A review by ellephuonglinhnguyen
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works by Arthur Rimbaud

4.0

All periods of time have ends to them, and these fatal endings we anticipate. A period of time—a day, an hour, a year-and this will end, we say; all this will end, the season will turn, and all will be over. We look in vain for some eternal moment, for happiness, felicity, that state of bliss that will go on for ever and ever. Is not happiness defined only when no term to its extent is imagined? So Rimbaud thought, it seems to me. His seasons are those stretches of time that open unawares and close painfully in our lives. That summer, those two years in the city, this love affair, that month in the country—these are the true, the organic epochs of our lives; the dates that mark their endings are our true anniversaries. Are not these the seasons Rimbaud wrote of: the implacable turning of seasons, and the denial of happiness implicit in their movement? Here then are the records of Rimbaud's Seasons—all his poems, his prose, most of his letters.