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2013-07-30 09:16 3983887 Anonymous (images-3.jpg 160x209 4kB)
What's /lit/ opinion of Rimbaud?

2 min later 3983890 Anonymous
2sexy4me

16 min later 3983907 Anonymous (totaleclipse.jpg 428x300 9kB)
His life was arguably more interesting than his poetry. But perhaps if I were French speaking I'd have a better opinion of his work.

35 min later 3983939 Anonymous
he's pretty sexy.

46 min later 3983963 Anonymous
Do not bother if you don't understand french.

2 hours later 3984173 Celebes
>>3983887 GOAT modernist poet.

2 hours later 3984184 e-dub
pros: interesting, influential, ground breaking, inspiring cons: indulgent, difficult, i don't speak french so i have to read it in translation, over rated

14 hours later 3985886 Anonymous
>>3983887 overrated like most (all) poets

19 hours later 3986355 Anonymous
>>3983887 no one here has actually read him because most people on this board are english speakers, but they will praise him (just like baudelaire). His work is truly groundbreaking though, the Seer letter is analysed in every literature class for a reason.

19 hours later 3986372 Celebes
>>3985886 Le philistine face

20 hours later 3986425 Anonymous
>>3986372 Hi there! You seem to have made a bit of a mistake in your post. Luckily, the users of 4chan are always willing to help you clear this problem right up! You appear to have used a tripcode when posting, but your identity has nothing at all to do with the conversation! Whoops! You should always remember to stop using your tripcode when the thread it was used for is gone, unless another one is started! Posting with a tripcode when it isn't necessary is poor form. You should always try to post anonymously, unless your identity is absolutely vital to the post that you're making! Now, there's no need to thank me - I'm just doing my bit to help you get used to the anonymous image-board culture!

20 hours later 3986442 Anonymous
>>3986425 >anonymous image-board culture! kill yourself

22 hours later 3986721 Anonymous
I'd fuck him.

24 hours later 3987152 Anonymous
>>3983887 Ben Affleck.

24 hours later 3987159 Fandroid
He was an edgy teen.

24 hours later 3987182 Anonymous
i finally got around to reading all of his letters from when he was a failed businessman in africa. so so sad

24 hours later 3987240 Anonymous
>>3986425 I've never seen a more reddit-worded post in my life.

24 hours later 3987256 Celebes
>>3987159 You're an edgy teen >>3987240 Such a faggot right? >>3987182 Did you read them on the internet or do you have a collected letters book

24 hours later 3987266 Anonymous
>>3987240 >I've never seen a more reddit-worded post in my life. It's the oldest copypasta 4chan has.

25 hours later 3987394 Anonymous
>>3986355 >Not reading a bilingual edition. >Not listening a declamation while you read the translation

29 hours later 3988137 Anonymous Lynx
Observation: incoming a huge post. I think I posted this in about 3 or 4 threads about Rimbaud, but since he is a poet who I respect and admire very much, let's go one more time with the infos. OP, the first thing you need to know is that Rimbud is famous both because of his work as his life (one of the most amazing and strange ever lived - Rimbaud makes Hemmingway a simple poser in questions such as courage and adventurousness). Let us speak first of his poetry. >Rimbaud's Poetry Rimbaud is considered one of the fathers of modern poetry. He was one of the first writers to use disjointed and apparently unrelated metaphors and similes, and strange and kinesthetic imagery. He was also one of the first poets to use free verse and prose poetry. However, judging Rimbaud as the father of modern poetry is almost a crime, keeping in view the sloppy and deeply obscure state of contemporary poems and poetry: it's a crime perpetrated against Rimbaud to call him the father of such abortions. Rimbaud was a prodigy: at about 12, 13 years of age he showed an extraordinary ability to write poetry, in both French and Latin. His school and his teachers were all proud of him: he won several poetry competitions and his abilities were developing at a breathtaking speed. By studying the Latin classics, Rimbaud learned to master all the classical meters, how to stress syllables in the classical way and the traditional construction of metaphors and similes. His studies of French and European literature familiarized him with the rhyme, and his knowledge of assonance and alliteration was brilliant. Thus, one can realize that Rimbaud, before innovating the traditional verse, completely dominated the classical poetry: all the poetic techniques were known by him. But the majority of writers influenced by him (As Allen Ginsberg and the beatnik generation, and the pseudo-poet Jim Morrison) never bothered to dissect the basic and classic skeleton of the poetic art that was calcified by generations of poets thorough the centuries: they readily go for the non-fixed forms, for free experimentation (without the basis, without the vertebral spine), and thus produced only mediocre works.

