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literarytaurean's review against another edition
2.0
I'm hoping this got lost in translation... Everything felt like it was missing context, nothing really made sense. Which I could excuse if the prose was stunning, but, it's not. There were four selections in the whole thing that I thought were okay. Heard other translations are much better but I am so disappointed in this one :(
piccoline's review against another edition
5.0
Purchased on Bastille Day at the Henry Miller Library, where nothing ever happens.
Perhaps I've now passed the point where I should say that I have a hard time with poetry. Rather, I used to have a hard time finding the poetry that I find interesting and that moves me. I'm getting a list of names, now, though. Pessoa. Rimbaud. Some Bolaño. Some Sebald. Bachmann, Bernhard. Almost all in translation. There's perhaps something to that. I enjoyed some Parra too.
As to this collection, I'm sure it's got a mountain of criticism and secondary literature about it. Rimbaud's certainly one of those names. I loved its immediacy, the sharp and jarring juxtapositions of colors and image. Standouts for me were "Democracy", "Bottom", "H", "Anguish", "Barbarian", and "Historic Evening". I'm just as confident that next time I read it others will leap out from the crowd.
I've not compared translations, but this edition, translated by John Ashberry, flowed beautifully and is filled with surprise and freshness.
Perhaps I've now passed the point where I should say that I have a hard time with poetry. Rather, I used to have a hard time finding the poetry that I find interesting and that moves me. I'm getting a list of names, now, though. Pessoa. Rimbaud. Some Bolaño. Some Sebald. Bachmann, Bernhard. Almost all in translation. There's perhaps something to that. I enjoyed some Parra too.
As to this collection, I'm sure it's got a mountain of criticism and secondary literature about it. Rimbaud's certainly one of those names. I loved its immediacy, the sharp and jarring juxtapositions of colors and image. Standouts for me were "Democracy", "Bottom", "H", "Anguish", "Barbarian", and "Historic Evening". I'm just as confident that next time I read it others will leap out from the crowd.
I've not compared translations, but this edition, translated by John Ashberry, flowed beautifully and is filled with surprise and freshness.
lauren_elizabeth's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Annually (or thereabouts), I have to return to Rimbaud — this time, it was John Ashbery’s excellent English translation of Illuminations. Enigmatic, powerful, with an occasional wry irreverence, Rimbaud was the first poet whose work I truly fell in love with.
“I remember the hours of silver and sun toward the rivers, the hand of the countryside on my shoulder, and our caresses as we stood in the pepper-scented plain.” — Lives
“Arriving from always, you’ll go away everywhere.” — To a Reason
“I stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; gold chains from star to star, and I dance.” — [Fragments of Folio 12]
“On the slope of the embankment, angels swirl their woolen dresses through pastures of steel and emerald. [...] The flowery sweetness of stars and sky and the rest descends opposite the embankment, like a basket, against our face, and creates the flowering and blue abyss down there.” — Mystical
“I remember the hours of silver and sun toward the rivers, the hand of the countryside on my shoulder, and our caresses as we stood in the pepper-scented plain.” — Lives
“Arriving from always, you’ll go away everywhere.” — To a Reason
“I stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; gold chains from star to star, and I dance.” — [Fragments of Folio 12]
“On the slope of the embankment, angels swirl their woolen dresses through pastures of steel and emerald. [...] The flowery sweetness of stars and sky and the rest descends opposite the embankment, like a basket, against our face, and creates the flowering and blue abyss down there.” — Mystical
benliamc's review
5.0
I've been reading this book in little bursts for about three months, trying to savor the immensity of its beauty, rationing out bursts of its ephemera, giving myself a controlled stream of the languid prose. Rimbaud does things with language that no one else has ever done. It often feels like riding atop a rocket ship or surfing a tsunami to find moments that make no conventional sense but interlock in discourse. A perfect book.
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