A Season in Hell & Illuminations

by Rimbaud, Arthur

  And I fear winter, the season of comfort!

  —Sometimes, I’ll see endless beaches in the skies above, filled with pale rejoicing nations. A great golden vessel, high above me, flutters varicolored flags in the morning breeze. I invented every celebration, every victory, every drama. I tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues. I thought I had acquired supernatural powers. Well then! The time has come to bury my imagination and my memories! A fitting end for an artist and teller of tales!

  Free from all morality, I who called himself magus and angel, surrender to the earth in search of duty, ready to embrace life’s rough road. Peasant!

  Am I wrong? Will charity be a sister of death?

  Finally, I ask forgiveness for feeding on lies. Okay: let’s go.

  And not even one friendly hand! And where can help be found?

  Yes: the dawn is harsh, to say the least.

  But victory is mine: everything moderates, the grinding teeth, the hissing fires, the putrid sighs. The filthy memories are wiped away. My final regrets flee—my jealousy of beggars, brigands, friends of death, rejects of every stripe. Were I to enact vengeance against all the damned!

  One must be absolutely modern.

  No more hymns: remain on the road you’ve chosen. Brutal night! Dried blood burns on my face, and nothing is near me, only that unbearable bush … Spiritual combat is as brutal as battle between men; but the vision of justice is God’s pleasure alone.

  Nonetheless, the eve is here. We welcome an infusion of true strength, and affection. And at dawn, armed with fiery patience, we’ll at last enter glorious cities.

  Why was I asking for a friendly hand? My biggest advantage: I can laugh off truthless loves, and strike down duplicitous couples with shame —down below, I experienced a hell women know too well—and now I will manage to possess truth in a single body and soul.

  April–August 1873

  From the stack of papers Rimbaud gave to Verlaine at their last meeting in Stuttgart. The poem is “Enfance,” from Illuminations, likely among Rimbaud’s final poetical works.

  AFTER THE FLOOD

  After the idea of the Flood had receded,

  A rabbit rested within swaying clover and bellflowers, saying his prayers to a rainbow spied through a spider’s web.

  Oh what precious stones sunk out of sight, what flowers suddenly stared.

  On the dirty main drag it was back to business; ships went to sea, piled on the water like a postcard.

  Blood flowed—at Bluebeard’s, in slaughterhouses, in circuses—wherever God’s mark marred windows. Milk, and blood, flowed.

  Beavers dammed. Steam rose from coffee cups in small cafés.

  The mansion’s windows were still streaming, mourning children within contemplating amazing scenes.

  A door slammed, and the child whirled his arms through the town square, movements understood by weathervanes and weathercocks everywhere, beneath a tumultuous downpour.

  Madame put a piano in the Alps. Mass and First Communion were given at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.

  Caravans left. The Hotel Splendide was built atop a chaos of ice in the polar night.

  Ever since, the Moon has heard jackals whimpering in thyme-strewn deserts, and club-footed eclogues growling in orchards. At last, in a violet, blooming stand, Eucharis said: Spring Is Here.

  Rise, waters. —Foam; roll over the bridge and through the woods—black veils and organ strains—lightning, thunder—rise and roam. Waters and sorrows, step forward and reveal the Floods.

  For since they relented—what precious stones have sunk—what flowers have bloomed—who cares! And the Queen, the Witch who sparks her blaze in a bowl of Earth, never tells us what she knows, and what we do not.

  CHILDHOOD

  I

  This idol, black-eyed and blonde-topped, without parents or playground, and nobler than Fables, whether Aztec or Flemish: his domain of insolent blues and greens borders beaches named by shipless waves, names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celt.

  At the edge of the forest—dream flowers chime, brighten to bursting—an orange-lipped girl, cross-legged in a flood of light soaking the fields, her nakedness shaded, crossed, and clothed by rainbows, blossoms, sea.

  Ladies promenading on terraces by the sea; toddlers and giants, gorgeous black women garbed in gray moss-green, jewels set just so into the rich ground of the groves, the unfrozen gardens—young mothers and elder sisters, faces flushed with pilgrimage, sultanas, princesses pacing in lordly gowns, girls from abroad, and sweetly melancholy souls.

  What a bore, to say “dearest body” and “dearest heart.”

  II

  There: the little dead girl, behind the rosebushes. —The dead young mother comes down the steps. The cousin’s carriage creaks on the sand. —The little brother—(off in India!) in a field of carnations at sunset. —Old men buried upright in a rampart of wallflowers.

  A swarm of golden leaves surrounds the general’s house. We’re in the south. You follow the red road to reach the empty inn. The château is for sale; its shutters have fallen off. —The priest must have fled with the key to the church. —All around the park, groundskeepers’ cabins stand empty … The fences are so high you only see the tips of trees rustling above them. But there’s nothing inside to see.

  Meadows reach across to roosterless villages and blacksmithless towns. Floodgates are wide open. O the calvaries and windmills in the wilderness, the islands and millstones.

  Magic flowers buzzed. Hillsides cradled him. Beasts of fabulous elegance made rounds. Clouds gathered on a rising sea, filled by an eternity of hot tears.

