A Season in Hell - Rimbaud

Prévia do material em texto

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (April 2010) 
simonelmer@hotmail.com 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A Season in Hell 
by 
Arthur Rimbaud 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A new translation 
by 
Simon Elmer & Eliot Albers 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Long ago, if I remember well, my life was a feast where 
all hearts were open, where all wines flowed. 
 One evening, I sat beauty on my knees. − She tasted 
bitter. − And I spat her out. 
 I took up arms against justice. 
 I took to my heels. O witches, O poverty, O hate, I have 
entrusted my treasure to you! 
 I purged all human hope from my mind. On every joy I 
pounced silently, like a wild beast, and strangled it. 
 I called on my executioners, as I lay dying, to let me bite 
the butts of their rifles. I called on plagues to smother me 
with sand and blood. Unhappiness was my god. I stretched 
myself out in the mud. I dried myself in the air of crime. And 
I played sly tricks on madness. 
 Spring brought me the terrifying laughter of an idiot. 
 But recently, finding myself on the point of uttering my 
last croak, I dreamed of searching for the key to the ancient 
feast where I might, perhaps, recover my appetite. 
 Charity is the key. − This inspiration proves I dreamt it! 
 ‘You will always be a hyena, etc. . . .’ cries the demon 
who crowned me with such fragrant poppies. ‘Seek your 
death with all your lusts, your selfishness, and all the 
cardinal sins.’ 
 Ah! I’ve taken too much. − But, dear Satan, I implore you, 
show a less glaring eye! And while waiting for the few small 
acts of cowardice still to come, you who love in a writer the 
absence of descriptive or discursive faculties, for you I tear 
out these few hideous pages from my notebook of the 
damned. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Bad Blood 
 
—— 
 
 From my Gaulish ancestors I have inherited blue-white 
eyes, a narrow skull, and clumsiness in battle. I find that 
my dress is as barbaric as theirs. But I don’t butter my 
hair. 
 The Gauls were flayers of beasts, and the most inept 
grass scorchers of their time. 
 From them I inherit: idolatry and the love of sacrilege − 
oh! all the vices: anger, lust − a magnificent lust − and 
above all deceit and idleness. 
 I have a horror of all trades. Masters and labourers, all 
are base peasants. The hand that holds the pen is no 
different from the hand that holds the plough. − What a 
century of hands! − I will never have my hand. Domesticity, 
moreover, leads me too far astray. The dignity of begging 
irritates me. Criminals digust me as if they were castrated: 
I’m intact, so it’s all the same to me. 
 And yet! who made my tongue so false that it has 
guided and safeguarded my idleness until now? Without 
employing even my body in order to live, and as lazy as a 
toad, I have still manged to live everywhere. I know all the 
families of Europe. − I mean families like my own, who owe 
everything to the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’. − I have 
known the sons of every family! 
 
——— 
 
 If only I had ancestors at some point in the history of 
France! 
 But no, nothing. 
 It is very clear to me that I have always belonged to an 
inferior race. I cannot understand revolt. My race never 
rose up except to pillage: like wolves fighting over the beast 
they did not kill. 
 I recall the history of France, eldest daughter of the 
Church. As a serf, I would have made the journey to the 
Holy Land; I hold, in my head, the routes through the 
Swabian plains, images of Byzantium, the ramparts of 
Jerusalem. The cult of the Virgin Mary and tenderness for 
the Crucified well up inside me among a thousand profane 
visions. − I am seated, leprous, on broken pots and nettles, 
at the foot of a sun-scoured wall. − Later, as a mercenary, I 
would have bivouacked under German nights. 
 Ah! once more I dance the witches’ sabbath in a red 
clearing, with old women and children. 
 I don’t remember further back than this land and the 
coming of Christianity. I shall never tire of picturing myself 
in that past. But always alone, without family; and what 
language did I speak then? I never see myself at the 
councils of Christ, nor at the councils of Lords − those 
representatives of Christ. 
 What was I in the last century? I only recognise myself 
as I am today. No more vagabonds, no more wars with 
obscure origins. Everything has been taken over by the 
inferior race − the so-called ‘people’: reason, the nation and 
science. 
 Oh! science! It has reconsidered everything. For the 
body and the soul − the viaticum − we now have medicine 
and philosophy, old wives’ remedies and rearranged 
popular songs. And the diversions of princes and games 
they forbade! Geography, cosmography, mechanics, 
chemistry . . . 
 Science, the new nobility! Progress. The world marches 
on! Why would it cease to turn? 
 It is the vision of numbers. We are moving towards 
Spirit. What I say is certain, oracular. I understand, but not 
knowing how to explain myself without using pagan words, 
I prefer to hold my tongue. 
 
——— 
 
 The pagan blood returns! Spirit is near, so why doesn’t 
Christ help me by granting my soul nobility and freedom? 
Alas! the Gospel has passed. The Gospel! The Gospel . . . 
 I wait for God, greedily. I am of an inferior race for all 
eternity. 
 Here I am on the beach at Brittany. Let the cities light 
up in the evening. My day is done, and I am leaving 
Europe. The sea air will burn my lungs, lost climates will 
tan my skin. Swimming, trampling the grass, hunting and 
above all smoking; drinking alcohol as strong as boiling 
metal − just as my dear ancestors did around their fires. 
 I will return with limbs of iron, dark skin and a furious 
eye: by this mask I’ll be judged to be the member of a 
powerful race. I’ll have gold. I’ll be idle and brutal. Women, 
take care of these ferocious invalids returned from hot 
countries. I’ll become involved in political affairs. Saved! 
 But now I am accursed. I loathe my country. The best 
thing in life is a really pissed sleep on the beach. 
 
