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I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud
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.
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.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
Arthur Rimbaud
668books2,635followersHallucinatory work of French poet Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud strongly influenced the surrealists.
With known transgressive themes, he influenced modern literature and arts, prefiguring. He started writing at a very young age and excelled as a student but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away to Paris amidst the Franco-Prussian war. During his late adolescence and early adulthood, he produced the bulk of his literary output. After assembling his last major work, Illuminations , Rimbaud completely stopped writing literature at age 20 years in 1874.
A hectic, violent romantic relationship, which lasted nearly two years at times, with fellow poet Paul Verlaine engaged Rimbaud, a libertine, restless soul. After his retirement as a writer, he traveled extensively on three continents as a merchant and explorer until his death from cancer. As a poet, Rimbaud is well known for his contributions to symbolism and, among other works, for A Season in Hell , a precursor to modernist literature.
With known transgressive themes, he influenced modern literature and arts, prefiguring. He started writing at a very young age and excelled as a student but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away to Paris amidst the Franco-Prussian war. During his late adolescence and early adulthood, he produced the bulk of his literary output. After assembling his last major work, Illuminations , Rimbaud completely stopped writing literature at age 20 years in 1874.
A hectic, violent romantic relationship, which lasted nearly two years at times, with fellow poet Paul Verlaine engaged Rimbaud, a libertine, restless soul. After his retirement as a writer, he traveled extensively on three continents as a merchant and explorer until his death from cancer. As a poet, Rimbaud is well known for his contributions to symbolism and, among other works, for A Season in Hell , a precursor to modernist literature.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 27, 2023
This was actually quite arduous to complete. In hindsight, more illumination as far as context really could have brought this up a notch or two.
Arthur Rimbaud is an incredibly fascinating figure. I don't feel that this work does him or his legacy justice. I wasn't looking for the author to opine as much as provide insight.
Without providing additional background, this becomes a very dry and mundane read. I never thought I would be using those words to describe something written about a man as intriguing as Rimbaud, but here we are.
Arthur Rimbaud is an incredibly fascinating figure. I don't feel that this work does him or his legacy justice. I wasn't looking for the author to opine as much as provide insight.
Without providing additional background, this becomes a very dry and mundane read. I never thought I would be using those words to describe something written about a man as intriguing as Rimbaud, but here we are.
August 6, 2023
نیلوفرهای آبی تاابد برای رمبو؛ لرزش تن نیمفه� در ادای تابستان� تو.
September 22, 2020
Arthur Rimbaud might be modern literature's greatest disappointment and greatest source of bafflement.
Born to a dour, thrifty, shrewd not-quite-peasant-woman and her older, absent military officer husband, Rimbaud was born and raised in the Norman provincial town of Charleville. There he had been a dutiful child and a brilliant pupil at the local schools - his "Visionary" letters were written to one of his schoolmasters, Georges Izambard. Adolescence hits everybody pretty hard, but none harder than Rimbaud. After exhibiting increasingly rowdy behavior in town, he fled to Paris to see if he could get in on the excitement of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. Even in the chaos, Rimbaud was such a nuisance that even the Paris Communards sent him back home as an indigent. After upsetting the Parisian art and cafe scene, he moved to England with Verlaine in a torrid love triangle (Verlaine was married, to a long-suffering woman). Then, soon after Verlaine shot him in a drunken quarrel, Rimbaud gave up poetry and became...a merchant.
So what happened? Well, we'll never know for sure, but what evidence we have from Rimbaud's end consists of his letters, which have all (almost) been brought together in this collection. As can be seen from his schooldays to his hectoring, demanding letters from his business days, Rimbaud "reinvented" himself in a way that is astonishing as well as perplexing. Or did he? From these letters I get the feeling Rimbaud was both more energetic and more scrupulous than most people - his efforts were unstinting and uncompromising - they just shifted from literature to money. Such shifts go on in teensy little ways all the time - every time another MFA or Ph.D. in Creative Writing is granted another career is launched. Poetry and money - they were both all or nothing for Rimbaud, and apparently he saw the two things as being incompatible. Or to put it another way, poetry is not a career, and unlike most poets, Rimbaud refused to mix the two.
