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swamp_witch's review against another edition
4.0
It seems Fowlie sacrifices much of the music and intelligibility of the original for the sake of using the same punctuation and syntax as the author. Notes are not useful and there are quite a few typos in the French version of the text.
batsworthy's review against another edition
3.0
I have a feeling this text's translation faltered in some areas - in Rimbaud's earlier poems and his letters the renditions were fine, but the later, surrealist, prose-y material felt undecipherable in some parts. I'm not very fluent in French but I caught myself quite a few times glancing at the left side of the page and re-arranging the English words to make them sound prettier - I do love the arrangement of words. Maybe I should become a translator. Rimbaud's poems did solidify my want to continue to learn French with more focus. Particularly the material structured to rhyme in the original text was pleasant even to gaze on.
Some of the poems were pretty boring, maybe because I'm not all that big a fan of figurative language. Rimbaud's development as a person was fascinating to go through. He ended up being an enormous leech; it reminded me of people I know. I also wish more letters to Verlaine were included, because those were the most intense of his correspondences by far.
Not a bad read by any stretch, but I think I've had enough of this lad for a few years. O Angst! O Angst! I worship you!
I
We aren't serious when we're seventeen.
—One fine evening, to hell with beer and lemonade,
Noisy cafés with their shining lamps!
We walk under the green linden trees of the park
The lindens smell good in the good June evenings!
At times the air is so scented that we close our eyes.
The wind laden with sounds—the town isn't far—
Has the smell of grapevines and beer...
II
—There you can see a very small patch
Of dark blue, framed by a little branch,
Pinned up by a naughty star, that melts
In gentle quivers, small and very white...
Night in June! Seventeen years old! —We are overcome by it all
The sap is champagne and goes to our head...
We talked a lot and feel a kiss on our lips
Trembling there like a small insect...
III
Our wild heart moves through novels like Robinson Crusoe,
—When, in the light of a pale street lamp,
A girl goes by attractive and charming
Under the shadow of her father's terrible collar...
And as she finds you incredibly naïve,
While clicking her little boots,
She turns abruptly and in a lively way...
—Then cavatinas die on your lips...
IV
You are in love. Occupied until the month of August.
You are in love. —Your sonnets make Her laugh.
All your friends go off, you are ridiculous.
—Then one evening the girl you worship deigned to write to you...!
—That evening, ... —you return to the bright cafés,
You ask for beer or lemonade...
—We're not serious when we are seventeen
And when we have green linden trees in the park.
Some of the poems were pretty boring, maybe because I'm not all that big a fan of figurative language. Rimbaud's development as a person was fascinating to go through. He ended up being an enormous leech; it reminded me of people I know. I also wish more letters to Verlaine were included, because those were the most intense of his correspondences by far.
Not a bad read by any stretch, but I think I've had enough of this lad for a few years. O Angst! O Angst! I worship you!
I
We aren't serious when we're seventeen.
—One fine evening, to hell with beer and lemonade,
Noisy cafés with their shining lamps!
We walk under the green linden trees of the park
The lindens smell good in the good June evenings!
At times the air is so scented that we close our eyes.
The wind laden with sounds—the town isn't far—
Has the smell of grapevines and beer...
II
—There you can see a very small patch
Of dark blue, framed by a little branch,
Pinned up by a naughty star, that melts
In gentle quivers, small and very white...
Night in June! Seventeen years old! —We are overcome by it all
The sap is champagne and goes to our head...
We talked a lot and feel a kiss on our lips
Trembling there like a small insect...
III
Our wild heart moves through novels like Robinson Crusoe,
—When, in the light of a pale street lamp,
A girl goes by attractive and charming
Under the shadow of her father's terrible collar...
And as she finds you incredibly naïve,
While clicking her little boots,
She turns abruptly and in a lively way...
—Then cavatinas die on your lips...
IV
You are in love. Occupied until the month of August.
You are in love. —Your sonnets make Her laugh.
All your friends go off, you are ridiculous.
—Then one evening the girl you worship deigned to write to you...!
—That evening, ... —you return to the bright cafés,
You ask for beer or lemonade...