——— 
 
 You cannot leave. − Let’s follow the roads here once 
again, burdened with my vice − the vice that sunk its roots 
of suffering into me as soon as I reached the age of reason 
− which ascends to the sky, batters me, throws me back 
again and drags me after it. 
 The last innocence and the last shyness. Or so it is 
said. I’ll not carry my betrayals and disgusts into the world. 
 Let’s go! The march, the burden, the desert, boredom 
and anger. 
 To whom can I sell myself? What beast must I worship? 
What holy image are we attacking? Whose heart will I 
break? What lie must I tell? − In whose blood will I march? 
 Rather, save me from justice. − The hard life, simple 
brutishness: − to lift the coffin’s lid up with a withered fist, 
lie down and suffocate. No senility or danger for us. Terror 
is un-French. 
 − Ah! I’m so alone that I offer my longings for perfection 
toany graven image. 
 O my abnegation, O my marvellous charity! But here 
below! 
 De profundis, Domine, what an idiot I am! 
 
——— 
 
 While still a child I admired the unrepentant criminal 
on whom the prison door always closes. I visited the inns 
and furnished rooms he had sanctified with his presence. I 
saw with his eyes the blue sky and the labour of flowering 
fields. I followed the scent of his fate through cities. He was 
stronger than a saint, had more good sense than a 
traveller, and he − he alone! − was the witness to his glory 
and right. 
 On the road, through winter nights, without shelter, 
naked and hungry, a voice clenched my frozen heart: 
‘Weakness or strength: there you are, it’s strength. You 
don’t know where you are going or why, so enter anywhere, 
answer everything. You cannot be killed, anymore than if 
you were a corpse.’ In the morning, my stare was so 
vacant, my expression so dead, that those I encountered 
perhaps did not see me. 
 In cities the mud suddenly seemed to be red and black, 
like a mirror when the lamp moves about in the next room, 
like a treasure in the forest! Good luck! I cried, and saw a 
sea of flames and smoke in the sky; and on the left and on 
the right, every kind of richness flaming like a million 
thunderbolts. 
 But orgies and the camaraderie of women were denied 
me. Not even a companion. I saw myself in front of a baying 
mob, facing the firing-squad, weeping over the 
unhappiness they wouldn’t have been capable of 
understanding, and forgiving them! − like Joan of Arc! − 
‘Priests, professors, masters, you are wrong to turn me over 
to Justice. I have never belonged to this people. I have 
never been Christian. I am of the race that sang under 
torture. I do not understand your laws. I have no moral 
sense, I am a brute. You are making a mistake . . . ” 
 Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am a beast, a 
nigger. But I can be saved. You are false niggers, you 
maniacs, ferocious and greedy. Merchant, you’re a nigger; 
magistrate, you’re a nigger; general, you’re a nigger; 
emperor, you old mange, you’re a nigger too: you have 
drunk untaxed spirits from Satan’s still. − These people are 
inspired by fever and cancer. Invalids and old men so 
respectable they asked to be boiled. − The shrewdest thing 
would be to leave this continent, where madness roams to 
provide hostages for these wretches. I am entering the true 
kingdom of the children of Ham. 
 Do I know nature yet? Do I know me? − No more words. 
I will bury the dead in my stomach. Cries, drums, dance, 
dance, dance, dance! I can’t even see the hour when the 
white men will land and I will fall into nothingness. 
 Hunger, thirst, cries, dance, dance, dance, dance! 
 
——— 
 
 The white men are landing! The cannon! They’ll force us 
to be baptised, put on clothes and work. 
 I have been shot in the heart by grace. Ah! I had not 
foreseen this! 
 I’ve done nothing wrong. My days will be light and I 
shall be spared repentance. I’ll not have gone through the 
torments of the soul, almost dead to goodness, from which 
a flame as severe as funeral tapers rises. The fate of the 
family’s son: a premature coffin covered with clear tears. No 
doubt debauchery is stupid, vice is stupid, and what is 
rotten must be thrown away. But the clock won’t be able to 
strike anything but the hour of pure pain! Am I going to be 
carried off like a child, to play in paradise in ignorance of 
unhappiness? 
 Quick! Aren’t there other ways of living? − To sleep in 
the midst of wealth is impossible. Wealth has always been 
public property. Divine love alone offers the keys to science. 
I see that nature is only a spectacle of plenitude. Farewell 
chimeras, ideals, errors! 
 The reasonable song of the angels rises up from the 
rescue ship: it is divine love. − Two loves! I may die of 
earthly love, die of devotion. I have left behind me souls 
whose suffering will only increase at my going! You chose 
me from among the shipwrecked, but what about the 
friends I left behind? 
 Save them! 
 Reason is born in me. The world is good. I will bless life. 
I will love my brothers. These aren’t childish promises. Nor 
is it the hope of escaping old age and death. God gave me 
strength, and I praise God. 
 
——— 
 
 Boredom is no longer my love. Rage, debauchery, 
madness: I know all ambitions and disasters − all my 
burden is laid aside. Let us appreciate, without vertigo, the 
extent of my innocence. 
 I am no longer capable of asking even for the comfort of 
a beating. I don’t believe I’ve embarked on a wedding with 
Jesus Christ as my father in law. 
 I’m not a hostage to my own reason. I have said: God. I 
want freedom in salvation: but how can I pursue it? 
Frivolous appetites have deserted me. No more need for 
devotion or divine love. Not that I regret the age of tender 
hearts. Each is right, contempt and charity. I maintain my 
place at the top of this angelic ladder of common sense. 
 As for established happiness, domestic or otherwise . . . 
no, I cannot. I’m too dissipated, too weak. Life blossoms 
through work, an old truth: but my life isn’t heavy enough, 
it soars up and floats far above all action, that cherished 
centre of the turning world. 
 What an old maid I’m becoming, lacking the courage to 
love death! 
 If only God would grant me a heavenly and aerial calm 
and prayer − like ancient saints. − Saints! they are the 
strong ones! Anchorites are like artists who are no longer 
wanted! 
 An endless farce! My innocence would make me weep. 
Life is a farce we all must play. 
 