***
The early letters are the poetical heart and soul of this collection; they have been published and cited a gazillion times - Rimbaud was one of the great poet-letter writers, like John Keats or Emily Dickinson. But he was only inclined to write such letters a few times, when he was about 16. The letter with that bit about a "long, involved, and logical derangement of all the senses" (p. 33) is a poetical talisman nowadays. But my favorite part of that same letter is this:
"...so many egoists call themselves authors, still others believe their intellectual growth is entirely self-induced! But all this is really about making one's soul into a monster: like some comprachio! Like some man sewing (sic.? Should this be "sowing"?) his face with a crop of warts." (p. 33)
Love those warts! Another good one, again to Georges Izambard:
"Charleville, November 2, 1870
...I'm dying, decomposing under the weight of platitude, of crap, of gray, of the daily grind. What else would you expect, I stubbornly continue to love free freedom, and...so many things tat are "so very unfortunate," am I right? -- I should just leave again today; I could do it: I was wearing new clothes, I could have sold my watch, and so hooray for freedom! -- But I stayed put! I stayed put! And I will want to leave again and again..." (p. 24)
"Free freedom." That's just wonderful, isn't it? My captive little soul boggles at it! It's too much, a donut with frosted frosting and glazed glazing. Without knowing what it means, I sometimes tell myself "free freedom, bub," like a kind of goad, or an explanation or an excuse. "But I stayed put!" I remind myself...
***
The rest of these letters (pages 79 to 357! You've been warned) are about business matters, mostly, and constitute one of the great mysteries of western civilization - how did this brilliant poet come to be such a drudgery-bound, money-grubbing, sometimes whiny guy who was worried about his retirement fund and what the other merchants thought of him? Scholars have been at this conundrum for a century, but these letters provide most of the actual evidence.
Nevertheless, these business letters are mostly ignored, but even beyond the fact that they were written by Rimbaud, they are of interest. He was in an fascinating part of the world during a fascinating time - a kind of "Heart of Darkness" colonial character, interacting with and exploiting (and sometimes being exploited by) "natives." His life during this time - provided mainly by these letters, and by a few first-hand witnesses (fellow-merchants, mostly). Rimbaud was one of the first westerners to actually live in the interior of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) - he seems to have adopted native customs and language with, as the letter show, varying degrees of respect and shocking outbursts of racist disgust (you've been warned).
Perhaps most astonishing, after his harum-scarum youth, Rimbaud became a dutiful son. A typical letter to his family begins:
"Harar, August 5, 1881
Dear friends,
I just made the request that my firm in France pay you, in French currency, the sum of eleven hundred sixty-five rupees and fourteen anas, which would make, with the rupee worth about 2 franc 12 centimes, two thousand four hundred seventy-eight francs. However, the exchange rate fluctuates. As soon as you have received this little sum, do with it as you see best, and alert me promptly..." (p. 127)
Such drudgery! Accounts figured to the last ana and centime. Such paltry ambitions! Or so cry the poetry professors and the scholars. What happened to the world's great restless soul? Perhaps Rimbaud was just terminally restless. Towards the end of his correspondence, I kept wondering why he didn't flee the difficulties and frustrations of being a merchant of the interior and settle on the coast somewhere - Aden or Alexandria (which had a thriving literary and brothel scene - C. V. Cavafy, for example)? Rimbaud was too restless for the 19th century equivalent of a cubicle - he was always ready for the next adventure, the next push forward. And so the businessman and the poet aren't so far apart - and besides, keeping good accounts and sending money home to Mom are honorable things to do.