29 hours later 3988142 Lynx
As for the poetry of Rimbaud, it is one of the most memorable I know:his bizarre and aggressive images, and his constant exotic/toxic perfume have hardly been equaled. You need to understand that the poetic production of Rimbaud in French occurred between the ages of 15 and 22 years old: namely, his work has never failed to discolor that youthful freshness, that taste and relish in the weird, in the colorful, in the metaphors and similes created to catch the reader's attention by the nose and pulling it to them. Rimbaud's work is constantly screaming at you from the pages, howling and begging for your attention: it's like a firework exhibition - a barrage of flames, sounds and luminosities. Rimbaud always keeps this delight in shocking the reader and waking (actually plucking) the dormant surprise that was rooted deep inside its rooms on the brain (you know: it is not easy to surprise experienced readers). It must be said, however, that Rimbaud is not one of the main great poets of the world. In reality, he is a poet for writers, a poet for specific readers. His work does not lend itself to all tastes. Rimbaud writes in a monotone, he has only one style (actually a blend of two styles): the weird and wonderful, the strangely aggressive caricatures and the suave lyrical beauties of the nature. Let's compare Rimbaud with Shakespeare (the greatest poet of all time): Shakespeare wrote in several different styles, and exhibited a multitude of speeches, from the simple and routine - like colloquial passages of Twelfth Night: "Out o 'tune, sir: ye lie. Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? " - to the most sublime (the great metaphorical passages such as this excerpt from Macbeth: "his virtues / Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against / The deep damnation of his taking-off ;/ And pity, like a naked newborn babe, / Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed / Upon the sightless couriers of the air, / Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, / That tears Shall drown the wind."). Rimbaud, however, always weaves poems with a mesh of strange and disjointed metaphors: it is as if he always wrote as the fool of King Lear. While Shakespeare is a great feast, with different dishes and a plethora of different flavors, Rimbaud is a extremely strong liqueur, a glass of hallucinogenic liquid pepper that not everyone has the stomach to support. Here, for example, is his biographer Graham Robb speaking about the satirical aspects of Rimbaud's poetry:

29 hours later 3988147 Lynx
"The Rimbaldian human being is a repellent piece of animated vegetation, a poxy assemblage of femurs, sinciputs, scapulas and hypogastria, a prey to cephalalgia, clottings, fluxions, rickets, nits and nasal mucus - a monster in the shape of a philosophical question-mark: if Man was made in the image of God, then what must God be like? "With its neologisms and barbarisms, its slang words jarring with the drawing-room syntax, Rimbaud's new idiom was dramatic proof that social distinctions in the new France were as virulent as ever. It was also an expression of his hybrid roots: urban and rural, burgeois and peasant." Of course, there is the other side of Rimbaud: the one that writes lyrical and strange songs, primeval hymns about the woods, about the see and its "starry archipelagos"; the poet that writes that "It’s found we see./– What? – Eternity./It’s the sun, mingled/With the sea.", and poems like: The fox howled in the leaves Spitting out bright plumes From his poultry feast: Like him I self-consume. The fruits and the veg Wait only for the pickers; But the spider in the hedge Eats violets, no others. Let me sleep! Let me simmer On the fires of Solomon. Down the rust, boiling over, Mingling there with the Kedron.