——— 
 
 Enough! Here is the punishment. − Forward march! 
 Ah! my lungs are burning, my temples are pounding! 
Night descends on my eyes, even in this sunlight! My 
aching heart . . . my limbs . . . 
 Where are we going? Into battle? I’m too weak! The 
others are advancing! Tools, weapons . . . time! 
 Fire! Shoot me! Now! Or I’ll surrender. − Cowards! I’ll 
kill myself! I’ll throw myself under the horses’ hooves! 
 Ah! . . . 
 − I’ll get used to it. 
 This would be the French way, the path of honour! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Night of Hell 
 
—— 
 
 I swallowed a monstrous mouthful of poison. − Thrice 
blessed be the counsel that came to me! − My entrails are 
burning. The violence of the poison contorts my limbs, 
deforms me and hurls me to the ground. I am dying of 
thirst, I’m choking, but I can’t cry out. This is hell, 
eternal punishment! See how the fire rises up again! I’m 
burning, as I deserve to. Come on, demon! 
 I caught a glimpse of my conversion to goodness and 
happiness, my salvation. How can I describe this vision, 
when the air of hell will not carry the sound of hymns! 
There were millions of charming creatures, a sweet 
spiritual concert, strength and peace, noble ambitions − 
what do I know! 
 Noble ambitions! 
 And this is what we call life! − If damnation truly is 
eternal! Isn’t the man who tries to mutilate himself 
damned then? I think I am in hell, therefore I am. It’s the 
fault of the catechism. I’m a slave to my baptism. 
Parents, you are the cause of both my unhappiness and 
your own. − Poor innocents! Hell has no power over 
pagans. − And still this is life! Later, the delights of 
damnation will be all the greater. A crime, quick, so I can 
fall into nothingness, condemned by human laws. 
 Shut up, will you shut up! . . . Shame and Reproach 
are here: Satan says the fire is contemptible, my anger 
ridiculous. − Enough! . . . Errors are whispered on their 
breath, spells,sickly perfumes, insipid music. − And to 
think that I hold truth in my hands, that I see justice: 
my judgement is sound and certain, I am ready for 
perfection . . . Pride. − The skin of my scalp is dry. Have 
pity! Lord, I am afraid. I am thirsty, so thirsty! Oh! 
childhood, the smell of grass, the sound of rain, water 
from the lake lapping on pebbles, the moonlight when the 
clock strikes twelve . . . that’s when the devil is in the 
tower. Mary! Holy Virgin! . . . − The horror of my 
stupidity. 
 Aren’t there any honest souls who wish me well down 
there? . . . Come on . . . A pillow covers my mouth and 
they can’t hear me, they are ghosts. Besides, no one ever 
thinks of others. Stay away from me. I’m sure I’m 
scorched. 
 The hallucinations are without number. In truth, this 
is what I’ve always had: no more faith in history, and a 
forgetfulness of principles. I’ll keep silent: or poets and 
visionairies would be jealous. I’m a thousand times 
richer than they, being as greedy as the ocean. 
 Ah! the clock of life just stopped. I am no longer in 
the world. − Theology is right: hell is definitely down 
below − and heaven up above. − Ecstasy, nightmares, 
sleep in a nest of flames. 
 What malice there is in the attention one attracts in 
the countryside . . . Satan, old Beelzebub, runs around 
with the wild grain . . . Jesus walks over the crimson 
brambles without breaking them . . . Jesus walked on 
troubled waters. The lantern showed him standing before 
us, pale, with long brown tresses, beside an emerald 
wave . . . 
 I’m going to reveal all mysteries, religious and 
natural: death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony − 
nothingness. I am master of the phantasmagoria. 
 Listen! . . . 
 My talents are limitless! − There is no-one here and 
there is someone: I wouldn’t want to spend my treasure. 
− Do you want nigger songs, houri dances? Do you want 
me to disappear, to dive in and search for the ring? Do 
you? I will fashion gold and remedies. 
 Then trust in me, faith provides relief, guides us, 
heals. Come all − even small children − that I may 
console you, pour out my heart − my marvellous heart! − 
to you. Poor men, workers! I am not asking for your 
prayers: your trust alone will suffice. 
 − And think of me. This hardly makes me miss the 
world. Fortunately, I no longer suffer. My life was nothing 
more than sweet extravagancies, it’s too bad. 
 Screw it! Let’s pull every face imaginable. 
 No doubt about it, we are outside this world. No more 
sounds. And my touch has gone. Ah! my castle, my 
Saxon lands, my willow grove. The evenings, mornings, 
nights, days . . . How tired I am! 
 I should have a hell for my anger, a hell for my pride 
− and a hell of caresses; a concert of hells. 
 I am dying of weariness. It’s the grave, I’m going to 
the worms, horror of horrors! Satan, old joker, you want 
to dissolve me with your charms. But I object. I object! 
Give me a prod with your pitchfork, or a drop of fire. 
 Ah! to come back to life again! To stare at our 
deformities. And that poison, that kiss a thousand times 
accursed! My weakness, the world’s cruelty! My God, 
have pity on me, hide me, I live so badly! − I am hidden 
and I am not. 
 The fire rises up again with its damned. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Delirium 
I 
—— 
THE FOOLISH VIRGIN 
—— 
THE INFERNAL BRIDEGROOM 
 