  III

  A bird is in these woods, its song stops you, makes you blush.

  And here’s a clock that will not chime.

  And here’s a pit that hides a nest of white beasts.

  And here’s a cathedral that sinks, and a lake that rises.

  And here’s a little carriage abandoned in a thicket, or that rolls beribboned down the road.

  And here’s a troupe of little actors in costume, spied on the edge of the woods.

  And when you grow hungry, and thirsty, here’s someone to chase you home.

  IV

  I’m the saint praying on a balcony—like peaceful beasts grazing along the Sea of Palestine.

  I’m the scholar in a plain reading chair. Branches and rain beat the library windows.

  I’m the pedestrian on the high road through the stunted woods; the sound of floodgates drowns out my footsteps. I stare at the melancholy wash of another golden sunset.

  Or I could be the child abandoned on a high seas jetty, a bumpkin along a lane that butts the sky.

  The path is harsh. The hillocks are weed. The air is still. How far we are from birds and streams. The end of the world must be just ahead.

  V

  So rent me a tomb whose cinderblocks peek through their whitewash—deep below ground.

  I rest my elbows on the table, the lamp brightly illuminates newspapers and boring books I’m dumb enough to reread.

  Far, far above my subterranean sitting room, houses settle and spread, fog gathers. Mud is red or black. Monstrous city, endless night!

  Nearer are the sewers. At my flanks, the width of the world. Or perhaps azure abysses, pits of fire. Perhaps moons and comets collide at these depths, seas and stories.

  In these bitter hours, I imagine spheres of sapphire and steel. I have mastered silence. So what’s that vent doing, up there, illuminating a corner of my ceiling?

  TALE

  A Prince was troubled by his habit of acting on only the most obvious impulses. He could imagine a sort of revolutionary love, and suspected his wives capable of more than mere complaisance embellished with blue skies and riches. He wanted truth, hours of complete desire and satisfaction. Whether an aberration of piety or no, he wanted it all the same. At the very least, he was willing to find out.

  —All the women who had been with him were put to death. Sl
aughter in Beauty’s garden. They blessed him beneath the blade. He sought no replacements. —Yet the women reappeared.

  He killed all his followers, after hunting or drinking. —None ceased to follow him.

  He took pleasure slitting the throats of rare beasts. He torched palaces. He pounced on people and tore them apart. —Yet the crowd, the golden roofs, the beautiful beasts: all remained.

  Can one rejoice in destruction, be rejuvenated by cruelty? His people didn’t grumble. None objected.

  One night, he galloped high in his saddle. A Genie appeared, of ineffable, inexpressible beauty. His face and bearing suggested a complex, multifaceted love; unspeakable—even unbearable—happiness! The Prince and the Genie vanished into each other, completely. How could they not have died of it? They died together.

  But the Prince passed away in his palace, at a routine age. The Prince was the Genie. The Genie was the Prince.

  Our desires lack an inner music.

  SIDESHOW

  Muscle-bound goons. The kind that rape the world. Self-satisfied, in no hurry to devote their remarkable faculties to understanding another’s mind. Such wise men. Stares as blank as summer nights, red and black, tricolored, golden star-stung steel: twisted features, leaden, pale, inflamed; hoarse guffaws. A grim onslaught of pretense. To hear what these kids would say about Cherubino in their rough voices and violent ways. They’re heading to town to get it from behind, all decked out in sickening luxury.

  A violent Paradise of runaway sneers! But no match for your Fakirs and hackneyed theatrics. In costumes sewn together with all the taste of a nightmare, they strut through assorted laments, tragedies filled with all every brigand and demigod missing from religion and history. Chinese, Hottentots, bohemians, fools, hyenas, Molochs, ancient lunacies, sinister demons—they slip savage slaps and tickles into your mother’s old chestnuts. A little avant-guarde here, some three-hankie stuff there. Master jugglers who use riveting comedy to transform players and scenes. Eyes ignite, blood sings, bones stretch, tears and red rivulets run. Their clowning can last minutes, or months.

  Only I have the key to this savage sideshow.

  ANTIQUE

  Graceful son of Pan! Beneath your flower- and berry-crowned brow, the precious spheres of your eyes revolve. Your wine-stained cheeks seem hollow. Your fangs gleam. Your chest is a lyre, music flows from your pale arms. Your heart beats in a belly where two sexes sleep. At night, wander, softly moving this thigh, then this other thigh, and this left leg.

  BEING BEAUTEOUS

  Out of the snow rises a Beautiful Being. Whisperings of death and rounds of unheard music lift this worshipped shape, make it expand and tremble like a ghost; black and scarlet wounds colonize immaculate flesh. Life’s colors deepen, dance, and radiate from this Vision fresh off the blocks. Tremors rise and rumble, and the wild flavor of these effects is outdone by mortal whisperings and raucous music that the distant world hurls upon our mother of beauty: she pulls back, she rears. Oh! Our bones are draped in amorous new flesh.

  O the ashen face, the coarse thatch, the crystal arms! The cannon I collapse upon, through a topple of trees and soft air.

  Being Beauteous: Rimbaud’s title for this poem was in English, as given.

