Arthur Rimbaud

"A Season in Hell" is one of the great works of modern literature. It is published here in a bilingual edition together with many of the verse poems which Rimbaud wrote between March 1870 and August 1872. "A Season in Hell" was Rimbaud's literary testament, his apology and a contribution to the mythology of his time.

"A Season in Hell" is one of the great works of modern literature. It is published here in a bilingual edition together with many of the verse poems which Rimbaud wrote between March 1870 and August 1872. "A Season in Hell" was Rimbaud's literary testament, his apology and a contribution to the mythology of his time.

The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Poems: Rimbaud contains selections from Rimbaud's work, including over 100 poems, selected prose, "Letter to Paul Demeny, May 15, 1871," and an index of first lines.

"With skill and imagination, Bertrand Mathieu gives us an intimacy of the spoken American that allows readers to absorb themselves in Rimbaud's private drama as in an obsessive dream of our own.... Mathieu has earned our gratitude and praise for his accomplishment: to have given Rimbaud his contemporary relevance for us."--David Ignatow

This new translation, with the French text on the facing pages, captures the tone and rhythm of Rimbaud's language as well as the quality of his thought.

Arthur Rimbaud est LE poete par excellence. Enfant precoce et eleve brillant, il remporte des prix de litterature des son adolescence. Jeune homme revolte contre l'ordre des choses, il voit la poesie comme un moyen de les faire evoluer. Son abandon de la poesie a partir de dix-neuf ans est pour certains l'aveu de cet echec. D'autres pensent que c'est simplement pour gagner sa vie qu'il arreta d'ecrire et se tourna vers le commerce. Le poete du Bateau ivre a eu une vie mouvementee faite de fugues, de vie de boheme, d'errance et de voyages.

The prose poems of the great French Symbolist, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), have acquired enormous prestige among readers everywhere and have been a revolutionary influence on poetry in the twentieth century. They are offered here both in their original texts and in superb English translations by Louise Varèse. Mrs. Varèse first published her versions of Rimbaud’s Illuminations in 1946. Since then she has revised her work and has included two poems which in the interim have been reclassified as part of Illuminations. This edition also contains two other series of prose poems, which include two poems only recently discovered in France, together with an introduction in which Miss Varèse discusses the complicated ins and outs of Rimbaldien scholarship and the special qualities of Rimbaud’s writing. Rimbaud was indeed the most astonishing of French geniuses. Fired in childhood with an ambition to write, he gave up poetry before he was twenty-one. Yet he had already produced some of the finest examples of French verse. He is best known for A Season in Hell, but his other prose poems are no less remarkable. While he was working on them he spoke of his interest in hallucinations––"des vertiges, des silences, des nuits." These perceptions were caught by the poet in a beam of pellucid, and strangely active language which still lights up––now here, now there––unexplored aspects of experience and thought.