 Let’s listen to the confession of a companion in hell: 
 ‘O heavenly Bridegroom, my Lord, do not refuse the 
confession of this, the most unhappy of your servants. I am 
lost. I’m pissed. I am impure. What a life! 
 ‘Forgive me, heavenly Father, forgive me! Oh, forgive 
me! What tears! And more still to come, I hope! 
 ‘Later, I will come to know the heavenly Bridegroom! I 
was born to be his slave. − But the other one can beat me 
now! 
 ‘At this moment, I’m at the nadir of this world! O my 
friends! . . . no, not my friends . . . Never such delirium or 
torture as this . . . How ridiculous. 
 ‘Oh! I suffer and cry. I truly suffer. And yet, burdened 
as I am with the contempt of the most contemptible hearts, 
everything is permitted me. 
 ‘Finally, let me admit this, even if I have to repeat it 
twenty times over − it’ll sound just as dead, just as 
insignificant. 
 ‘I am a slave to the infernal Bridegroom, he who led 
foolish virgins astray. He really is a demon. He’s not a 
ghost, not a phantom. But I, who have lost all reason, who 
am damned and dead to the world − I cannot be killed! − 
how can I describe him to you? I no longer even know how 
to speak. I am in mourning, weeping and afraid. Soothe my 
brow, O Lord, if you will, if you only would! 
 ‘I am a widow . . . I used to be a widow . . . Yes, once 
upon a time I was very serious, and I was not born to 
become a skeleton! . . . He was almost a child . . . I was 
seduced by his mysterious delicacy. I forgot all my human 
duty in order to follow him. But what a life! The real life is 
absent. We are not of this world. I trail after him, I have to. 
And often he rages at me, at me, a poor sinner. The demon! 
He is a demon, you know, he is not a man. 
 ‘He said: “I do not like women. Love as we know it has 
to be reinvented. All women want these days is security. 
Once they get it, their hearts grow cold and their beauty is 
neglected: only cold disdain remains, the food of marriage 
today. Or else I see women, showing signs of happiness, 
who could have been close friends, being devoured by 
brutes as sensitive as logs . . . ” 
 ‘I listen to him turning infamy into glory, cruelty into 
charm. “I belong to an ancient race: my ancestors were 
Norsemen; they used to pierce their sides and drink their 
own blood. − I’ll slice gashes over my entire body and cover 
it with tattoos. I want to be as hideous as a Mongol: you’ll 
see, I’ll howl in the streets. I want to grow mad with rage. 
Never show me jewels, for I’d grovel and writhe on the floor. 
I want my wealth to be spattered with blood. Never shall I 
work . . . ” 
 ‘On several nights, when his demon seized me, I 
wrestled with him and we rolled together on the ground! − 
Often, at night, drunk, he lay in wait for me in the street or 
hidden in houses, to scare me half to death. − “They really 
will cut my throat one day; it’ll be disgusting.” Oh! those 
days when he tried to walk about with the air of a criminal! 
 ‘At times he speaks, in a kind of tender dialect, of the 
death that brings repentance, of the wretches who have to 
live, of backbreaking labours and heartbreaking farewells. 
In the dives where we used to get drunk, he would weep as 
he watched those around us, reduced to animals by their 
poverty. He used to pick up drunks in the dark streets. He 
felt for them the pity of a bad mother for her children. − He 
would walk off with the gentleness of a little girl going to 
her catechism class. − He feigned knowledge of everything: 
commerce, art, medicine. − And I went along with him, I 
had to! 
 ‘I saw the entire setting with which he surrounded 
himself in his imagination − clothes, curtains, furniture: I 
provided him with weapons and another face. I saw 
everything that touched him as he would have wanted to 
create it for himself. When his mind seemed sluggish I 
followed him into strange and complex adventures − for too 
long, whether good or evil: I was sure I could never enter 
into his world. How many nights have I lain awake beside 
his dear sleeping body wondering why he wanted to escape 
fromreality so badly. Never has a man had such a desire. I 
recognised − without fearing for him − that he could be a 
serious threat to society. − Does he, perhaps, possess the 
secrets for changing life? No, I told myself, he is only 
searching for them. In the end, his charity is bewitched, 
and I am its prisoner. No-one else would have enough 
strength − strength and despair! − to endure it, to be cared 
for and loved by him. Besides, I couldn’t imagine anyone 
else being his soulmate. I believe each of us sees his own 
angel, never the angel of another. I lived in his soul as in a 
palace that had been emptied so somebody as lacking in 
nobility as myself would not be seen − that is all. Alas! I put 
my trust in him. But what could he do with my despicable 
and cowardly existence? He made me no better, if he didn’t 
actually drive me to despair! Sometimes, sad and angry, I 
would tell him: “I understand you.” He’d just shrug his 
shoulders. 
 ‘And so, my sadness increasing daily, and finding 
myself gone astray in my own eyes − as in the eyes of all 
those who would have liked to watch me, if I had not been 
condemned forever to be forgotten by everyone! − more and 
more did I hunger for his kindness. With his kisses and his 
friendly embrace, it was indeed a heaven, a sombre heaven, 
that I entered into, and where I would have liked to have 
been left, poor, deaf, dumb and blind. I’d already grown 
used to it. I pictured us as two good children, free to walk 
in the Paradise of Sorrow. We got on with each other. 
Amused by each other, we worked together. But, after a 
passionate caress, he would say: “This will seem strange to 
you, after what has happened, when I’m gone. When you 
no longer have my arms around your neck, my heart to lay 
your head on, or these lips pressed to your eyes. Because 
there’ll come a time when I’ll have to leave, go far away. 
Then I’ll have to help others: it’s my duty. No matter how 
unattractive that will be . . . dear heart . . . ” Immediately I 
saw myself as I would become when he was gone, overcome 
with dizziness, hurled into that most terrifying of shadows: 
death. I made him promise that he would never leave me. 
Over and over he repeated it, that lover’s promise. And it 
was as meaningless as when I told him: “I understand 
you.” 
 ‘Oh! I was never jealous of him. He will not leave me, I 
thought. What would he do? He knows nothing, and he’ll 
never work. He wants to live his life like a sleepwalker. But 
once he’s on his own in the real world, will his kindness 
and charity give him the right to do so? At times I forget the 
pitiful state into which I’ve fallen: he’ll give me strength, 
we’ll travel, hunt together in the desert, sleep on the 
pavements of unknown cities, without cares or worries. Or 
else I’ll wake up and our laws and customs will have 
changed − all thanks to his magical powers; − or else the 
world, although remaining the same, will leave me to my 
desires, my joys and my casual ways. Oh! the life of 
adventure that exists in children’s books − will you offer it 
to me in recompense, to one who has suffered so much? He 
cannot. I do not know what his ideal is. He has spoken of 
his regrets, his hopes: but what are they to me? Does he 
speak to God? Perhaps I should appeal to God. I’m in the 
lowest depths of the abyss, and I no longer know how to 
pray. 
 ‘If he explained his sorrow to me, would I understand 
it any more than his mockery? He belittles me, spending 
hours making me feel ashamed of everything in this 
world that has ever meant anything to me, and then he 
grows indignant if I cry! 
 “ − You see this elegant young man entering that 
beautiful, peaceful house over there? His name is Duval, 
Dufour, Armand, Maurice − whatever. Some woman has 
devoted her life to loving this miserable idiot: she is dead, 
and is certainly a saint in heaven by now. One day you 
will kill me, just as he has killed this women. That’s 
what’s in store for us, what awaits all charitable hearts.” 
Alas! there are days when all active men appeared to him 
as the playthings of grotesque delirums, and he’d laugh 
long and hideously. − But then he would recover his 
manners of a young mother, a beloved sister. If only he 
were not so wild, we would be saved! But even his 
tenderness is mortal. I’ve made myself a slave to him. − I 
must be mad! 
 ‘One day, perhaps, he will miraculously disappear; 
but I must know whether he is to ascend some heaven 
again, so I might be present at the assumption of my 
little friend!’ 
 Strange couple! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Delirium 
II 
—— 
ALCHEMY OF THE WORD 
—— 
 
