A Season in Hell & Illuminations

by Rimbaud, Arthur

  But there’s more! I dance on the sabbath, in a red clearing with old women and children.

  I don’t remember anything prior to this earth and this Christianity. I don’t see myself anywhere but in that past. And always alone; without family, speaking what language? I never see myself in Christ’s councils; nor in the councils of Lords—Christ’s delegates.

  What was I last century? I only see myself now. No more vagabonds or nebulous wars. The inferior race has spread, everywhere—people or, as we now say, reason: nationality and science.

  Oh, science! We’ve remade the world. For body and soul—as viaticum—we have medicine and philosophy—home remedies and coverversions of popular songs. Princely amusements and the games they forbade. Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry …!

  Science, the new nobility. Progress. The world turns. Why wouldn’t it?

  Numerical visions. We close in upon the Animus. What I say is irrefutable, oracular. I understand, and not knowing how to explain myself but in pagan words, I’d be better off shutting my mouth.

  Pagan blood returns! The Animus nears, why won’t Christ help me, grace my soul with nobility and liberty. But the Gospel is gone. The Gospel! The Gospel.

  I await God, hungrily. I am an eternal member of an inferior race.

  There I am on the beaches of Brittany. Cities blaze in the night. My day is done: I’m leaving Europe. The marine air will burn my lungs; unknown climates will tan my skin. To swim, trample grass, hunt, and above all, smoke; drink liquors as strong as molten metal—like our cherished ancestors around their fires.

  I’ll return with iron limbs, dark skin, an imperious gaze: my mask will mark me as member of a powerful race. I’ll have gold: be lazy and merciless. Women pamper fierce invalids returned from hot countries. I’ll enter politics. Saved.

  Now, though, I’m cursed: I can’t stand my country. The best I can hope for is drunken sleep, by the shore.

  But we don’t leave. —We take the same roads, burdened with my vice, vice that since the age of reason has sunk its roots right into my side—climbing skyward, beating me, toppling me, dragging me along.

  The final innocence and the final humility. That does it. I won’t hump my disgusts and deceits across the world.

  We’re off! The march, the burden, the desert, the boredom, the anger.

  What flag will I bear? What beast worship? What shrine besiege? What hearts break? What lies tell? —And walk through whose blood?

  Better yet: steer well clear of Justice. —The hard life, simple brutishness—lift the coffin’s lid with a withered fist, sit inside, suffocate. Neither old age, nor danger: fear isn’t French.

  I feel so forsaken I orient my instinct for perfection on any sacred image. O self-sacrifice; o magnanimous charity! All for me, of course! De profundis Domine—what a fool I am!

  When I was very young, I admired hardened criminals locked behind prison doors; I visited inns and taverns they frequented; with their eyes, I saw the blue sky and the blossoming work of the fields; I tracked their scent through cities. They were more powerful than saints, more prudent than explorers—and they, they alone, were witnesses to glory and reason!

  On the roads, through winter nights, without a home, without habits, without bread, a voice strangled my frozen heart: “Weakness or strength: Those are your options, so strength it is. You know neither where you’re going, nor why you’re going, entering anywhere, answering anyone. You’re no more likely to be killed than a corpse.” By morning, I had developed such a lost, dead expression that those I met may not have even seen me.

  In cities, mud suddenly seemed red and black, like a mirror when a lamp is moved through an adjoining room, like treasure found in a forest. Good luck, I cried, and I saw a sky flooded with smoke and flame; and to my left, to my right, all the world’s riches burned like a billion thunderbolts.

  But orgies and womanly companionship were denied me. Not one friend. I saw myself in front of an angry mob, facing a firing squad, weeping incomprehensible sorrows and forgiving them, like Joan of Arc: “Priests, professors, masters: you falter bringing me to justice. I was never one of you; I was never Christian; my race sang upon the rack; I don’t understand your laws; I have no moral compass, I’m a beast: you falter …”

  Yes, my eyes are shut to your light. I’m an animal, a nigger. But I can be saved. You’re all fake niggers, you brutal, greedy maniacs. Merchant? No: nigger. Magistrate? Nigger. General? Nigger. Emperor—you itchy old scab—nigger. You drank Satan’s duty-free booze. —Fever and cancer thrill you. Cripples and codgers are so decent they ask to be boiled. —The wisest move would be to leave this continent, creeping with madness, a madness that seeks hostages for lost souls. I set out in search of the true kingdom of the children of Ham.