29 hours later 3988148 Lynx
And also he is the poet capable of this orgy of colors, this pictorial rhapsody: A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels, I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins: A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies Which buzz around cruel smells, Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents, Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley; I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips In anger or in the raptures of penitence; U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas, The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads; O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds, Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels: O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes! Rimbaud was one of the first poets who I loved; reading him was the first time I discovered how language could be aggressive, and found that literature possessed black and dark corners where it is difficult to breathe. Many of the metaphors of Rimbaud never abandoned me. In Le Bateau Ivre (justly considered the greatest of all the poems of Rimbaud) there are wonderful pictures of huge fat snakes (pythons) sliding on trees, being devoured by lice, and huge leviathans (the beast of chaos) rotting in swamps, mouldering the rivers with its putrescence. And the opening of the first poem in prose from the Illuminations is one of the lightest and most charming passages in world literature about renewal and rebirth: "As soon as the idea of the Flood was finished, a hare halted in the clover and the trembling flower bells, and said its prayer to the rainbow through the spider’s web." As for poetry in translation, don't pay attention to this guys: . Not all of us have time to learn all the languages in witch all the many great poets of the world wrote, and although we may lost some of the beauty and technical power of the original, we will also get several rewards. And other thing: on of the ways by witch the literature of one people and one time is fertilized by the literature of other nation/era is by translation. Actually, the sperm of translated poetry can fertilize the eggs of the brains of other poets, and generate an progeny of new masters of literature. Want an example? You know that Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Milton all wrote their major works on Blank Verse (and that means that Blank Verse is one of the most successful verse forms in the history of world literature - if not the most successful). Well, The first documented use of blank verse in the English language was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his translation of the Æneid. That means that a translation was responsible for one of the greatest verse forms ever invented: Surrey did not saved every technical wonder of the original Latin poem, but he did something much more important: he gave England a new verse form.

29 hours later 3988154 Lynx
>Rimbaud's Life Rimbaud is the poet who lived the most poetic life of all: there is none like him in the history of literature. He began life as a shy blond rose-cheeked white boy (the son of an extremely religious mother) and ended it as an black arms dealer, slim and tanned by the sun in Africa. Rimbaud's father abandoned the family when he was a baby, and his mother raised him alone: she forced the children to study for hours during the day, and also to read the Bible and attend church. Rimbaud was up to 14, 15 years a respectful and obedient boy: he won several poetry contests and had the highest grades of the school. However, with the reach of adolescence, he began to revolt, and ran away several times from home, traveling by foot across France, and going all the way up to Belgium. Imagine yourself with about 15 years of age walking alone on empty roads, sleeping under the stars, under the serene, with no money in your pocket to eat, traveling just for the pleasure of traveling: it is something that would awake fear in many people, but Rimbaud did it several times. When he was 16 years old Rimbaud sent his poems to Verlaine (a famous poet in Paris), and Verlaine, amazed by the talent of the young provincial, collected money with other poets and artists and was able to buy train tickets to bring Rimbaud to Paris(Rimbaud had fled to Paris before to see a popular uprising called The Paris Commune - it is even possible that has been raped by soldiers on that occasion). When the teenager arrived at Paris, he shocked everyone with his talent and his physical beauty. However, he soon made many enemies because he usually mocking the mediocrity of other poets (one of his trolling examples: in an poetical dinner, when one of the other writes was declaiming his poem Rimbaud shouted, after every single verse, the world "shit": one of the guests, to defend the honor of the bad-poet, attempted to assault Rimbaud and expelled him from the hall, pushing him out of the dining room; latter that night this gentleman was attacked by Rimbaud - who was out there waiting for him - with a knife. On another occasion Rimbaud ejaculated in the latte of a painter) and expended his days drinking and doing drugs like opium and hashish. He almost did not shower, and was a walking colony of lice, flies and fleas.