My turn. The story of one of my lunacies. 
 For a long time I boasted of possessing every possible 
landscape, and found the celebrated names of painting and 
modern poetry laughable. 
 I liked stupid paintings, door panels, stage sets, the 
back-drops for acrobats, signs, popular engravings, old-
fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books with bad 
spelling, the novels read by our grandmothers, fairy tales, 
little books from childhood, old operas, ridiculous refrains, 
naïve rhythms. 
 I dreamed of crusades, of unrecorded voyages of 
discovery, of republics with no history, of hushed-up 
religious wars, of revolutions in customs, the movements of 
races and continents: I believed in every kind of 
enchantment. 
 I invented the colours of the vowels! − A black, E white, 
I red, O blue, U green. − I regulated the form and movement 
of each consonant, and, with instinctive rhythms, I 
flattered myself with having invented a poetic language 
accessible, one day, to all the senses. I reserved translation 
rights. 
 At first it was a study. I wrote silences, nights, I 
recorded the inexpressible. I captured moments of vertigo. 
 
——— 
 
 Far from birds, from flocks and village girls, 
 What did I drink, on my knees in the heather 
 Surrounded by a sweet wood of hazel trees, 
 In the warm and green mist of the afternoon? 
 
 What could I drink from that young Oise, 
 − Voiceless elms, flowerless grass, an overcast sky! − 
 Drinking from these yellow gourds, far from the hut 
 I loved? Some golden spirit that made me sweat. 
 
 I would have made a dubious sign for an inn. 
 − A storm came to chase the sky away. In the evening 
 Water from the woods sank into the virgin sand, 
 And God’s wind threw ice across the ponds. 
 
 Weeping, I saw gold − but could not drink. − 
 
——— 
 
At four in the morning, in the summer, 
The sleep of love still continues. 
Beneath the trees the wind disperses 
The smells of the evening feast. 
 
Over there, in their vast woodyard, 
Under the sun of the Hesperides, 
Already hard at work − in shirtsleeves − 
Are the Carpenters. 
 
In their Deserts of moss, quietly, 
They raise precious panelling 
 
Where the city 
Will paint fake skies. 
 
O for these Workers, charming 
Subjects of a Babylonian king, 
Venus! leave for a moment the Lovers 
Whose souls are crowned with wreaths. 
 
O Queen of Shepherds, 
Carry the water of life to these labourers, 
So their strength may be appeased 
As they wait to bathe in the noon-day sea. 
 
——— 
 
 Old-fashioned poetry played a large part in my alchemy 
of the word. 
 I grew accustomed to pure hallucination: I saw, quite 
clearly, a mosque in place of a factory, a school of 
drummers composed of angels, carriages on roads in the 
sky, a drawing room at the bottom of a lake, monstersand 
mysteries; the title of a vaudeville conjured up horrors 
before my eyes! 
 Then I explained my magic sophisms with the 
hallucination of words! 
 I ended up holding the disorder of my mind sacred. I 
was idle, the victim of a heavy fever: I envied the happiness 
of animals − caterpillars, representing the innocence of 
limbo, and moles, the sleep of virginity! 
My character turned sour. I said my farewells to the 
world in the form of poetic stories: 
 
SONG OF THE HIGHEST TOWER 
 
Let it come, let it come 
The time that we will love. 
 