—We're not serious when we are seventeen
And when we have green linden trees in the park.
amyotheramy's review against another edition
2.0
All I can think about this is that Rimbaud's work must really sing in French. Because this ... this is not good. It is not remotely great. This is the ranting of a teenage boy who did not want to grow up, did not want to be responsible. He insults his mother, but he always runs home to her. It seems to me that his reputation mostly rests on his shocking biography and his letters. (Of course, I recognize that timing is everything in literature; when he wrote, much of this must have seemed new and startling as well.)
Mind you, the makings of greatness are here, but at the time he was writing (from the age of 15 to the age of 20) he did not have the experience to fill it out. And he knew that. His famous "I am depraving myself as much as I can," his ars poetica is based on gathering the experience he knew he needed. His drinking and drugging, his wild affair with Verlaine, his travels, all to explore his own otherness, his unknown, to become aware of and to cultivate himself with the express goal of knowing and writing so that others may then build on that work. But then:
Science, the new nobility! Progress! The world moves!...And why shouldn't it?
We have visions of numbers. We are moving toward the Spirit. What I say is oracular and absolutely right. I understand...and since I cannot express myself except in pagan terms, I would rather keep quiet.
-from "Bad Blood" in A Season in Hell, 1873
And just two years after that, he quit writing. On October 14, 1875, six days shy of his 21st birthday, he writes his friend Ernest Delahaye "the hell with 'my craft and art,'" requesting information on pursuing a degree in science. The letter contains his last known poem, on soldiers farting. He then goes to travel, then a life as a trader in Africa. (And ooh, hello colonialism.)
Truly, I regret that he did not continue. Maybe he could not. Maybe the wild living was part and parcel with the poetry for him and he could not write without it. I would have liked to see his poetry when he grew up. When he had had to live by the sweat of his brow and toil with the thorns and thistles as we all do, I would have liked to see what a man of his impressive craftsmanship could do with that wisdom. But I certainly don't begrudge him his turning to other things. I only wonder what might have been.
I don't have any French with which to judge Paul Schmidt's translation, or I would be reading the originals of course, but his translations make perfectly good English verse. I appreciated his arrangement of the body of work into seasons bracketed by a brief biographical note and letters; it helped to place the poetry within Rimbaud's life. I did think it was incredibly petty of Mr. Schmidt to suggest that it would have been better for the poet to disappear or die young than suffer the banal life of business he turned to. There is more to life than just poetry, and Rimbaud died young enough at 37. Of what he left behind, this is probably my favorite (and it is an early work):
Crows
Lord, when the open field is cold,
When in battered villages
The endless angelus dies-
Above the dark and drooping world
Let the empty skies disclose
Your dear, delightful crows.
Armada dark with harsh cries,
Your nests are tossed by icy winds!
Along the banks of yellowed ponds,
On roads where crumbling crosses rise,
In cold and gray and mournful weather
Scatter, hover, dive together!
In flocks above the fields of France
Where yesterday's dead men lie,
Wheel across the winter sky;
Recall our black inheritance!
Let duty in your cry be heard,
Mournful, black, uneasy bird.
Yet in that oak, you saints of God,
Swaying in the dying day,
Leave the whistling birds of May
For those who found, within that wood
From which they will not come again,
That every victory is vain.
(c. 1870? During the Franco-Prussian War)
Mind you, the makings of greatness are here, but at the time he was writing (from the age of 15 to the age of 20) he did not have the experience to fill it out. And he knew that. His famous "I am depraving myself as much as I can," his ars poetica is based on gathering the experience he knew he needed. His drinking and drugging, his wild affair with Verlaine, his travels, all to explore his own otherness, his unknown, to become aware of and to cultivate himself with the express goal of knowing and writing so that others may then build on that work. But then:
Science, the new nobility! Progress! The world moves!...And why shouldn't it?
We have visions of numbers. We are moving toward the Spirit. What I say is oracular and absolutely right. I understand...and since I cannot express myself except in pagan terms, I would rather keep quiet.
-from "Bad Blood" in A Season in Hell, 1873
And just two years after that, he quit writing. On October 14, 1875, six days shy of his 21st birthday, he writes his friend Ernest Delahaye "the hell with 'my craft and art,'" requesting information on pursuing a degree in science. The letter contains his last known poem, on soldiers farting. He then goes to travel, then a life as a trader in Africa. (And ooh, hello colonialism.)