  Do I really know nature? Do I know myself?—No more words. I bury the dead in my belly. Shouts, drums, dance, dance, dance, dance! I can’t imagine a moment when whites will arrive and I’ll tumble into the void.

  Hunger, thirst, shouts, dance, dance, dance, dance!

  Whites arrive. A cannon! I submit to baptism, dress, work.

  My heart is struck by grace. And I never saw it coming!

  I’ve done nothing wrong. My days bring no burden, I’ll be spared repentance. I won’t have to suffer the torments of a soul dead to decency, whose harsh light rises as if from funeral tapers. The fate of the favorite son: an early grave, blanketed with limpid tears. Of course debauchery is as stupid as vice. Cast rot aside. But no clock will ever do more than merely mark our hours of purest pain! Will I be carried off, like a child, to play in paradise, forgetting all my misfortune!

  Quick: are there other lives? —It’s impossible to sleep surrounded by riches. Riches are supremely public. Only divine love grants the keys to science. I see that nature is only a spectacle of goodness. Farewell chimeras, ideals, mistakes.

  The angels’ prudent songs rise from the ship of souls: divine love. —Two loves! I may die of earthly love, or of devotion. I’ve left souls behind whose suffering will swell with my departure! You pluck me from the shipwreck; are those who remain not my friends?

  Save them!

  Reason is born within me. The world is good. I bless life. I will love my brothers. These are no longer idle promises of youth, nor a hope of evading old age and death. God is my strength. I praise God.

  Boredom is no longer my bride. I know these passions and disasters too well—the rages, the debauches, the madness—my burden lifts. Let us soberly consider the depth of my innocence.

  I can no longer find consolation in being beaten. There is no chance of a honeymoon when Jesus Christ is your father-in-law.

  I’m no prisoner of reason. I said: God. I want salvation to bring freedom: what do I do? I’ve lost my taste for frivolity. Nor do I need devotion or divine love. I don’t repent the age of sensitive hearts. Contempt and charity have their place: I reserve mine for the top of this angelic ladder of common sense.

  As for pre-existing happiness, whether domestic or not … no: I just can’t. I’m too exhausted, too weak. Life blossoms with work, an old truth: my life isn’t sufficiently substantial, it flies away, floats far above the bustle, over the focal point of the world.

  What an old maid I’m becoming, not even courageous enough to love death!

  If only God gave me heavenly, aerial calm, and the power of prayer—like ancient saints. —Saints! What strength! The anchorites were artists abandoned by the world.

  Unending farce! My innocence leaves me in tears. Life is the farce we lead.

  Enough! Here’s punishment! —March!

  Ah! How my lungs burn, how my temples stew! Night rolls in my eyes from all this sun! The heart … The limbs …

  Where are we going? To war? I’m weak! The troops advance. Tools, weapons … Time …!

  Shoot! Shoot me! I’m over here! Or I’ll surrender … —Cowards! —I’ll kill myself! I’ll throw myself under a horse!

  Ah …!

  —I�
�ll get used to it.

  That’s the French thing to do. That’s the path of honor.

  NIGHT IN HELL

  I swallowed a gollup of poison. —May the advice I received be thrice blessed! —My gut burned. The violence of the venom wracked my limbs, left me deformed, threw me to the ground. I die of thirst, suffocate, can’t even cry out. It’s hell: eternal suffering! The flames rise! I burn, as you’d expect. Demon, do your worst!

  I once got a glimpse of conversion to goodness and happiness, of salvation. Can I describe what I saw, here in this hymn-deaf hell? There were millions of enchanting creatures, harmonious spiritual song, peace and power, noble ambitions: what else can I say?

  Noble ambitions!

  Yet, I’m still here, still alive. So what if damnation is eternal! Any man who would destroy himself is damned, isn’t he? I believe I’m in hell, therefore I am. Catechism in action. I’m the slave of my baptism. O parents, you guaranteed my suffering and you guaranteed your own. Poor innocent! —Hell has no purchase on pagans. —Still alive! Later, the delights of damnation deepen. Crime, quick: so I can fall into the void, as human law assures.