So patient have I been 
That I’ve forgetten everything: 
Fear and suffering 
Have departed for the heavens, 
And an unholy thirst 
Darkens my veins. 
 
Let it come, let it come 
The time that we will love. 
 
Like the field 
Left to forgetfulness, 
Growing and flowering 
With incense and weeds, 
And the fierce buzzing 
Of dirty flies. 
 
Let it come, let it come 
The time that we will love. 
 
 I loved the desert, burnt orchards, musty shops, tepid 
drinks. I dragged myself through stinking alleys, and with 
eyes closed I offered myself to the sun, the god of fire. 
 ‘General, if there is still an old canon left on the ruined 
ramparts, bombard us with clumps of dried earth. Aim at 
the mirrors of fancy shops and parlours! Make the city eat 
its own dust. Oxidize the gargoyles. Fill the bedrooms with 
the burning powder of rubies . . .’ 
 Oh! the drunken fly in the urinal of an inn, in love with 
weeds and dissolved by a sunbeam! 
 
HUNGER 
 
If I have a taste, it is only 
For earth and stones. 
I always dine on air, 
On rock, on coal, on iron. 
 
Hunger, be gone. Feed, hunger, 
On the field of bran. 
Suck the gay venom 
Of the bindweed. 
 
Eat the pebbles you break, 
The ancient stones of churches, 
The gravel of old floods, 
Bread scattered in grey valleys. 
 
——— 
 
The wolf howled under the leaves 
As he spat out the bright feathers 
Of his feast of fowl: 
Like him, I devour myself. 
 
Lettuce and fruit 
Wait only to be picked; 
But the spider in the hedge 
Eats only violets. 
Let me sleep! Let me boil 
On the altars of Solomon. 
The broth runs over the rust, 
And flows into the Kidron. 
 
——— 
 
 At last – O happiness, O reason – I removed from the 
sky the blue that is black, and I lived, a glitter of gold in the 
light of nature. 
 From joy I took an expression as clownish and 
distracted as possible: 
 
It is found again! 
What? Eternity. 
It is the sea merged 
With the sun. 
 
My eternal soul, 
Observe your vow 
In spite of the night 
And the day on fire. 
 
So you free yourself 
From human approbation, 
From common aspirations! 
You fly with . . . 
 
− Never any hope. 
Nul orietur. 
Science and patience, 
The torment is certain. 
No more tomorrow, 
Embers of satin, 
Your ardour 
Is your duty. 
 
It is found again! 
− What? − Eternity. 
It is the sea merged 
With the sun. 
 
——— 
 
 I became a fabulous opera. I saw that all beings have a 
fatality for happiness: action is not life, but a way of 
spending your strength, an irritation. Morality is a 
weakness of the brain. 
 To each being, it seemed to me, several other lives were 
due. This gentleman doesn’t know what he’s doing: he is an 
angel. This family is a litter of dogs. Standing before several 
men, I spoke aloud with one moment of one of their other 
lives. − In this way, I even loved a pig. 
 Not one sophistry of madness – the madness that is 
locked up – have I forgotten: I could recite them all again, I 
know the system by heart. 
 My health was threatened. Terror overcame me. I would 
fall into a sleep of several days, and on awakening I 
continued with the saddest of dreams. I was ripe for death, 
and on a road of perils my weakness led me to the edge of 
the world and Chimmeria, a land of shadows and 
whirlwinds. 
 I had to travel, to dispel the enchantments that 
crowded my brain. Over the sea, which I loved as if it would 
wash me clean of a stain, I watched the consoling cross 
rise. I had been damned by the rainbow. Happiness was 
my fate, my remorse, my worm: my life would always be too 
vast to be devoted to strength and beauty. 
 Happiness! Its tooth, sweet to death, warned me at the 
crowing of the cock − ad matutinum, at the Christus venit 
− in the darkest cities: 
 
O seasons, O castles! 
What soul is without faults? 
 
I have made the magic study 
Of happiness, which no one escapes. 
 
Say hello to it, each time 
The Gaulish cock crows. 
 
Ah! I’ll have no more desires: 
It has taken hold of my life. 
 
This charm has taken body and soul 
And dispelled all my efforts. 
 
O seasons, O castles! 
 
The hour of its flight, alas! 
Shall be the hour of my death. 
 
O seasons, O castles! 
 
——— 
 
 All that has passed. Today I know how to greet beauty. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Impossible 
 