  LIVES

  I

  O the vast avenues of the holy land, the terraces of the temple. What became of the Brahman who taught me the Proverbs? From then, from there, I still see images, even of old women. I remember hours of silver and sun along rivers, the hand of the land upon my shoulder, and our caresses in the fragrant fields. A rising flock of scarlet pigeons thunders through my thoughts. —In exile, life was a stage where literature’s masterpieces were played out. I could share untold riches that remain unknown. I watch you unearth your discoveries. I know what will be! My wisdom? You disdain it like chaos. What is my nothingness, in the face of the stupor awaiting you?

  II

  I’m an inventor unique among my predecessors; think of me as a musician who has discovered the key of love. For now, a gentleman from a barren land and a sober sky, I try to stir myself with memories of a beggar’s boyhood; my apprenticeship, days in wooden shoes, arguments, five or six unimaginable losses, and a few wild nights where my stubbornness kept me from losing it completely. I don’t regret my earlier allotment of divine joy: the sobriety of this desolate landscape nourishes my wild skepticism. But because this skepticism no longer has its place, and since I’m consumed with a brand-new mess—I’m destined to become a miserable kook.

  III

  I met the world, in an attic I was confined to at twelve. There, I furnished illustrations to the human comedy. I learned history, in a cellar. At some nocturnal celebration in a northern city, I met women who modeled for the old masters. I was schooled in the sciences in a Paris back alley. I made my own masterpieces and retired to an appropriately magnificent Oriental retreat. I brewed my blood. My burden was lifted. My brooding was over. I am beyond all parting, and past persuading.

  DEPARTURE

  Seen enough. Visions confronted in every weather.

  Had enough. Urban tumult, by night and day, forever.

  Known enough. Life’s still-points. —O tumult and Visions!

  Departure for fresh affection and noise!

  ROYALTY

  One fine morning, in a land of very decent people, a gorgeous man and woman were shouting in the town square:

  “Friends, I want her to be queen!”

  “I want to be queen!” She laughed, and trembled.

  He spoke to his friends of revelation, of an ordeal undergone. They swooned, one against the other.

  And so they ruled all morning, as crimson curtains blazed from windows, and then all afternoon, as they strolled the palm gardens.

  FOR A REASON

  Striking your finger on a drum discharges all sound and begins a new harmony.

  Taking a single step suggests the advent and advance of new men.

  Your head turns away: new love! Your head turns back—new love!

  All the children sing: “Change our fates, hobble the plague, start with time.” They beg: “Elevate anywhere our fortunes and hopes.”

  Arrival from always, for departure to everywhere.

  DRUNKEN MORNING

  Goodness and Beauty, and they’re mine! The noise is unbearable but it won’t faze me! Storybook tortures! Hurray (for once) for great work and bodily miracles! Children’s laughter marks both beginning and end. This poison lingers in our veins even when we withdraw to the silence of prior discord. Now that we warrant such torture, let’s make good on the superhuman promise our bodies and souls deserve: this promise, this madness! Elegance, science, violence! They promised to bury the tree of good and evil in the shadows, and cast off tyrannical shackles of decency, so we could cultivate true love. The beginning was begun on the border with disgust, and the end—unable to seize eternity while on the run—the end unfolds with a stampede of perfume.

  Children’s laughter, sobriety of slaves, austerity of virgins, fear of faces and forms from this place—be blessed by the memory of this night. In the beginning there was hooliganism, in the end angels of ice and fire.

  Sacred drunken night! Sacred if only for the mask you grant us. Fair enough! We won’t forget how you blessed our hours. We put faith in poison. We know how to live completely, every day.

  Behold an age of Assassins.

  LINES

  When the world is no more than a lone dark wood before our four astonished eyes—a beach for two faithful children—a musical house for our bright liking—I will find you.

  Even if only one old man remains, peaceful and beautiful, steeped in “unbelievable luxury”—I’ll be at your feet.

  Even if I create all of your memories—even if I know how to control you—I’ll suffocate you.

  When we are strong—who retreats? When happy, who feels ridiculous? When cruel, what could be done with us?

  Dress up, dance, laugh. —I could never toss Love out the window.


  My companion, my beggar, my monstrous girl! You care so little about these miserable women, their schemes—my discomfort. Seize us with your unearthly voice! Your voice: the only antidote to this vile despair.

  UNTITLED FRAGMENTS

  A cloudy morning in July. The taste of ash floats in the air; the smell of sweating wood in a hearth—flowers rotting in water—havoc along walkways—drizzle of canals moving across fields—and why stop there—why not add toys, and incense?

  I ran ropes from spire to spire; garlands from window to window; gold chains from star to star; and I dance.

  The mountain pond smokes endlessly. What witch will rise against the whitening sunset? What violet foliage will fall?

  While public funds are spent on brotherly bacchanals, a bell of rosefire rings in the clouds.

  A black powder rains gently on my evening, kindling an agreeable taste for India ink. —I lower the gas-jets, throw myself on the bed, and, turned towards the shadows, I see you: my daughters—my queens!

  WORKERS

  O the warm February morning. How the sudden South rekindled our memories of unbearable poverty, of youthful miseries.