His death was painful, drawn-out and heroic. He got knee cancer, but didn't find competent treatment until it was too late. He managed to die in France, after a horrific journey in a litter across a couple hundred miles of wilderness, then an amputation in Marseilles that only managed to prolong his agony. His last letter was to the Director of the Messageries Maritimes, November 9, 1891. It starts out with a list of ivory tusk lots, apparently to settle his accounts with this firm. He wants to go back to Africa:
"...So send me the price for service from Aphinar to Suez. I am completely paralyzed: so I would like to leave plenty of time to board.
Tell me what time I should be carried on board..." (p. 357)
That's it - a Sojourner to the end, but like the Norman peasant he was, accounting for every rupee.
***
So why did Rimbaud give up on poetry? I cannot give a definitive answer to this question, but I have a theory, ideas that came about from this remarkable collection and other accounts of his life. Rimbaud dropped poetry because he was disgusted by the poetry scene. There is a famous painting by Henri Fantin-Latour of Rimbaud, the disheveled beautiful wild child, sitting in a bar with a bunch of Paris's finest poetical nincompoops (and Verlaine, who was only a partial nincompoop). The condescension and derision that his youth, beauty, and more importantly, his brilliance, inspired in these pompous poetasters was infuriating - they knew he was great, but it was easier to complain about his bad behavior. He'd get the same treatment nowadays at an AWP seminar chaired by a bunch of "famous" American poetry professors. Try showing up to one of these drunk and brilliant and raving about "free freedom"! The tiny egos bolstered by even tinier talents, the boosterism and insider-trading of favors, the bad poems published and praised, the insistence on absurd credentials. It can be pretty hard to take, especially when you are as impatient as Rimbaud apparently was. And as brilliant. Again, poetry is not a career.
He was clear about this as a teenager - from another of the early letters to his influential, sympathetic and out-classed teacher Georges Izambard:
"Charleville, May 1871
And so you're a professor again. You've said before that we owe something to Society; you're a member of the brotherhood of teachers, you're on track. -- I'm all for your principles: I cynically keep myself alive, I dig up old dolts from school: I throw anything stupid, dirty, or plain wrong at them I can come up with: beer and wine are my reward. Stat mater dolorosa, dum pendet filius. I owe society something, doubtless -- and I'm right. You are too, for now. Fundamentally, you see your principles as an argument for subjective poetry: your will to return to the university trough -- sorry! -- proves it! But you will end up an accomplished complacent who accomplishes nothing of worth...." (p. 28)
I'll bet you don't find this letter quoted on your MFA Poetry Program's prospectus! "But you will end up an accomplished complacent who accomplishes nothing of worth...."
But again, why business? Again I am guessing, but perhaps Rimbaud liked the challenge, which, like sports, is based on performance and not so much, as with the arts, based on who you know and idiot bureaucracies and coteries. At its best, business can be clarifying. In business, unless the government bails you out, failure is failure and success was success, and money is the only measure of success. I think there is something there that appealed to Rimbaud - not the money itself (he lived frugally), but the ability to succeed or fail without appeal to institutionalized literary insider trading and credential-mongering. Success would be on his own terms and indisputable. Business, again, at its best, is more honest than institutionalized poetry, or at least less hypocritical - do you think you're a good cook? Open a restaurant and find out for sure...
Also, I think Rimbaud was curious - maybe he just wanted to see the World?
Poets drop out all the time - most of the time it isn't noticed because, well, they probably weren't very good poets to begin with. But this isn't always the case. As another example of a great drop-out, Emily Dickinson didn't go into business, but she too gave up trying to place her work in the face of monolithic cultural incomprehension and outright stupidity. So she stayed in her room and tied up her poems in little bundles with ribbon and tucked them in her desk drawer. Rimbaud went to Africa, via the Dutch East Indies (he deserted from the Dutch Army) and Cyprus, not really an option for a 19th century woman. Dickinson and Rimbaud don't seem all that far apart to me.