—— 
 Ah! the life of my childhood, the open road in all 
weather, supernaturally sober, more disinterested than 
the best of beggars, proud of having neither country nor 
friends: what madness this was. − And only now do I see 
it! 
 − I was right to despise those nice men who never lost 
the chance for a grope, parasites of the cleanliness and 
health of our women today − today, when they are so 
distant from us. 
 I was right about everything I rejected: since I’m 
escaping myself! 
 I’m escaping myself! 
 I’m explaining myself. 
 Yesterday, once again, I was sighing: ‘God in heaven! 
aren’t there enough of us damned down here already? I 
have been in their ranks for so long! I know them all. We 
always recognise one another; we disgust each other. 
Charity is unknown to us. But we are polite, and our 
relations with the world are very correct.’ − Does this 
surprise you? The world! Merchants, fools! − We are not 
without honour. − But the elect, how would they receive 
us? For there are surly and joyful people, the false elect, 
since we must be bold or humble to approach them. But 
these are the true elect. They are not the purveyors of 
blessings! 
 Having rediscovered my two-pence worth of reason − 
how quickly it is spent! − I see that my difficulties come 
from not having realised soon enough that we are in the 
West. The Western marshes! Not that I believe the light is 
faded, that form is exhausted, or movement has gone 
astray . . . Good! See how my spirit insists on taking 
upon itself all the cruel developments that spirit has 
undergone since the downfall of the East . . . My spirit 
demands it! 
 . . . My two-pence worth of reason is over! − Spirit is 
authority, and it wants me in the West. It would have to 
be silenced, if things were to conclude as I would like 
them to. 
 The devil take the palms of martyrs, the beacons of 
art, the pride of inventors, the ardour of plunderers; I 
returned to the East and to the original, eternal wisdom. 
− But it seems this was a grossly idle dream! 
 Nevertheless, I hardly dare dream of the joy of 
escaping from modern suffering. I wasn’t thinking of the 
bastard wisdom of the Koran. − But isn’t there real 
torture in the fact that, since that declaration of science 
we callChristianity, man has been fooling himself, 
proving the obvious, puffing himself up with pleasure at 
repeating these proofs, and living only in this way! A 
subtle, simple torture, and the source of my spiritual 
wanderings. Perhaps nature is bored! Monsieur Pompous 
was born with Christ. 
 Isn’t it because we insist on cultivating fogs? We 
swallow fever with our watery vegetables. And 
drunkenness! And tobacco! And ignorance! And blind 
devotion! − Isn’t all this a long way from the home of 
thought, from the wisdom of the Orient, our original 
fatherland? Why have a modern world at all, if these 
poisons are its invention? 
 Men of the Church will say: we agree! But you are 
speaking of Eden. There’s nothing for you in the history 
of Oriental peoples. − It’s true: I did mean Eden! This 
purity of ancient races − what has it got to do with my 
dream! 
 Philosophers will say: the world has no age. 
Humanity shuffles about, that’s all. You live in the West, 
but are free to inhabit your East, as ancient as you wish 
it to be − and to live there happily. Do not be one of the 
conquered. Philosophers, you are of your Western world. 
 My spirit: take care. No violent departures for 
salvation. Stir yourself! − Ah! science never moves fast 
enough for us! 
 − But I see that my spirit is sleeping. 
 Were it always wide awake from this moment on, we 
would soon reach truth, who perhaps surrounds us with 
her weeping angels! . . . Had it been awake until this 
moment, I would not have given in to my weaker 
instincts at a forgotten time! . . . If it had always been 
awake, I would be sailing in full wisdom! . . . 
 O purity! Purity! 
 This moment of awakening has brought me the vision 
of purity! − Through spirit one comes to God! 
 Worst luck! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Lightning 
 
—— 
 
 The labour of man! That’s the explosion that 
illuminates my abyss from time to time. 
 ‘Nothing is vanity; science and onward!’, cries the 
modern Ecclesiast, which is to say, Everyone. And yet, 
the corpses of the wicked and the idle fall on the hearts 
of others . . . Ah! quick, come quickly, over there, beyond 
the night: these future rewards for all eternity . . . will 
they escape us? . . . 
 − What can I do? I know what labour is; and science 
moves too slowly. Prayers gallop upwards and light 
thunders . . . I see it well. This is too simple, and it’s too 
hot; people will pass me by. I have my duty; but I’ll be 
proud to set it aside, as others have before me. 
 My life is used up. But come on, let’s pretend, be idle. 
O how pitiful! And we’ll exist by amusing ourselves, by 
dreaming of monstrous loves and fantastic universes, by 
complaining and quarrelling with the appearance of this 
world, clown, beggar, artist, bandit − priest! On my 
hospital bed the smell of incense came back to me so 
powerfully; guardian of sacred herbs, confessor, martyr 
. . . 
 I recognised my filthy childhood education there. But 
what of it? . . . I’ll do my twenty years, if the others do 
theirs . . . 
 No! no! now I rebel against death! Labour seems too 
slight for my pride: my betrayal to the world would be too 
brief a torture. At the last moment I’d lash out, right and 
left . . . 
 Then − oh! − poor dear soul, wouldn’t eternity be lost 
to us! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Morning 
 
—— 
 
 Didn’t I once have a happy youth, heroic and 
fabulous, to be written on leaves of gold? Too much luck! 
By what crime, through what error, have I deserved my 
present weakness? You who maintain that animals sob 
with grief, that the sick depair, that the dead have bad 
dreams, try and give an account of my downfall and 
present slumber. I can no more explain myself than the 
beggar with his endless Paters and Ave Marias. I no 
longer know how to speak! 
 Today, nevertheless, I believe I have finished the story 
of my hell. It really was hell: the old one, whose gates 
were opened by the Son of man. 
From the same wilderness, in the same night, my 
tired eyes always awaken to the same silver star; always, 
though the Kings of life, the three magi – the heart, the 
soul, the spirit – are not stirred. Where shall we go, 
beyond the shorelines and the mountains, to hail the 
birth of the new work, the new wisdom, the flight of 
tyrants and demons, the end of superstition, to worship – 
the first to do so! – Christmas on Earth? 
 The song of heaven, the march of peoples! Slaves, let 
us not curse life! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Farewell 
 