Truly, I regret that he did not continue. Maybe he could not. Maybe the wild living was part and parcel with the poetry for him and he could not write without it. I would have liked to see his poetry when he grew up. When he had had to live by the sweat of his brow and toil with the thorns and thistles as we all do, I would have liked to see what a man of his impressive craftsmanship could do with that wisdom. But I certainly don't begrudge him his turning to other things. I only wonder what might have been.
I don't have any French with which to judge Paul Schmidt's translation, or I would be reading the originals of course, but his translations make perfectly good English verse. I appreciated his arrangement of the body of work into seasons bracketed by a brief biographical note and letters; it helped to place the poetry within Rimbaud's life. I did think it was incredibly petty of Mr. Schmidt to suggest that it would have been better for the poet to disappear or die young than suffer the banal life of business he turned to. There is more to life than just poetry, and Rimbaud died young enough at 37. Of what he left behind, this is probably my favorite (and it is an early work):
Crows
Lord, when the open field is cold,
When in battered villages
The endless angelus dies-
Above the dark and drooping world
Let the empty skies disclose
Your dear, delightful crows.
Armada dark with harsh cries,
Your nests are tossed by icy winds!
Along the banks of yellowed ponds,
On roads where crumbling crosses rise,
In cold and gray and mournful weather
Scatter, hover, dive together!
In flocks above the fields of France
Where yesterday's dead men lie,
Wheel across the winter sky;
Recall our black inheritance!
Let duty in your cry be heard,
Mournful, black, uneasy bird.
Yet in that oak, you saints of God,
Swaying in the dying day,
Leave the whistling birds of May
For those who found, within that wood
From which they will not come again,
That every victory is vain.
(c. 1870? During the Franco-Prussian War)
behindthecritic's review against another edition
5.0
So it turns out I've been quoting Arthur Rimbaud before I even knew who he was.
Rimbaud is another key writer in the origin story for lots of twentieth century writers and it's easy to see why. Like Baudelaire, Rimbaud is a key part of the transition from traditional to modernism.
I'm going to focus on A Season in Hell because - there's no competition - it's his greatest work and is basically the bible and everything after it is the extended edition. It reminded me of Inferno, it was Surreal before Surrealism was a thing, it was very self-conscious, and it placed the author in a position of what is biography and what is complete fiction. There's so much lit theory you could apply to this.
Reading A Season in Hell along with his older poetry (as this edition is a collected works) enriched my reading of the poem as I have seen with my own eyes Rimbaud's development from mimicking his contemporaries to becoming extraordinary. He also references some of his other poems which is a nice little nod.
This edition ends with his letters after he retired from poetry at the old age of 21. I always saw Rimbaud as a live fast, die young kinda guy - and yes he did die young - but he lived until he was 38 and to an extent lived a mundane life. Comparing his personal letters to A Season in Hell is as tricking contrast. It is hedonistic youth versus dull reality. It is strange and tragic.
Anyone who vaguely likes literature and poetry needs to read some Rimbaud- especially A Season in Hell.
Rimbaud is another key writer in the origin story for lots of twentieth century writers and it's easy to see why. Like Baudelaire, Rimbaud is a key part of the transition from traditional to modernism.
I'm going to focus on A Season in Hell because - there's no competition - it's his greatest work and is basically the bible and everything after it is the extended edition. It reminded me of Inferno, it was Surreal before Surrealism was a thing, it was very self-conscious, and it placed the author in a position of what is biography and what is complete fiction. There's so much lit theory you could apply to this.
Reading A Season in Hell along with his older poetry (as this edition is a collected works) enriched my reading of the poem as I have seen with my own eyes Rimbaud's development from mimicking his contemporaries to becoming extraordinary. He also references some of his other poems which is a nice little nod.
This edition ends with his letters after he retired from poetry at the old age of 21. I always saw Rimbaud as a live fast, die young kinda guy - and yes he did die young - but he lived until he was 38 and to an extent lived a mundane life. Comparing his personal letters to A Season in Hell is as tricking contrast. It is hedonistic youth versus dull reality. It is strange and tragic.
Anyone who vaguely likes literature and poetry needs to read some Rimbaud- especially A Season in Hell.
tscott907's review against another edition
4.0
Rimbaud is fascinating and an excellent writer. I enjoyed this collection and the translation. I’m trying to expand my horizons with poetry, so the inclusion of his letters along with the poems was nice. I’m familiar with Schmidt’s work as a translator — I’ve read his translations of Chekhov — and I think he brought that same clarity and tension to Rimbaud.
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