I highly recommend this book. Since I don't know French, I cannot rate the quality of the translation, but the letters English'd are just marvelous, so I am assuming Wyatt Mason did a great job translating (except maybe sew/sow noted above). I also appreciate he included most of the business letters as well (a few were left out, apparently - I wish that weren't the case). This book lives on my nightstand, a seething provocation to try harder and to be more brave.
Born to a dour, thrifty, shrewd not-quite-peasant-woman and her older, absent military officer husband, Rimbaud was born and raised in the Norman provincial town of Charleville. There he had been a dutiful child and a brilliant pupil at the local schools - his "Visionary" letters were written to one of his schoolmasters, Georges Izambard. Adolescence hits everybody pretty hard, but none harder than Rimbaud. After exhibiting increasingly rowdy behavior in town, he fled to Paris to see if he could get in on the excitement of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. Even in the chaos, Rimbaud was such a nuisance that even the Paris Communards sent him back home as an indigent. After upsetting the Parisian art and cafe scene, he moved to England with Verlaine in a torrid love triangle (Verlaine was married, to a long-suffering woman). Then, soon after Verlaine shot him in a drunken quarrel, Rimbaud gave up poetry and became...a merchant.
So what happened? Well, we'll never know for sure, but what evidence we have from Rimbaud's end consists of his letters, which have all (almost) been brought together in this collection. As can be seen from his schooldays to his hectoring, demanding letters from his business days, Rimbaud "reinvented" himself in a way that is astonishing as well as perplexing. Or did he? From these letters I get the feeling Rimbaud was both more energetic and more scrupulous than most people - his efforts were unstinting and uncompromising - they just shifted from literature to money. Such shifts go on in teensy little ways all the time - every time another MFA or Ph.D. in Creative Writing is granted another career is launched. Poetry and money - they were both all or nothing for Rimbaud, and apparently he saw the two things as being incompatible. Or to put it another way, poetry is not a career, and unlike most poets, Rimbaud refused to mix the two.
***
The early letters are the poetical heart and soul of this collection; they have been published and cited a gazillion times - Rimbaud was one of the great poet-letter writers, like John Keats or Emily Dickinson. But he was only inclined to write such letters a few times, when he was about 16. The letter with that bit about a "long, involved, and logical derangement of all the senses" (p. 33) is a poetical talisman nowadays. But my favorite part of that same letter is this:
"...so many egoists call themselves authors, still others believe their intellectual growth is entirely self-induced! But all this is really about making one's soul into a monster: like some comprachio! Like some man sewing (sic.? Should this be "sowing"?) his face with a crop of warts." (p. 33)
Love those warts! Another good one, again to Georges Izambard:
"Charleville, November 2, 1870
...I'm dying, decomposing under the weight of platitude, of crap, of gray, of the daily grind. What else would you expect, I stubbornly continue to love free freedom, and...so many things tat are "so very unfortunate," am I right? -- I should just leave again today; I could do it: I was wearing new clothes, I could have sold my watch, and so hooray for freedom! -- But I stayed put! I stayed put! And I will want to leave again and again..." (p. 24)
"Free freedom." That's just wonderful, isn't it? My captive little soul boggles at it! It's too much, a donut with frosted frosting and glazed glazing. Without knowing what it means, I sometimes tell myself "free freedom, bub," like a kind of goad, or an explanation or an excuse. "But I stayed put!" I remind myself...
***
The rest of these letters (pages 79 to 357! You've been warned) are about business matters, mostly, and constitute one of the great mysteries of western civilization - how did this brilliant poet come to be such a drudgery-bound, money-grubbing, sometimes whiny guy who was worried about his retirement fund and what the other merchants thought of him? Scholars have been at this conundrum for a century, but these letters provide most of the actual evidence.
