I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (Modern Library Classics) - Softcover

Rimbaud, Arthur

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812970152 ISBN 13: 9780812970159

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

One of the most written-about literary figures in the past decade, Arthur Rimbaud left few traces when he abandoned poetry at age twenty-one and disappeared into the African desert. Although the dozen biographies devoted to Rimbaud’s life depend on one main source for information—his own correspondence—a complete edition of these remarkable letters has never been published in English. Until now.

A moving document of decline, Rimbaud’s letters begin with the enthusiastic artistic pronouncements of a fifteen-year-old genius, and end with the bitter what-ifs of a man whose life has slipped disastrously away. But whether soapboxing on the essence of art, or struggling under the yoke of self-imposed exile in the desert of his later years, Rimbaud was incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence. As translator and editor Wyatt Mason makes clear in his engaging Introduction, the letters reveal a Rimbaud very different from our expectations. Rimbaud—presented by many biographers as a bohemian wild man—is unveiled as “diligent in his pursuit of his goals . . . wildly, soberly ambitious, in poetry, in everything.”

I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud is the second and final volume in Mason’s authoritative presentation of Rimbaud’s writings. Called by Edward Hirsch “the definitive translation for our time,” Mason’s first volume, Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library, 2002), brought Rimbaud’s poetry and prose into vivid focus. In I Promise to Be Good, Mason adds the missing epistolary pieces to our picture of Rimbaud. “These letters,” he writes, “are proofs in all their variety—of impudence and precocity, of tenderness and rage—for the existence of Arthur Rimbaud.” I Promise to Be Good allows English-language readers to see with new eyes one of the most extraordinary poets in history.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The poetic genius of Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) blossomed early and burned briefly. Nearly all of his work was composed when he was in his teens. During the century following his death at thirty-seven, Rimbaud’s work and life have influenced generations of readers and writers. Radical in its day, Rimbaud’s writing took some of the first and most fundamental steps toward the liberation of poetry from the formal constraints of its history, and now represents one of the most powerful and enduring bodies of poetic expression in human history.

Wyatt Mason is a contributing editor of Harper’s magazine, where his essays regularly appear. He also writes for The London Review of Books and The New Republic. The Modern Library has published his translations of the complete works of Arthur Rimbaud in two volumes. His translations of Dante’s Vita Nuova and Montaigne’s Essais are in progress.

"From the Hardcover edition.

Aus dem Klappentext

One of the most written-about literary figures in the past decade, Arthur Rimbaud left few traces when he abandoned poetry at age twenty-one and disappeared into the African desert. Although the dozen biographies devoted to Rimbaud s life depend on one main source for information his own correspondence a complete edition of these remarkable letters has never been published in English. Until now.

A moving document of decline, Rimbaud s letters begin with the enthusiastic artistic pronouncements of a fifteen-year-old genius, and end with the bitter what-ifs of a man whose life has slipped disastrously away. But whether soapboxing on the essence of art, or struggling under the yoke of self-imposed exile in the desert of his later years, Rimbaud was incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence. As translator and editor Wyatt Mason makes clear in his engaging Introduction, the letters reveal a Rimbaud very different from our expectations. Rimbaud presented by many biographers as a bohemian wild man is unveiled as diligent in his pursuit of his goals . . . wildly, soberly ambitious, in poetry, in everything.

I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud is the second and final volume in Mason s authoritative presentation of Rimbaud s writings. Called by Edward Hirsch the definitive translation for our time, Mason s first volume, Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library, 2002), brought Rimbaud s poetry and prose into vivid focus. In I Promise to Be Good, Mason adds the missing epistolary pieces to our picture of Rimbaud. These letters, he writes, are proofs in all their variety of impudence and precocity, of tenderness and rage for the existence of Arthur Rimbaud. I Promise to Be Good allows English-language readers to see with new eyes one of the most extraordinary poets in history.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Chapter 1

NOTE LEFT IN THE MAILBOX OF GEORGES IZAMBARD

[Charleville; undated, most likely late winter 1870]

If you have, and if you can lend me:

(above all)1: Historical Curiosities, volume one by (I think) Ludovic Lalanne;

2: Bibliographical Curiosities, volume one by same;

3: French Historical Curiosities, by P. Jacob, first series, including the Feast of Fools, the King of the Ribauds, the Francs-Taupins, and Jesters of France,

(And above all). . . and the second series of same.

I'll come by for them tomorrow, around ten or ten-fifteen. -I'll be in your debt. They will be most useful.

Arthur Rimbaud

TO THÉODORE DE BANVILLE

Charleville (Ardennes), May 24, 1870

Cher Maître,

These are the months of love; I'm seventeen, the time of hope and chimeras, as they say, and so, a child blessed by the hand of the Muse (how trivial that must seem), I've set out to express my good thoughts, my hopes, my feelings, the provinces of poets-I call all of this spring.

For if I have decided to send you a few poems-via the hands of Alp. Lemerre, that excellent editor-it is because I love all poets, all the good Parnassians-since the poet is inherently Parnassian-taken with ideal beauty; that is what draws me to you, however naïvely, your relation to Ronsard, a brother of the masters of 1830, a true romantic, a true poet. That is why. Silly, isn't it? But there it is.

