Resembling an island, tossing on my sides the brawlsĪnd droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds.Īnd I was scudding along when across my frayed ropesĭrowned men sank backwards into sleep!.īut now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves, Lifted my shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me,Īnd I hung there like a kneeling woman. Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones, Īnd at times ineffable winds would lend me wings. Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fish. I should have liked to show to children those dolphins Where the giant snakes, devoured by vermin,įall from the twisted trees with black odours! Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals! Traps where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!ĭownfalls of waters in the midst of the calm,Īnd distances cataracting down into abysses! I have seen the enormous swamps seething, Under the sea's horizon to glaucous herds! Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers in human skins! I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas, Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the MarysĬould muzzle by force the snorting Oceans! The swells battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows, I have followed, for whole months on end, The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,Īnd the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus! I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows, Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds! I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors I know the evening, and dawn rising up like a flock of doves,Īnd sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw! I have come to know the skies splitting with lightning,Īnd the waterspouts, and the breakers and currents Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music, In pallid flotsam, a dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down ĭeliriums and slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight, Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,ĭevouring the green azures where, entranced The green water penetrated my pinewood hullĪnd washed me clean of the bluish wine-stainsĪnd the splashes of vomit, carrying away both rudder and anchor.Īnd from that time on I bathed in the Poem Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children, Which men call the eternal rollers of victims,įor ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights! Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings. More absorbed than the minds of children, I ran! Into the ferocious tide-rips, last winter, The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased. When, along with my haulers, those uproars stopped, Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets,Ĭarrying Flemish wheat or English cotton. I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers: Summers' Gay & Lesbian Literary Heritage, see the articles and bibliographies for "Rimbaud," "Verlaine," and "French Literature: Nineteenth Century." There are many resources including additional poems, articles, and photographs at Peter Pullicino's excellent Rimbaud site. If you read French, here are the original texts of Les Illuminations and Une Saison en enfer also, both Rimbaud and Verlaine's complete works are at Athena: Textes d'auteurs d'expression française. Feel free to read these or any other translations. And remember that all points of view are welcome, including critical ones. You might also want to peruse these five Verlaine poems. I admit that initially I had a lot of trouble reading Rimbaud: so if you don't connect with one of these works, try some of the others. A Season in Hell is an hallucinatory memoir. Illuminations contains about three dozen brief prose poems. What to Read: " The Drunken Boat" is the visionary piece which first brought Rimbaud to Verlaine's attention. He wrote all of his masterpieces before the age of 20. Lovecraft, the Surrealists, Federico García Lorca, Hart Crane, Jean Genet, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Morrison & the Doors, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and today's alternative music scene. He was a seminal influence on artists as diverse as Oscar Wilde, Jean Cocteau, H.P. Below is the material we used.Ībout Rimbaud: Rimbaud is one of the world's most influential writers. On Augwe had a Fiction & Film Group event focused on Rimbaud and Verlaine's poetry as well as the film about their tempestuous relationship, Total Eclipse. " The Drunken Boat, " Illuminations, & A Season in HellĪrthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) updated 8/22/99 with links to original French texts Rimbaud's "Drunken Boat," Illuminations & Season in Hell
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