Nevertheless, these business letters are mostly ignored, but even beyond the fact that they were written by Rimbaud, they are of interest. He was in an fascinating part of the world during a fascinating time - a kind of "Heart of Darkness" colonial character, interacting with and exploiting (and sometimes being exploited by) "natives." His life during this time - provided mainly by these letters, and by a few first-hand witnesses (fellow-merchants, mostly). Rimbaud was one of the first westerners to actually live in the interior of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) - he seems to have adopted native customs and language with, as the letter show, varying degrees of respect and shocking outbursts of racist disgust (you've been warned).
Perhaps most astonishing, after his harum-scarum youth, Rimbaud became a dutiful son. A typical letter to his family begins:
"Harar, August 5, 1881
Dear friends,
I just made the request that my firm in France pay you, in French currency, the sum of eleven hundred sixty-five rupees and fourteen anas, which would make, with the rupee worth about 2 franc 12 centimes, two thousand four hundred seventy-eight francs. However, the exchange rate fluctuates. As soon as you have received this little sum, do with it as you see best, and alert me promptly..." (p. 127)
Such drudgery! Accounts figured to the last ana and centime. Such paltry ambitions! Or so cry the poetry professors and the scholars. What happened to the world's great restless soul? Perhaps Rimbaud was just terminally restless. Towards the end of his correspondence, I kept wondering why he didn't flee the difficulties and frustrations of being a merchant of the interior and settle on the coast somewhere - Aden or Alexandria (which had a thriving literary and brothel scene - C. V. Cavafy, for example)? Rimbaud was too restless for the 19th century equivalent of a cubicle - he was always ready for the next adventure, the next push forward. And so the businessman and the poet aren't so far apart - and besides, keeping good accounts and sending money home to Mom are honorable things to do.
His death was painful, drawn-out and heroic. He got knee cancer, but didn't find competent treatment until it was too late. He managed to die in France, after a horrific journey in a litter across a couple hundred miles of wilderness, then an amputation in Marseilles that only managed to prolong his agony. His last letter was to the Director of the Messageries Maritimes, November 9, 1891. It starts out with a list of ivory tusk lots, apparently to settle his accounts with this firm. He wants to go back to Africa:
"...So send me the price for service from Aphinar to Suez. I am completely paralyzed: so I would like to leave plenty of time to board.
Tell me what time I should be carried on board..." (p. 357)
That's it - a Sojourner to the end, but like the Norman peasant he was, accounting for every rupee.
***
So why did Rimbaud give up on poetry? I cannot give a definitive answer to this question, but I have a theory, ideas that came about from this remarkable collection and other accounts of his life. Rimbaud dropped poetry because he was disgusted by the poetry scene. There is a famous painting by Henri Fantin-Latour of Rimbaud, the disheveled beautiful wild child, sitting in a bar with a bunch of Paris's finest poetical nincompoops (and Verlaine, who was only a partial nincompoop). The condescension and derision that his youth, beauty, and more importantly, his brilliance, inspired in these pompous poetasters was infuriating - they knew he was great, but it was easier to complain about his bad behavior. He'd get the same treatment nowadays at an AWP seminar chaired by a bunch of "famous" American poetry professors. Try showing up to one of these drunk and brilliant and raving about "free freedom"! The tiny egos bolstered by even tinier talents, the boosterism and insider-trading of favors, the bad poems published and praised, the insistence on absurd credentials. It can be pretty hard to take, especially when you are as impatient as Rimbaud apparently was. And as brilliant. Again, poetry is not a career.
He was clear about this as a teenager - from another of the early letters to his influential, sympathetic and out-classed teacher Georges Izambard:
"Charleville, May 1871
And so you're a professor again. You've said before that we owe something to Society; you're a member of the brotherhood of teachers, you're on track. -- I'm all for your principles: I cynically keep myself alive, I dig up old dolts from school: I throw anything stupid, dirty, or plain wrong at them I can come up with: beer and wine are my reward. Stat mater dolorosa, dum pendet filius. I owe society something, doubtless -- and I'm right. You are too, for now. Fundamentally, you see your principles as an argument for subjective poetry: your will to return to the university trough -- sorry! -- proves it! But you will end up an accomplished complacent who accomplishes nothing of worth...." (p. 28)
I'll bet you don't find this letter quoted on your MFA Poetry Program's prospectus! "But you will end up an accomplished complacent who accomplishes nothing of worth...."