  Shut up! Just shut up! It’s all just shame and blame, look: Satan himself says that fire is vulgar, that anger is pathetic, absurd. —Enough … ! Enough of errors whispered my way, of magics, fake perfumes, childish music! —And to think I already possess the truth, that I can discern justice: my judgment is sound and sure, I’m prepared for perfection … Pride. —The skin on my scalp dries to dust. Pity! I’m afraid, O Lord! I thirst; such thirst! Ah: Childhood, grass, rain, the stony lake, moonlight when the clock strikes twelve … the hour when the devil waits at the belfry. Mary! Holy Virgin! —The shame of my stupidity.

  Up above, are there no honest souls who wish me well …? Come … There’s a pillow pressed to my lips, they can’t hear me, these ghosts. And no one ever thinks of anyone else. Better they steer clear. Surely I smell like I’m burning.

  Hallucinations come, are without number. As before: I have no faith in history, no memory of principles. But I’ll shut up about all this: poets and visionaries would be jealous. I’m a thousand times richer, and I’ll be miserly as the sea. Look—life’s clock just stopped. I’m no longer of this earth. —Theology is serious business: hell is absolutely down below—and heaven on high. —Ecstasy, nightmare, sleep in a nest of flame.

  Nature’s attentions only bring mischief … Satan and Ferdinand run through wild wheat … Jesus walks on crimson thorns that do not bend beneath him … Jesus once walked on troubled waters. The lamp showed him standing before us, white, with brown hair, by an emerald wave …

  I will unveil every mystery: whether religious or natural, death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony, the void. I have mastered phantasmagoria.

  Listen …!

  I possess every talent! —No one is here, and yet someone is: I won’t squander my treasure. Shall I offer you African chants? Houri dances? Shall I disappear? Make my plunge in search of the ring? Shall I? I’ll forge gold, and cures.

  Then put your faith in me; faith relieves; directs; cures. Everyone, come—even the littlest children—let me console you, let the heart spread wide—the miraculous heart!—Poor mankind, a race of laborers! I don’t ask for prayers; your faith is my reward.

  —And think of me. It’s worth the loss of the world. I’m lucky to see my suffering ended. Alas: my life was little more than a few mild madnesses.

  Fine. Make any face you want.

  Unquestionably, we are beyond the world. Not a single sound. My sense of touch is gone. My château, my Saxony, my willow grove. Evenings, mornings, nights, days … How weary I am!

  There should be a hell for my anger, a hell for my pride—and a hell for every caress: a satanic symphony.

  I die of weariness. Here is my tomb, I join the worms—horror of horrors! Satan, you joker: you would see me consumed by your charms. I protest! I protest! Give me the pitchfork’s sting, the fire’s flame.

  Ah, to rise back to life! To look once again upon our deformities. And this poison, this kiss countlessly cursed! My weakness; worldly cruelty! O God have pity, hide me, I am wicked!—I am hidden and I am not.

  Flames rise again, bearing the damned.

  DELIRIA

  I

  FOOLISH VIRGIN

  Hellish Husband

  Hear a hellmate’s confession:

  “O heavenly Husband, O Lord, do not refuse this confession from the saddest of your servants. I am lost. I am drunk. I am impure. O this life!

  “Forgive, heavenly Lord, forgive! Ah! Forgive. Too many tears! And, I hope, too many tears to come.

  “Later, I’ll meet my heavenly Husband. I was born beneath His yoke. But now, I’m someone else’s whipping boy!

  “Now I’m at the bottom of the world. O the women I call my friends … No, not my friends … I’ve never known such delirium and torture … It’s ridiculous!

  “How I suffer, how I scream: I truly suffer. There’s nothing I wouldn’t contemplate doing now, burdened as I am with the contempt of the most contemptible of hearts.

  “So enough, let’s confess, even if it means repeating it twenty times over—however dreary and insignificant.

  “I am the slave of a hellish Husband, to him who undid foolish virgins. There’s no doubt he’s the same demon. He’s no ghost, no phantom. But I, whose wisdom has been squandered, who is damned and dead to the world—I won’t be killed! —How can I explain all of this? I barely know how to talk anymore. I’m in mourning; I weep; I’m afraid. A breath of fresh air, O Lord, if you would, if you would please!