29 hours later 3988157 Lynx
Verlaine fell in love with Rimbaud and the two began an love affair, so that Verlaine fled, leaving his wife and new-born daughter to follow Rimbaud to England. Latter, in a fight motivated by jealousy, Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist, and ended up arrested (he also accused of sodomy). Rimbaud continued to write until the completion of his only published book Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell). The book did not succeed, and around this time Rimbaud stopped writing forever. What he did next was traveling on almost all European countries: Germany, Sweden, Norway, Italy. He once was crossing the Alps on foot and ended up getting sunstroke; he was found by a lady on the road, that took care of him. He even got a inflammation caused by the contact of the rib-cage with the flesh caused by his incessantly foot-walking. He worked in various strange departments : as a translator in a circus, and as book-keeper and janitor in big engineering work camps. He never, however, rested in one single place. He finally ended up in Africa, traveling through several countries, but was in Ethiopia that he began his career as an arms dealer: Rimbaud used to sell guns to Menelik, king of Ethiopia. He was the first European to enter certain sacred cities and to cross inhospitable deserts (he described them as "The presumed horror of the lunar landscapes"). Some of the desert-crossings he did (that took about 3-4 months) were so brutal that camels usually had to be euthanized after the trip because they were totally exhausted and useless for the job. On such trips, Rimbaud carried with him cyanide pills because if he ended up captured by native tribes he would be tortured, and suicide was better than having your own testicles slowly cut off. What he ate were only a handful of dried dates, and he drank some milky water, preserved with strange oils and fats.

29 hours later 3988159 Lynx
He ended up winning a lot of money (he carried a large sack of gold tied to his waste in all the places he go). His mind was so skilled that he also learned several native languages, many now extinct. He could speak more than 15 languages. For a time he lived with Ethiopian with a very beautiful and elegant black woman, who was his mistress. Anyway, eventually he developed a tumor on his leg (a cancer). He had to return to France, where he had his leg amputated. A few weeks later, with fever and possessed by delirium (he was on colossal amounts of morphine), he died. His body was black (almost as carbon), his hair gray, his body slim and bony. He died with only 33 years of age. He was certainly one of the strangest souls that this world has ever hosted. So you see, OP, you must also read about Rimbaud's life. Here is a good book about him: http://www.amazon.com/Rimbaud-A-Bio graphy-Graham-Robb/dp/0393049558/re f=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375317315&sr= 8-1&keywords=graham+robb+rimbaud Gentleman, good night. Lynx

29 hours later 3988162 Anonymous
>>3987256 the book i have has everything he's written from when he was 10 to his death, including all the letters and some stuff he submitted to latin contests as a kid, and a pretty in-depth biography

29 hours later 3988167 Lynx
>>3988148 >As for poetry in translation, don't pay attention to this guys: . * >>3983963 >>3987394 But a bilingual edition is really a good idea.

29 hours later 3988174 Lynx
>>3988147 >see *sea

29 hours later 3988179 Anonymous
>>3988159 Thanks so much. With all the shitposting going on at the moment this is a wonderful reminder of why I come back to /lit/ I think you are cool Lynx!

29 hours later 3988200 Anonymous
>>3988157 i read your post weirdly, nvm

29 hours later 3988210 Lynx
>>3988179 Thanks my friend, I'm glad you enjoyed the post. I was lucky in this case: I am a fan of Rimbaud, and so I know quite a lot about him. Whenever I can provide some information, I promise I will do my best.

29 hours later 3988228 Anonymous (monmec.png 425x425 275kB)
>>3988159 Thank you for this. >>3988162 ISBN etc and I'll walk on your back while teaching you L'Eclair

30 hours later 3988250 Anonymous
Fantastic help thank you. I'll be checking the book out. /lit/ loves you

30 hours later 3988253 Anonymous
>>3988250 Obviously directed at >>3988159

30 hours later 3988257 Celebes
>>3988159 Bravo. Great post. I think some of the biographical details may be a little off but that's just from what I remember. Great job

39 hours later 3989705 Anonymous
>>3988159 Thank you. Your post is awesome

39 hours later 3989716 Anonymous
>>3987266 Sick burn

40 hours later 3989777 Anonymous
>>3988159 yo, do you by chance know the source of this quote that is attributed to him: "the only thing unbearable is that nothing is unbearable" do you know where he said this? in one of his letters, perhaps?