But again, why business? Again I am guessing, but perhaps Rimbaud liked the challenge, which, like sports, is based on performance and not so much, as with the arts, based on who you know and idiot bureaucracies and coteries. At its best, business can be clarifying. In business, unless the government bails you out, failure is failure and success was success, and money is the only measure of success. I think there is something there that appealed to Rimbaud - not the money itself (he lived frugally), but the ability to succeed or fail without appeal to institutionalized literary insider trading and credential-mongering. Success would be on his own terms and indisputable. Business, again, at its best, is more honest than institutionalized poetry, or at least less hypocritical - do you think you're a good cook? Open a restaurant and find out for sure...
Also, I think Rimbaud was curious - maybe he just wanted to see the World?
Poets drop out all the time - most of the time it isn't noticed because, well, they probably weren't very good poets to begin with. But this isn't always the case. As another example of a great drop-out, Emily Dickinson didn't go into business, but she too gave up trying to place her work in the face of monolithic cultural incomprehension and outright stupidity. So she stayed in her room and tied up her poems in little bundles with ribbon and tucked them in her desk drawer. Rimbaud went to Africa, via the Dutch East Indies (he deserted from the Dutch Army) and Cyprus, not really an option for a 19th century woman. Dickinson and Rimbaud don't seem all that far apart to me.
I highly recommend this book. Since I don't know French, I cannot rate the quality of the translation, but the letters English'd are just marvelous, so I am assuming Wyatt Mason did a great job translating (except maybe sew/sow noted above). I also appreciate he included most of the business letters as well (a few were left out, apparently - I wish that weren't the case). This book lives on my nightstand, a seething provocation to try harder and to be more brave.
August 7, 2014
Pese a la pésima edición del texto, cuya abundancia de erratas te hace incluso cuestionar la calidad de la traducción, he encontrado muy interesante la lectura de estas cartas. Las de juventud, claro, pero también las que escribió como comerciante desde Aden o Harar, por las que casi tenía más curiosidad, pues la vida de Rimbaud en África y Yemen siempre tuvo para mí un aura si bien menos bohemia sí más auténticamente romántica. Un coletazo último del un espíritu indómito que deja la pluma por la espada. Y eso que las ominosas advertencias sobre la posible decepción que que éstas podían suponerme -por prosaicas y aburridas-, amenazaban mi lectura. Pero incluso en los pesados y minuciosos listados de mercancías, en el repaso de precios, ingresos y pérdidas se vislumbra aun la personalidad del poeta adolescente, que huye de la desidia y el aburrimiento, que airado todavía y siempre, busca y trabaja con furia hasta agotarse con la fútil esperanza de poder ganar lo suficiente para vivir de la rentas. Tras la tormentosa relación con Verlaine y su constante ir por Europa debió deducir que la libertad sólo la alcanzaría con dinero. Y en eso se concentra. Sin embargo, este hombre es claramente fruto y reflejo del joven que buscaba la "visión" mediante un largo, inmenso desarreglo de los sentidos. Su misma perseverancia, temeridad, curiosidad intelectual -todavía confía más en los libros y en su inteligencia que en cualquier otra cosa, a ahí los pedidos de manuales de todo tipo a su familia-, impaciencia e intolerancia con su punto mezquino retratan todavía al hombre que ya tullido sueña, en Marsella, con los espacios abiertos de África. Nunca perdió su cínico sentido del humor ni la voluntad de ser él mismo y el otro.
November 10, 2020
4.5 stars, an interesting book which I intend to read again. I wish there was a hardcover version! I enjoyed it very much; yet, the translation needs improvement, especially the letters that include Rimbaud's poems. Admittedly, Rimbaud’s poetry and writing does not always successfully translate to English and there are many English versions of the same poems, some versions are truly beautiful but some are disappointing; thus I would love to read this book in French or another Romance language, it would be such a delightful read!
