Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works Book

Rimbaud is comfort reading for the soul. i fell into reading him on accident, i was talking about poetry with a friend and he happened to mention that this was his favourite poet. and he told me all about rimbaud's past, the tryst he had with paul verlaine, the religious upbringing he had and the curious fact that rimbaud stopped writing at 21. that he dropped everything to become a merchant and to run away from it all. my interest was piqued; there isn't any way that it couldn't be.

what strikes me about rimbaud in the translated work that wyatt mason has compiled is the ability to watch him grow in the few years that he is a poet and writer. he lists the poetry and prose as best as he can by the year that it was written. mason even captures versions of poems, again sorting by year, so that you can see the corrections that age helped him to make to his beautiful poems.

i've read previous translations of rimbaud, and i've loved those as well, but this one felt a bit more… modern and relatable. instead of a literal translation, word by word, he tried to convey nuances of the language into english, which to me hasn't been done as well by previous translators. i imagine reading it in the original french would be amazing, but alas, i can only speak so many languages.

below is probably my favourite prose piece that he's written (which isn't an easy thing to choose).

* * * *

Long ago, if my memory serves, life was a feast where every heart was open, where every wine flowed.

One night, I sat Beauty on my knee. -And I found her bitter. -And I hurt her.
I took arms against justice.

I fled, entrusting my treasure to you, o witches, o misery, o hate.

I snuffed any hint of human hope from my consciousness. I made the muffled leap of a wild beast onto any hint of joy, to strangle it.

Dying, I called my executioners over so I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called plagues to suffocate me with sand, blood. Misfortune was my god. I lay in the mud. I withered in criminal air. And I even tricked madness more than once.
And spring left me with an idiot's unbearable laughter.

Just now, having nearly reached death's door, I thought about seeking the key to the old feast, through which, perhaps, I might regain my appetite.

Charity is the key. -Such an inspiration proves I was dreaming!

"A hyena you'll remain, etc…." cries the demon that crowns me with your merry poppies. "Make for death with every appetite intact, with your egotism, and every capital sin."

Ah. It seems I have too many already: -But, dear Satan, I beg you not to look at me that way, and while you await a few belated cowardices'you who so delight in a writer's inability to describe or inform'watch me tear a few terrible leaves from my book of the damned.

it's hard for me to explain why i love a poet, or a specific poem. i feel transported, or full of life or anger, or just an emotion that previously hadn't consumed me, for the duration of my reading and for some time beyond. i'm stuck in that space that the author has written and it feels for a time like i want nothing more than to drown in that emotion. this is why i read rimbaud, all the time.