48 hours later 3990593 Anonymous
Frenchfag here, I have read most of Rimbaud's poem, so I might come in handy in this occasion. >>3988137 >>3988142 >>3988147 >>3988148 >>3988154 >>3988157 >>3988159 Great post. I have hardly ever seen such a thorough and interesting presentation of Rimbaud. Let me address a few things, though:: >Rimbaud's Life Nothing much to add, there are many things I didn't know about his life, mainly about his arm-dealing days. The only major lack is the role of Rimbaud's literature teacher in highschool, Izambard, who opened the young man his library of contemporary literature (he introduced him to Baudelaire for instance). >Rimbaud's poetry Except for the part about Rimbaud not being one of world's great poets (it's a matter of opinion I guess, as it can equally be argued one way or the other), I pretty much agree with what you said. I will just add my personal commentaries from my experience of reading Rimbaud: Rimbaud's poetry isn't easy to read. I'm all good with people reading him in translation, but keep in mind that he probably is a huge pain to translate, and that even in French he sounds weird. It's not that he is particularly convoluted or intellectual (he has a surprisingly large vocabulary and uses strange metaphors, and he carries with him the cultural baggage of a good highschool student of his time, but on this respect he's no Joyce). But the mere strangeness of his approach, his daring word choices, his eerie metaphors, and mostly his unique pacing and use of rhyme is what makes him unsettling. Baudelaire used new metaphors, Baudelaire was daring in his way, but his verses are almost as smooth as it gets, they flow wonderfully around the mouth. Rimbaud is much less harmonious, and it sounds like he's always trying to internally dismantle the verse while still staying committed to the alexandrine. That's probably why he is harder to memorize and to pronounce than his predecessors. But then again, it's mostly true for his first round of poems. The poems he wrote later, under the tutelage of Verlaine, are a bit different, much more tame, much more incertain, less tangible. The influence of the whispeing Verlaine is clear here. Your analogy with the fool is quite interesting, I guess that for an English reader, trying to imagine what Shakespeare would have written if he had tried to make a play with Lear's fool talking to himself and to the audience as only character gives an idea of how Rimbaud sounds like.

48 hours later 3990597 Anonymous
>Rimbaud's prose I'm surprised that you seldom mentionned it, Verlaine himself talks about "that diamant prose that is his [Rimbaud's] exclusive property". I have barely begun to read A Season in Hell because, as the angsty teenager I was at the time, I feared it would make my angst only worse. But from the few first pages you can already see that his prose is as brazen, as bold, as heart-rendingly intuitive as his verses. That being said, I'm glad to see him discussed here, because from my short experience of /lit he hardly receive the attention he deserves on this board.

48 hours later 3990625 Anonymous
>>3990593 >Rimbaud is much less harmonious, and it sounds like he's always trying to internally dismantle the verse while still staying committed to the alexandrine. Not a Frenchfag, but I read him in French. This really struck a chord with me, because the pacing is almost like a stutter or aspiration- he forces you to take disjointed pauses rather than continuing a harmony before setting the melody and harmony up again. For me, this is the beauty of his work- he can make one pause just after a moment of seeming profundity, making you question if you felt that depth before plunging you back into that ocean. It's like you're a horse he is riding at a clipping canter before he reigns you back in, you stumble and then are whipped into a new direction.

48 hours later 3990666 Lynx
>>3990593 Thank you for your vision of the poetry of Rimbaud. I love reading comments like yours, that focus on the technical part of the writing an author. People often say that the level of /lit/ is falling, but I constantly find extremely interesting and useful posts, and have discovered several good books by this board (like Angela carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” and the wonderful book of literary criticism “Shakespeare”, by Mark Van Doren -I’m thinking of making a thread about this last work, because it is truly an unknown diamond). I think that this is due to the fact that I left a bit of my enthusiasm for Rimbaud drip on the keyboard when typing. You see, I'm like the Rimbaud’s bitch: I really admire him. I love this Bruce Barton sentence about Enthusiasm: “If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be Enthusiasm.” This is true: Enthusiasm seasons the gray porridge of a apathetic life with pepper. You can own the whole world, but if you don’t have enthusiasm, the world will be as boring as a classroom in summer time. >>3990597 I apologize for this omission, to speak the truth rereading my posts I'm seeing several failures and absences: they almoust seem to have been eaten by termites.