December 2, 2008
Arthur Rimbaud's letters. Duh! A majority of them are written after 'A season in Hell' and 'Illuminations' when he had already walked away from writing poetry and set off to sell arms in Africa. It's the last we have of him.
December 15, 2024
Dudo que la edición que leí hayan sido las cartas completas, pero no está agregada en ŷ, así que fingiremos que es esta. Verdaderamente disfruté leyendo tanto de sus cartas sobre poesía como su correspondencia cotidiana, dado que estaban todas muy cargadas de esa esencia de Rimbaud. La última carta en la edición que yo leí era una de 1887, si no me equivoco, completamente técnica y desprovista de emoción sobre los conflictos en África donde estuvo presente. Esta es la única que no disfruté leyendo
November 2, 2009
Good read, but I wish there was a bilingual version available.
February 16, 2021
Ha! What a way to be introduced to a person. I really knew nothing about Rimaud before I started this book. The introduction caught me up on his mythos versus who he really might have been, and then I got to peep through his personal letters from him as a poet god teenager to him as a trader in Yemen and the Horn of Africa where he was stamped with deaths mark. Certainly I am now fascinated with reading more of his poems. These letters though, there was such a pleasure in reading the contrast of his youth to his older dreadful working days that made up most of his life. I can see how some would bore of this and I wouldn't blame them (there were a couple letters I skipped over myself), but for the most part I relished in the hell that Rimbaud called home. Of course, the big curiosity is why? And so I thought this the whole way through, and the mystery I don't find too unfamiliar: which is what excites me! All these world changing poets out there, wallowing in misery, tortured and looking to be free.
May 12, 2011
A curiosity at best. Nothing spectacular about the letters themselves, they're basically fed up and peevish reports/lists devoid of any insights, literal flourishes or original thoughts. I might as well have read the reports of any merchant of that time.
Perhaps I was hoping for too much, as I (naturally) wished to learn why Rimbaud abandoned art/European culture so completely and whether he thought he made the right decision. I was hoping for insightful analysis on this. But there is nothing, only the banality of the trade.
This would have been completely fine, if the letters themselves were interesting. Alas, they are not.
Perhaps I was hoping for too much, as I (naturally) wished to learn why Rimbaud abandoned art/European culture so completely and whether he thought he made the right decision. I was hoping for insightful analysis on this. But there is nothing, only the banality of the trade.
This would have been completely fine, if the letters themselves were interesting. Alas, they are not.
January 28, 2010
Definitely a good idea to read the Robb biography for context, but these letters are the real deal.
Want to read
August 2, 2013epub version
July 7, 2015
Sorry - love the poetry -- did not find what the critics said. May try another day.
May 31, 2022
when i first picked up this book, i thought it was going to be the most mundane thing i'd be reading this year (bc who wants to read a bunch of letters detailing 90% money-driven, money-centric exploits and 10% actual life events?) but there was a surprising amount of substance...
do have to say that half the fun is from filling in the gaps between letters with your own imagination or even reading too much into whatever rimbaud is saying � which the preface warns you against, oh no, etc etc (have kept that in mind, hopefully) � from his obsession with economic possessions, his pendulous relationship with his family (though always his 'dear friends'), and the thinly concealed desperation that undergirded his 'peregrinations' (always pragmatic, rarely morosely artistic; so wild that this iconic, restless poet ticks few boxes off the mad artist checklist).
favourite sections:
- pleading letters to verlaine; saucy, need to know more, actually kinda cringe
- every single one of his demands for books; so wild, truly the aspiring (post-?)renaissance man
- towards the end, when rimbaud's cynical musings on death turn into his reality
did his family not get annoyed at how every single letter he wrote to them was just him lamenting about his life problems? was that the norm?? did people not write about happy events??