In two years, perhaps one, I will have made my way to Paris. -Anch'io, gentlemen of the press, I will be a Parnassian! Something within me . . . wants to break free . . . I swear, Master, to eternally adore the two goddesses, Muse and Liberty.

Try to keep a straight face while reading my poems: You would make me ridiculously happy and hopeful were you, Maître, to see if a little room were found for "Credo in Unam" among the Parnassians . . . I could appear in the final issue of le Parnasse: it would be a Credo for poets! Ambition! Such madness!

Arthur Rimbaud

***

Through blue summer nights I will pass along paths,

Pricked by wheat, trampling short grass:

Dreaming, I will feel coolness underfoot,

Will let breezes bathe my bare head.

Not a word, not a thought:

Boundless love will surge through my soul,

And I will wander far away, a vagabond

In Nature-as happily as with a woman.

April 20, 1870

A.R.

OPHELIA

I

On calm black waters filled with sleeping stars

White Ophelia floats like a lily,

Floating so slowly, bedded in long veils . . .

-Hunting horns rise from the distant forest.

A thousand years without sad Ophelia,

A white ghost on the long black river;

A thousand years of her sweet madness

Murmuring its ballad in the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts, arranges her veils

In a wreath softly cradled by waters;

Shivering willows weep at her shoulder,

Reeds bend over her broad dreaming brow.

Rumpled water lilies sigh around her;

And up in a sleeping alder she sometimes stirs,

A nest from which a tiny shiver of wings escapes:

-A mysterious song falls from golden stars.

II

O pale Ophelia. Beautiful as snow.

You died, child, borne away upon waters.

Winds from high Norwegian mountains

Whispered warnings of liberty's sting;

Because a breath carried strange sounds

To your restless soul, twisting your long hair,

Your heart listened to Nature's song

In grumbling trees and nocturnal sighs,

Because deafening voices of wild seas

Broke your infant breast, too human and too soft;

Because one April morning, a pale, handsome knight,

A poor fool, sat silent at your feet.

Sky. Love. Liberty. What dreams, poor Ophelia.

You melted upon him like snow in flame:

Visions strangled your words

-Fear of the Infinite flared in your eyes.

III

-And the poet says you visit after dark

In starlight, seeking the flowers you gathered,

And that on the water, sleeping in long veils

He saw white Ophelia floating like a lily.

15 May 1870

Arthur Rimbaud

CREDO IN UNAM . . .



The sun, hearth of tenderness and life,

Spills molten love onto a grateful earth,

And, when you're asleep in a valley, you can feel

The earth beneath you, nubile and ripe with blood;

Her huge breast, rising with the soul within,

Is, like god, made of love; like woman, made of flesh;

Heavy with sap and sunlight,

And embryonic swarms.

How it all grows, how it all rises.

-O Venus, O Goddess.

I long for the lost days of youth,

For wanton satyrs and beastly fauns,

Gods who, for love, bit the bark of branches

And kissed blonde Nymphs in water-lily pools.

I long for lost days: when the rosy blood

Of green trees, the water in rivers,

When the world's sap flowed,

Pouring a universe into Pan's veins.

When the green ground breathed beneath his goat's feet;

When his lips, softly kissing his syrinx,

Sent a song of love into the sky;

When, standing on the plain, he heard

Nature respond to his call;

When the silent trees cradled the songbird,

When the earth cradled man, the blue seas

And the beloved beasts-beloved in God.

I long for lost days when great Cybele

In all her boundless beauty was said

To cut across magnificent cities

In a great bronze chariot, both of her breasts

Spilling the pure stream of eternal life

Unto the breach. Mankind suckled

Her blessed breast like a delighted little child.

-Because he was strong, Man was gentle and chaste.



Misery! For now he says: I know everything,

And therefore wanders, eyes closed, ears shut. -And yet,

No more gods! No more gods! Man is King.

Man is God! But Love remains our Faith.

O Cybele! O grandmother of gods and men,

If only man could linger at your breast,

If only he hadn't forsaken immortal Astarte

Who, flower of flesh, odor of oceans,

Once rose from the vast brightness of the blue waves,

Baring a rosy belly snowing foam, goddess

With great black conquering eyes

Who made the nightingale sing in forests

And love in human hearts.



I believe in You! I believe in You! Divine Mother,

Aphrodite of the sea! Oh the way is bitter

Now that another God has yoked us to his cross;

Flesh, Marble, Flower, Venus: I believe in you!

-Man is sad and ugly, sad beneath an enormous sky,

He is clothed for he is no longer chaste,

He has sullied his godly head,

And his Olympian body is stooped

In dirty servitude, an idol in the fire.

Yes, even in death, even as a pale skeleton

He would live on, an insult to his original beauty.

-And the Idol upon whom you lavished your virginity,

In whom you made mere clay divine, Woman,

So that Man might illuminate his poor soul

And slowly climb, in limitless love,

From the earthy prison to the beauty of light-

Woman has forgotten her virtue.

-Such a farce! And now the world snickers

At the sacred name of mother Venus.



If only lost time would return.

-Man is done for, has played his part.

In the light, weary of smashing his idols

He revives, free from his Gods,

And, as if he were from heaven, searches the skies.

The idea of an invincible, eternal Ideal,

The god who endures within clayey flesh,

Will rise and rise until he burns his brow.

And when you see...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0812970152
• ISBN 13: 9780812970159
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland