never see myself in the counsels of Christ: nor in the counsels of the Lords – representatives of Christ.
What was I in the last century: I only discover myself in the present day. No more vagabonds, no more vague wars. The inferior race has spread everywhere – the people, as one says, reason: the nation and science.
Oh! Science! They’ve altered everything. For the body and the soul – the eucharist – we’ve medicine and philosophy – old wives’ remedies and arrangements of popular songs. And the diversions of princes and the games they prohibited! Geography, cosmography, physics, chemistry!…
Science! The new nobility! Progress. The world progresses! Why shouldn’t it turn as well?
It’s the vision of numbers. We advance towards the Spirit. It’s quite certain: it’s oracular, what I say. I know, and unaware how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather be mute.
*
The pagan blood returns! The Spirit is near, why doesn’t Christ help me by granting my soul nobility and freedom? Alas! The Gospel has passed! The Gospel! The Gospel.
I wait for God with greed. I’ve been of inferior race from all eternity.
Here
I am on the Breton shore. How the towns glow in the evening. My day is done:
I’m quitting
I’ll return with iron limbs, dark skin, a furious look: from my mask I’ll be judged as of mighty race. I’ll have gold: I’ll be idle and brutal. Women care for these fierce invalids returning from hot countries. I’ll be involved in politics. Saved.
Now I’m damned, I have a horror of country. The best is a good drunken sleep on the beach.
*
One doesn’t go. - Let’s take to the roads again, full of my vice, the vice that has thrust its roots of suffering into my side, since the age of reason - that rises to the sky, strikes me, knocks me down, drags me along.
The last innocence and the last timidity. I’ve said it. Not to carry my disgust and betrayals through the world.
Let’s go! Marching, burdens, deserts, boredom, anger.
Whom shall I hire myself to? What beast must be adored? What saintly image attacked? What hearts shall I break? What lie must I uphold? - Wade through what blood?
Rather, protect oneself from justice – a hard life, pure brutalisation – to open the coffin lid with a withered hand, sit down, stop your breath. So no old age, no dangers: to be terrified is not French.
- Ah! I am so forsaken I could offer any divine image no matter what my urges towards perfection.
O my self-denial, O my marvellous pity! Even down
here!
De profundis Domine, what a creature I am!
Still a child, I admired the stubborn convict on whom the prison gates always close once more: I visited inns and lodgings that he might have sanctified with his presence: I saw the blue sky with his mind, and the flowering labour of the countryside: I scented his fate in the towns. He had more strength than a saint, more good sense than a traveller - and he, he alone! As witness to his glory and reason.
On the roads, on winter nights, without shelter, without clothing, without bread, a voice would clutch my frozen heart: “Weakness or strength: with you it’s a strength. You don’t know where you’re going or why you’re going, go everywhere, react to everything. They won’t kill you any more than if you were a corpse.” In the morning I had such a lost look, such a dead face, that those who met me perhaps they did not see me.
Suddenly, in the towns, the mud would seem red or black to me, like the mirror when the lamp is carried about in the next room, like a treasure in the forest! Goods luck, I’d cry, and I’d see a sea of flames and smoke in the sky: and to right and left all the riches flaming like a trillion lightning flashes.
But orgies and the company of women were forbidden me. Not even a friend. I could see myself before an angry crowd, facing the firing-squad, weeping with a misery they couldn’t have understood, and forgiving them! - Like Joan of Arc ! – “Priests, professors, masters, you’re wrong to hand me over to justice. I’ve never been one of this race: I’ve never been a Christian: I’m of the race that sings under torture: I don’t understand the law: I’ve no moral sense, I’m a brute: you’re wrong…”
Yes, I’ve shut my eyes to your light. I’m a beast, a black. But I can be saved. You are really blacks, you maniacs, wild beasts, misers. Merchant, you’re a black: magistrate, you’re a black: general, you’re a black: emperor, you old sore, you’re a black: you’ve drunk an untaxed liquor, Satan’s make. – This race is inspired by fever and cancer. Old folks and invalids are so respectable they ask to be boiled. – The cleverest thing is to quit this continent, where madness prowls to find hostages for these wretches. I’m off to the true kingdom of the sons of Ham.
Do I know nature yet? Do I know myself? - No more words. I bury the dead in my gut. Shouts, drums, dance, dance, dance, dance! I don’t even see the moment when the whites land, and I’ll fall to nothingness.
Hunger, thirst, shouts, dance, dance, dance, dance!
*
The whites are landing. Cannon! We have to submit to baptism, clothes, work.
I’ve received the coup de grâce to my heart. Ah! I hadn’t foreseen it!