48 hours later 3990679 Lynx
>>3990666 >I think that this is due to the fact that I left a bit of my enthusiasm for Rimbaud drip on the keyboard when typing. By "this", I mean: >>3990593 >I have hardly ever seen such a thorough and interesting presentation of Rimbaud

48 hours later 3990680 Anonymous
>>3990625 >Not a Frenchfag, but I read him in French. You clearly can give yourself a pat on the back here, because Rimbaud is hard even for a native speaker. Your metaphor of the horse is really interesting. It's true that while reading Rimbaud you feel like being lead, as if you were a dumb beast, through various way by some cruel and skillful master. It's really a challenging poetry.

48 hours later 3990685 Anonymous
>>3990666 what do you think of Baudelaire? is he a good poet?

48 hours later 3990708 Lynx
>>3990685 I read little of his work, would not be able to form an opinion. Yes, I know: it is a serious omission, but it's true. :(

48 hours later 3990732 Anonymous
>>3990680 Thank you. I think I owe the majority of my French proficiency to feeling Rimbaud has more to teach me and giving up or reading in English would be cheating myself of what he has to offer. When I first started, I was deeply annoyed by my lack of understanding but now I see it as something more to learn, to uncover. I guess the glimpses of his genius I could apprehend at first drove me on to try to understand more and better, and part of that was developing my French. There's really nothing like him- even now I still find new meaning I had passed over in previous readings.

49 hours later 3990868 Anonymous
>>3990685 Frenchfag again here,he's probably as good as it gets, though I probably don't know enough about poetry to say that. I know literature teachers who read Latin and Greek and think of him as one of the best poets in modern history. I also know people who seldom read but told me they would remember Baudelaire their whole life. To be straight to the point, he's a master of the verse. He painstakingly composed his poems, and some of them he edited for years. He even once claimed: "I have never given for publication a single verse that wasn't perfect". In his case, it's more a pledge of crasftmanship than a boast, I think. His genius (apart for his incredible sense of rhyme) was both in the choice of his themes and metaphors, his way of connecting sensations, of alluding to memories and in his way of using sonority to render the ebb and flow of human voice. His poetry doesn't read like something you would hear in the street-any street- but it always sounds like the voice of the poet is arising from the written verse, not unlike the tone of a wraith bound to the pages. He has way of intertwining rhymes, of pausing and going again, of reapeating sentences like a chorus that almost makes you hear the emphasis on certain words, and the awe, or despair, or joy or irony associated with them. I could go on for much longer, as I am myself a sucker for Baudelaire, but I'm afraid I'd become boring so, to make it short: Baudelaire allies technical mastery of the highest order with new themes and metaphors that allow him to make a little aesthetical revolution of his own. It should be noted that he also wrote very keen essays on art and taste (as it seems his work ethic wasn't devoid of principles and general method) and from reading them it becomes clear that his work is that of a visionary as much as of a craftsman. It should be noted that he was also one the the first to explore prose poems (some of them even look like ironic rewritings of his verses poems). >>3990732 That's pretty much how I deal (if you can call that deal) with him myself. It's always good to have someone remind you that you can't even speak properly your own mothertongue. >>3990666 >You see, I'm like the Rimbaud’s bitch: I really admire him. It's hard not to be. If people made a film about his life and writings it wouldn't even seem credible. I agree with your bit on enthousiasm. Being devoid of enthousiasm has got me into living like an undead for three years.

49 hours later 3990921 Anonymous
>>3990868 any poems you would say are exemplary of Baudelaire's greatness? his "Le Bateau ivre" perhaps?