—— 
 
 Autumn already! − But why regret an eternal sun, if 
we’re committed to the discovery of the divine light − far 
from all those who die with the seasons. 
 Autumn. Our boat, floating in the still mist, turns 
toward the harbour of misery, the enormous city under a 
sky stained with fire and mud. Ah! the rotten rags, the 
rain-soaked bread, the drunkenness, the thousand loves 
on which I was crucified! She’ll never be done with me, 
then, that ghoulish queen of a million souls and dead 
bodies, all of which will be judged! I see myself again, my 
skin eaten away by mud and plague, worms in my hair 
and armpits, and still bigger worms in my heart, lying 
among ageless, unfeeling strangers . . . I could have died 
there . . . An unbearable memory! I despise poverty. 
 And I dread winter, because it is the season of 
comfort! 
 − Sometimes I see endless beaches in the sky covered 
with white, rejoicing nations. A huge golden ship passes 
over me, its many-coloured pennants fluttering in the 
morning breeze. I have created all festivals, all triumphs, 
all tragedies. I have tried to invent new flowers, new 
stars, new flesh, new tongues. I thought I had acquired 
supernatural powers. Oh well! I must bury my 
imagination and my memories! What fame, for an artist 
and storyteller who was easily carried away! 
 And I − who called myself magus or angel, free from 
all morality − I am flung back to earth, with a duty to 
find and crude reality to embrace! Peasant that I am! 
 Was I mistaken? Could charity be the sister of death 
for me? 
 Finally, I will beg forgiveness for nurturing myself on 
lies. And now, let’s go. 
 But not a friendly hand in sight! Where will I find 
help? 
 
——— 
 
 Yes, at least the new hour is severe. 
 For I can say that victory is mine: the grinding of 
teeth, the hissing of flames and the reeking sighs begin 
to abate. Every squalid memory fades. My last regrets 
scuttle off: − jealousy of beggars, bandits and the friends 
of death, backward types of every sort. − All damned, if I 
avenged myself! 
 One must be absolutely modern. 
 No hymns: hold fast to the ground won. A hard night! 
The dried blood smokes on my face, and I have nothing 
behind me except this miserable tree! . . . A spiritual 
battle is as brutal as a battle of men; but the vision of 
justice is the pleasure of God alone. 
 Nonetheless, this is the vigil. Let us welcome every 
influx of vigour and genuine tenderness. And at dawn, 
armed with an ardent patience, what splendid cities we 
shall enter. 
 What was I saying about a friendly hand? One 
advantage is that I can laugh now atold false loves, and 
strike with shame those lying couples − I saw the hell of 
women down there; − and I shall be free to possess truth 
in one body and one soul. 
 
 April-August, 1873 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
NOTE 
 
Une saison en enfer is dated April-August 1873, but its 
writing was anything but continuous. Rimbaud had been 
living in London with Paul Verlaine since September 
1872, surviving on the money sent by the latter’s mother, 
and frequenting the British Library to improve their 
English. They were also under investigation by the police, 
as much for the illegality of their relationship as for their 
links to the exiled Communards. When legal proceedings 
were brought against him by his wife, Verlaine left for 
France on the 4th of April. Rimbaud followed shortly 
afterwards, returning to his family’s newly-inherited 
home in Roche, where he began work on his manuscript. 
That May Rimbaud wrote to his friend, Ernest Delahaye: 
‘I am writing little stories in prose, general title: ‘Pagan 
Book’, or ‘Nigger Book’. It is stupid and innocent. O 
innocence! Innocence, innocence, inno − curse it! . . . My 
fate depends upon this book, for which half a dozen 
atrocious stories are still to be invented. I am not 
sending you any now, although I already have three, it 
costs too much!’ Rimbaud would remain faithful to this 
structure. Of the nine projected stories, the three he had 
already completed would include the short passages that 
make up the imaginary ancestry of ‘Bad Blood’, as well 
as the absinthe-induced ‘Night of Hell’. By the 25th of 
May the lovers were back in London, staying in Camden 
Town and giving English lessons to pay the rent and 
fund their recent conversion to opium. That June 
Rimbaud wrote the two long central sections, both titled 
‘Delirium’, in which Verlaine is cast in the role of the 
Gospel’s ‘Foolish Virgin’, himself in the part of the 
‘Infernal Bridegroom’. But after a violent quarrel Verlaine 
left again, this time for Brussels, where he was joined by 
Rimbaud on the 4th of July. Three days later another 
quarrel ended with Verlaine shooting Rimbaud in the 
wrist with a revolver. When Rimbaud tried to leave the 
following evening Verlaine threatened to shoot himself, 
whereupon the police were called and Verlaine arrested 
and later imprisoned for eighteen months, despite 
Rimbaud withdrawing charges. Rimbaud spent most of 
July in hospital waiting to have the bullet removed. By 
August he was back in Roche, where he spent the next 
month completing the final four sections, ‘The 
Impossible’, ‘Lightning’, ‘Morning’ and ‘Farewell’, as well 
as the preface: − howling and stamping out their 
rhythms on the floor of his locked attic room as he took 
account of his past and thrashed out his future. The 
book was finally printed in Brussels in October 1873, the 
downpayment paid by his mother, who nevertheless 
declared she understood nothing of what her son had 
written (to which he responded: ‘It is to be read literally 
and in every sense’). On the 22nd of October, two days 
after his nineteenth birthday, Rimbaud picked up his 
twelve author’s copies, leaving one to be forwarded to the 
imprisoned Verlaine. The following month Rimbaud was 
back in Paris, where he gave a handful of copies to his 
few remaining friends; but when it became clear that the 
literary world had no interest either in his book or his 
genius, Rimbaud returned to Roche, where the remaining 
copies, together with his rough drafts, were consigned to 
the flames. The bulk of the copies, however, remained at 
the printers, forgotten and undiscovered until 1901, ten 
years after Rimbaud’s death at the age of thirty-seven. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Back cover: ‘The Sorcerer’, c. 13,000 B.C. Rock painting and engraving. 
Caverne des Trois Frères, Montesquieu-Avantès, Ariège.