  “I am widowed …—I was widowed … but yes, I was, once, very proper, and I wasn’t born simply to become bones! —He was very nearly a child … His mysterious ways seduced me. I forgot all my earthly duties in order to follow him. O this life! Real life is elsewhere. We aren’t of this earth. I go where he goes, how can’t I? And yet he blows up at me all the time, me —poor soul. That demon! —He’s doubtless a demon, for he is certainly not a man.

  “He says: ‘I don’t like women. Love must be reinvented, that much is clear. Women want security. And once they get it, goodness and beauty are out the window: cold disdain is the meat of marriage. Or I’ll see women who seem happy, who even I could befriend, and I see them devoured by brutes as sensitive as butchers …’

  “I listen to him turning infamy into glory, cruelty into charm. ‘I am a member of a long-lost race: my forefathers were Scandinavian: they pierced their own sides, drank their own blood. —I’ll gash myself everywhere, tattoo myself, make myself as grotesque as a Mongol: you’ll see: I’ll be screaming in the streets. I want to go mad with rage. Don’t show me jewels; I’ll cringe and writhe on the rug. I’d stain any wealth that came my way with blood. I’ll never work …’ Many nights, this demon would grab me, and we would wrestle and fight! —Nights, usually drunk, he’d wait in the street or a house, waiting to frighten me to death. —’You’ll see: I’ll get my throat cut. It’ll be disgusting.’ By day, he struts around like he’s some sort of criminal!

  “And then, occasionally, he’d speak a tender kind of talk, about remorse engendered by death; about miserable wretches who are everywhere; about backbreaking toil; about farewells that break hearts. In the dives where we’d drink, he’d cry while watching the people around us: misery’s cattle. He’d prop up drunks in dark streets. He had compassion for the little children of mean mothers. —He’d conduct himself with all the kindness of a girl going to Sunday school. He’d pretend to be enlightened about everything—business, art, medicine. —I followed him, how couldn’t I?

  “I learned the spiritual landscape he surrounded himself with: clothes, drapes, furniture: I lent him weapons … and a second face. I saw everything that moved him, exactly as he did. Whenever he grew dissipated, I followed him nonetheless, me, executing strange tasks, far away, good or bad: I knew I would never really become a part of his world. Next to his sweetly sleeping body, I spent so many slee
pless hours trying to figure out why he wanted to escape from reality. No man before him had wished for such a thing. I was aware —without being afraid of him—that he could be a menace to society. Maybe he had found a way to change life as we know it? No, he was only searching, or so he said. His charity is bewitching, and I am its prisoner. No other soul was strong enough—the strength of despair! —to have withstood his protection and love. And anyway, I couldn’t imagine him with anyone else: we know only the Angel we’re given, never another, or so I believe. I inhabited his heart as one might a palace: it was empty, precisely so no one would learn that a person as ignoble as you were there: and there it is. Alas! I needed him. But what did he want with me, drab and lifeless as I was? He didn’t make me a better person, and he didn’t manage to kill me! Sad, angry, I would occasionally say, ‘I understand you.’ He’d just shrug his shoulders.

  “And so my sorrow was endlessly renewed, and seeing myself drifting further out to sea—as anyone would have noticed, had I not already been condemned to be forgotten by everyone—I grew more and more hungry for some measure of kindness from him. His kisses and his warm embraces were a heaven, a dark heaven, into which I had entered, and where I would have preferred to have remained: poor, deaf, mute, blind. I got used to it. I saw us as two good children, free to stroll through Heavenly sadness. We got along perfectly. We worked side by side, filled with emotion. But, after a penetrating caress, he said: ’How ridiculous all you’ve been through will seem when I’m no longer here. When you no longer have my arms beneath your neck, nor my heart to lie upon, nor my mouth upon your eyes. Because one day, I’ll go far away. I must make myself useful to others, too: it’s my duty. However unsavory this seems … dear heart …’ Immediately, in the wake of his absence, I felt both gripped by vertigo and thrown into the most unbearable darkness: death. I made him swear he wouldn’t leave me. He swore a lover’s promise twenty times over. It was as meaningless as when I said, ‘I understand you.’