50 hours later 3990990 Anonymous
>>3990921 Le Bateau Ivre is Rimbaud's most iconic poem, not Baudelaire's (but reading him is a good experience if you can). If you want a vague idea of how Baudelaire sounds, I think Dillon's translation of Baudelaire's"Le Léthé" does a good job of rendering his craftsmanship. In French (and probably in English) some of the most well-known peoms in Flowers of Evil are: -Litanies de Satan (Litanies of Satan) -La Chevelure (The Hair) -L'Albatros (The Albatros) -Moesta et Erraunda (Latin for Sad and Wandering) -Héautontimorouménos (Greek for tormenter of oneself) -Spleen (it's the original title, there are actually three poems named "Spleen") -Invitation au Voyage (Invite to Travelling) -Le Voyage (The Journey) Also some pieces which were banned from publication at first, and happen to be among the best: -Lesbos (homeland of Sappho and where the word lesbian comes from) -Le Léthé (Léthé is Greek for forgetfulness) -Les Bijoux (The Jewels) -A Celle Qui Est Trop Gaie (To the Too Merry One) Those are all relatively short, The Albatros is the shorter with sixteen verses if I remember well, the longest (and longest of all Flower of Evil poem) is The Journey with about one hundred fourty four verses. If the list seems too overwhelming, just begin with the first two.

50 hours later 3991024 Anonymous
>>3990990 I want to add the rest of the poems in Les fleurs du mal which Duval inspired besides La Chevelure- Le serpent qui danse (The Dancing Snake?) is one of my favourite love poems, but I rarely see it mentioned anywhere. Actually, I think I just want to add the whole of The Flowers of Evil

63 hours later 3992836 Anonymous
>>3990990 no i meant maybe Baudelaire has his "Le Bateau ivre" also. thanks for the list and translation recommendation. i've read Les Fleurs du mal for the first time recently. Richard Howard translation. felt nothing.

65 hours later 3993061 Anonymous
>>3992836 >no i meant maybe Baudelaire has his "Le Bateau ivre" also. thanks for the list and translation recommendation. Oh, sorry for the misundestanding. Baudelaire's Bateau Ivre would be Le Voyage (The Journey). Like the Bateau Ivre, it's the last and the longest ofthe collection it was published into (and Le Bateau Ivre is probably inspired by Le Voyage). As for the translation, I unfortunately couldn't advice you. I mentionned Dillon's translation of Le Léthé earlier because one anon quoted it in a "favourite peom" thread, and I found it to be very close to the spirit of the original. Perhaps you will be more lucky with Dillon as a translator, then. Baudelaire is very challenging to translate because of his consistent work on sonority and emphasis (probably the two aspects of language where English and French are the most dissimilar). >>3991024 I feel you. Every single poem in it is excellent. The Dancing Snake makes no exception. I think one day I will eventually come to have learnt the whole Flowers of Evil by heart.

73 hours later 3993772 Lynx
>>3988157 >He finally ended up in Africa, traveling through several countries, but was in Ethiopia that he began his career as an arms dealer: Rimbaud used to sell guns to Menelik, king of Ethiopia. He was the first European to enter certain sacred cities and to cross inhospitable deserts (he described them as "The presumed horror of the lunar landscapes"). Some of the desert-crossings he did (that took about 3-4 months) were so brutal that camels usually had to be euthanized after the trip because they were totally exhausted and useless for the job. On such trips, Rimbaud carried with him cyanide pills because if he ended up captured by native tribes he would be tortured, and suicide was better than having your own testicles slowly cut off. What he ate were only a handful of dried dates, and he drank some milky water, preserved with strange oils and fats. >>3988157 >He ended up winning a lot of money (he carried a large sack of gold tied to his waste in all the places he go). His mind was so skilled that he also learned several native languages, many now extinct. He could speak more than 15 languages. For a time he lived with Ethiopian with a very beautiful and elegant black woman, who was his mistress. >Anyway, eventually he developed a tumor on his leg (a cancer). He had to return to France, where he had his leg amputated. A few weeks later, with fever and possessed by delirium (he was on colossal amounts of morphine), he died. His body was black (almost as carbon), his hair gray, his body slim and bony. He died with only 33 years of age. Just passing to suggest a wonderful book about this period of the life of Rimbaud: http://www.amazon.com/Somebody-Else -Arthur-Rimbaud-1880-91/dp/02265802 96/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=137547460 2&sr=8-1&keywords=rimbaud+in+africa

74 hours later 3994013 Anonymous
Bumping good threads

74 hours later 3994027 Anonymous (arthur-rimbaud-18721.jpg 446x600 89kB)
The last poet of any consequence, without doubt.