I’ve done nothing wrong. The days will pass easily for me, repentance will be spared me. I’ll not have known the torments of the soul that’s almost dead to virtue, where the light rises severely like that from funeral tapers. The fate of a son of good family, an early coffin scattered with crystal tears. Doubtless, debauchery is foolish, vice is foolish, rottenness must be thrown out. But the clock has not yet taken to striking only hours of pure sadness! Shall I be carried off like a child to play in paradise forgetting all unhappiness?
Quick! Are there other lives? – Repose with riches is impossible. Wealth has always been so public. Divine love alone offers the keys of knowledge. I see that nature is nothing but a show of kindness. Farewell chimeras, ideals, errors.
The rational song of the Angels rises from the lifeboat: it’s divine love. - Two Loves! I can die of earthly love, or die of devotion. I’ve left souls for whom the pain of my departure increases! You have chosen me from the shipwrecked: those who are left aren’t they my friends?
Save them!
Reason is born in me. The world is good. I’ll bless life. I’ll love my brothers. These are no longer childish promises. Nor the hope of escaping old age and death. God give me strength and I praise God.
*
Tedium’s no longer my love. Rage, debaucheries, madness, all of whose joys and disasters I know - all my burden is laid down. Let us appreciate without dizziness the extent of my innocence.
I’d no longer be capable of demanding the comfort of a bastinado. I don’t think I’m embarking for a wedding with Jesus Christ for father-in-law.
I’m not a prisoner of my reason. I said: ‘God, I want freedom in salvation: how to pursue it? Frivolous tastes have quit me. No need for self-sacrifice or divine love any more. I don’t regret the age of sensitive hearts. Each has his reason, scorn, pity: I retain my place at the summit of this angelic ladder of good sense.
As for established happiness: domestic or not…no, I can’t. I’m too dissipated, too feeble. Life flowers through work, an old truth: me, my life is too insubstantial, it flies off and drifts around far above the action, that focus dear to the world.
What an old maid I’m becoming, lacking the courage to love death!
If God would grant me celestial, aerial, calm, prayer - like the ancient saints – the Saints! Strong ones! The anchorites, artists for whom there’s no longer need!
Continual farce! My innocence should make me weep. Life is the farce all perform.
*
Enough! Here is the sentence. - March!
Ah! My lungs burn, my brow throbs! Night revolves in my eyes, in this sun! Heart…limbs…
Where to? To fight? I’m weak! The others advance. Equipment, arms…the weather!…
Fire! Fire at me! Here! Or I’ll surrender - Cowards! - I’ll kill myself! I’ll hurl myself under the horses’ hooves!
Ah!..
- I’ll get used to it.
That would be the French way, the path of honour!
(Une Saison en Enfer: L’Éclair)
Human labour! It’s the explosion that lightens my abyss from time to time.
“Nothing’s in vain: on to Science, forward!” Cries the modern Ecclesiastes, that’s to say The Whole World. And yet the corpses of the wicked and idle still fall on the hearts of others…Ah! Quick, quick, a moment: there, beyond the night, that future recompense, eternal…shall we escape them?…
- What can I do? I know work: and Science is too slow. How prayer gallops and light groans… I see that fine. It’s too simple, and the weather’s too warm: they’ll do without me. I’ve my duty, I’ll be proud the way others are, in setting it aside.
My life’s used up. Let’s go! Cheat, do nothing, O the pity! And we’ll exist by amusing ourselves, dreaming monstrous loves and fantastic universes, moaning and quarrelling with the world’s shows, acrobat, beggar, artist, ruffian – priest! In my hospital bed, the smell of incense returned to me so strongly: guardian of the holy herbs, confessor, martyr…
I recognise now my rotten childhood education. So what! …Let me be twenty, if the others are going to be twenty…
No! No! Now I rebel against death! Work seems too trivial for my pride: my betrayal to the world would be too brief a torment. At the last I’ll attack to right and left…
Then - oh! - poor dear soul, eternity would not be lost to us.
(Une Saison en Enfer: Adieu)
Autumn already! – But why regret an eternal sun, if we are engaged in discovering the divine light – far from races that die with the seasons.
Autumn. Our ship towering in the motionless fogs turns towards the port of poverty, the enormous city with a sky that’s flecked with fire and mud. Ah! The rotting rags, the bread soaked with rain, the drunkenness, the thousand loves that have crucified me! She’ll never have done then, this ghoulish queen of millions of souls and corpses who will be judged! I see my skin ravaged again by mud and pestilence, worms filling my hair and my armpits, and bigger worms in my heart, stretched out among ageless unknowns, without feeling…I might have died there…Horrible imagining! I detest poverty.
And I fear winter because it’s the season of comfort!