74 hours later 3994048 Anonymous
>>3993772 http://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Was- My-God-Rimbaud/dp/0307742865/ref=sr _1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375479934&sr=8-2& keywords=disaster+was+my+god This is the best Rimbaud book ever written

74 hours later 3994084 Anonymous
Anyone knows which is his best biography?

98 hours later 3996322 Anonymous
>>3994084 This 2 are very good: >>3988159 >http://www.amazon.com/Rimbaud-A-Bi ography-Graham-Robb/dp/0393049558/r ef=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375317315&sr =8-1&keywords=graham+robb+rimbaud >>3993772 >http://www.amazon.com/Somebody-Els e-Arthur-Rimbaud-1880-91/dp/0226580 296/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=13754746 02&sr=8-1&keywords=rimbaud+in+afric a

99 hours later 3996488 Anonymous
>>3996322 Thank you

99 hours later 3996492 Anonymous
He was a cutie. I've only read his poems in English and, still, he's one of my favorites. I really ought to learn French. Based on some of the responses in here, I'd say he's definitely underrated.

105 hours later 3997447 Anonymous
>>3996492 god I want to learn french so bad. If only it didn't take months and/or years of disciplined work...

106 hours later 3997531 Anonymous
There's no debating Rimbaud's talent, but I don't feel that he is one of the world's best poets. If anything, he is a bridge between the Romantic movement to the Modernist movement, and as such his influence on modern culture can not be overstated.

106 hours later 3997564 Anonymous
>>3997447 If you already know English then french is ez pz I studied french casually for only six or seven years and I'm nearly fluent, at least I know it well enough to live in France.

113 hours later 3998185 Anonymous
>>3996492 He is underrated

115 hours later 3998359 Anonymous
does he write poetry only? i do not read poetry

115 hours later 3998397 Anonymous
>>3988162 i still want to know what this collection is.

115 hours later 3998408 Anonymous
>>3998185 you mean overrated

115 hours later 3998432 Anonymous
>>3998408 ma camarade, mendiante, enfant monstre! comme ca t'est egal, ces malheureuses et ces manoeuvres, et mes embarras. attache-toi a nous avec ta voix impossible, ta voix! unique flatteur de ce vil desespoir

116 hours later 3998547 Anonymous
>>3996322 someone should pdf this shit yo

116 hours later 3998556 Anonymous
>>3998547 or any other decent bio

119 hours later 3999014 Anonymous
>>3998408 Underrated. A lot of people try to give him less value than he deserves and they say that he is interesting only because of his biography

119 hours later 3999026 Anonymous
>>3998408 you mean underrated

120 hours later 3999069 Anonymous
>>3998359 Season in Hell is in prose (a startling one at that). His letters are also very interesting.

120 hours later 3999109 Anonymous
he was a douche but his poetry is great. "he was somebody after all, since genius ennobles even baseness"- remy de gourmont

123 hours later 3999621 Anonymous
>>3999109 He wasn't a douche. He only had a very difficult personality

142 hours later 4002610 Anonymous
>>3998359 And "A Heart under a Cassock" is also very good

143 hours later 4002774 Anonymous
>>3998359 "un coeur sous une soutane" it's in prose and as >>3999069 said, a season in hell is in poetic prose and the letters are also very good

144 hours later 4002919 Anonymous
At the green inn 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. I can't imagine how the English cripples this great poem. compare the last verse: 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. Even in Russian is more gentle than in English: Чуть розоватою и белой, и мгновенно Большую кружку мне наполнила, где пена В закатных отблесках казалась золотой.

144 hours later 4002933 Anonymous
you also know that he was pretty bad boy and he died as arm smuggler. He got glory post-mortem.

144 hours later 4002966 Anonymous
>>4002933 he knew very well how good his work was.

144 hours later 4003050 Anonymous
>>3988159 >He ended up winning a lot of money (he carried a large sack of gold tied to his waste in all the places he go) Faux. He had gold coins// lean bars of gold knit underneath his wide belt because he did not trust the abessinians who were working for him.

144 hours later 4003059 Anonymous
great action movie

145 hours later 4003122 Anonymous
>>4003050 Maybe. Anyway, he gained some money.

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