- Sometimes I see limitless beaches in the sky covered by white nations full of joy. A great golden vessel, above me, waves its multicoloured flags in the morning breeze. I’ve created all the feasts, all the triumphs, all the dramas. I’ve tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new languages. I believed I’d gained supernatural powers. Ah well! I must bury my imagination and my memories! Sweet glory as an artist and story-teller swept away!
- I! I who called myself magus or angel, exempt from all morality, I’m returned to the soil, with a task to pursue, and wrinkled reality to embrace! A peasant!
Am I wrong? Is pity the sister of death, to me?
Well, I shall ask forgiveness for nourishing myself with lies. Let’s go.
But no friendly hand! And where to find help?
*
Yes, the present hour is very severe at least.
Since I can say the victory is won: the gnashing of teeth, the hissing of flames, the pestilential sighs are fading. All the foul memories are vanishing. My last regrets flee. – my envy of beggars, brigands, friends of Death, all sorts of backward ones. – Damned ones, if I revenged myself!
It’s necessary to be absolutely modern.
No hymns: hold the yard gained. Hard night! The dried blood smokes on my face, and I’ve nothing at my back but that horrible stunted tree!…Spiritual combat is as brutal as the warfare of men: but the vision of justice is God’s delight alone.
Still, now is the eve. Let us receive every influx of strength and true tenderness. And at dawn, armed with an ardent patience, we’ll enter into the splendid cities.
What did I say about a friendly hand? One real advantage, is that I can smile at old false loves, and blast those lying couples with shame - I’ve seen the hell of women down there: - and it will be granted me to possess truth in a soul and a body.
April-August, 1873
(Lettre à Paul Demeny: Charleville, 15 mai 1871)
“Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who could judge it? The Critics! The Romantics! Who prove so clearly that the singer is so seldom the work, that’s to say the idea sung and intended by the singer.
For I is another. If the brass wakes the trumpet, it’s not its fault. That’s obvious to me: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I hear it: I make a stroke with the bow: the symphony begins in the depths, or springs with a bound onto the stage.
If the old imbeciles hadn’t discovered only the false significance of Self, we wouldn’t have to now sweep away those millions of skeletons which have been piling up the products of their one-eyed intellect since time immemorial, and claiming themselves to be their authors!
In
The first study for a man who wants to be a poet, is true complete knowledge of himself: he looks for his soul, examines it, tests it, learns it. As soon as he knows it he must develop it! That seems simple: a natural development takes place in every brain: so many egoists proclaim themselves authors: there are plenty of others who attribute their intellectual progress to themselves! - But the soul must be made monstrous: after the fashion of the comprachicos, yes! Imagine a man planting and cultivating warts on his face.
I say that one must be a seer (voyant), make oneself a seer.
The poet makes himself a seer by a long, rational and immense disordering of all the senses. All forms of love, suffering, madness: he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in himself, to keep only their quintessence. Unspeakable torture, where he needs all his faith, every superhuman strength, during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed – and the supreme Knower, among men! – Because he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than others! He arrives at the unknown, and when, maddened, he ends up by losing the knowledge of his visions: he has still seen them! Let him die charging among those unutterable, unnameable things: other fearful workers will come: they’ll start from the horizons where the first have fallen!……………
I’ll go on:
So the poet is truly the thief of fire, then.
He is responsible for humanity, even for the animals: he must make his inventions smelt, felt, heard: if what he brings back from down there has form, he grants form: if it’s formless he grants formlessness. To find a language – for that matter, all words being ideas, the age of a universal language will come! It is necessary to be an academic – deader than a fossil – to perfect a dictionary of any language at all. The weak-minded thinking about the first letter of the alphabet would soon rush into madness!
This language will be of the soul for the soul, containing everything, scents, sounds, colours, thought attaching to thought and pulling. The poet would define the quantity of the unknown, awakening in the universal soul in his time: he would give more than the formulation of his thought, the measurement of his march towards progress! An enormity become the norm, absorbed by all, he would truly be an enhancer of progress!
This future will be materialistic, you see. – Always filled with Number and Harmony, these poems will be made to last. – At heart, it will be a little like Greek poetry again.
Eternal art will have its function, since poets are citizens. Poetry will no longer take its rhythm from action: it will be ahead of it!
These poets will exist! When woman’s endless servitude is broken, when she lives for and through herself, when man - previously abominable - has granted her freedom, she too will be a poet! Women will discover the unknown! Will her world of ideas differ from ours? – She will discover strange things, unfathomable, repulsive, delicious: we will take them to us, we will understand them.
Meanwhile, let us demand new things from the poets - ideas and forms. All the clever ones will think they can easily satisfy this demand: that’s not so!…..