do have to say that half the fun is from filling in the gaps between letters with your own imagination or even reading too much into whatever rimbaud is saying � which the preface warns you against, oh no, etc etc (have kept that in mind, hopefully) � from his obsession with economic possessions, his pendulous relationship with his family (though always his 'dear friends'), and the thinly concealed desperation that undergirded his 'peregrinations' (always pragmatic, rarely morosely artistic; so wild that this iconic, restless poet ticks few boxes off the mad artist checklist).
favourite sections:
- pleading letters to verlaine; saucy, need to know more, actually kinda cringe
- every single one of his demands for books; so wild, truly the aspiring (post-?)renaissance man
- towards the end, when rimbaud's cynical musings on death turn into his reality
did his family not get annoyed at how every single letter he wrote to them was just him lamenting about his life problems? was that the norm?? did people not write about happy events??
Read
August 13, 2023რემბოს დეგრადაცია მედიუმის შეცვლა� გამოიწვი� და არ� ხელობისა�. მა� შეეძლო აფრიკაში ხეტიალის პარალელურა� ეწერ� ლექსებ�, მაგრამ არ ქნ� - გადაწყვიტა რო� პოეტ� და მოგზაური ცხოვრები� ყოფილიყო. ვე� გათვალ� რო პოეზიი� არწერა� თა� გაყვებოდ� სულიერ� ცხოვრებისთვი� საჭირო მდიდარ� ემოციური გამოცდილებაც.
პირა� წერილებს დროსთა� ერთა� ეტყობა სიმშრალე, ყოფიერ საქმეებზ� პროზაული კირკიტ� და საბოლოოდ ჯანმრთელობის გაუარესებასთან ერთა� რემბ� მორწმუნე ხდებ�, თუმც� აქაც კი თავი� პრაქტიკუ� მიზნებ� ინარჩუნებს და სასოწარკვეთილი მიეახლებ� რელიგიას რო� როგორმ� განიკურნოს (შემდგომშ� - სული იხსნას). ამ დროს უკვე მისგან მხოლოდ ფარსიღ� არის დარჩენილ�.
პირა� წერილებს დროსთა� ერთა� ეტყობა სიმშრალე, ყოფიერ საქმეებზ� პროზაული კირკიტ� და საბოლოოდ ჯანმრთელობის გაუარესებასთან ერთა� რემბ� მორწმუნე ხდებ�, თუმც� აქაც კი თავი� პრაქტიკუ� მიზნებ� ინარჩუნებს და სასოწარკვეთილი მიეახლებ� რელიგიას რო� როგორმ� განიკურნოს (შემდგომშ� - სული იხსნას). ამ დროს უკვე მისგან მხოლოდ ფარსიღ� არის დარჩენილ�.
January 28, 2025
This book was somewhat interesting but generally tedious and boring. Rimbaud is morose and self-centered. His observations of East Africa in the 1880’s was not ‘in the moment� enough to make the book worth it but after my encounter with his poetry i was curious what all the kudos were about ( see previous review).
Only for historical study is this useful. I would recommend not reading this book to everyone.
Only for historical study is this useful. I would recommend not reading this book to everyone.
May 21, 2023
Me hicieron falta mas notitas a pie de página para guiarme mejor, pero es increíble como la poesía gotea en la vida personal de rimbaud, y como la tristeza y desesperación (desolación?) de la última sección va anticipando su final.
June 18, 2023
One might find the selection of letters mundane, trivial, irrelevant, but I love reading the greeting and ending part, where Rimbaud saluted sincerely, cordially, vulnerably, in a variety of forms that make out a hundred silhouettes of love.
October 9, 2024
This is a beautiful book. It is visually pleasing and a pleasure to have and to hold. I struggle to find what I want, but to read from cover to cover and enter the struggle of Rimbaud, it's priceless.
December 30, 2017
The best part about this book is his miserable whining about being stuck in Africa, even though it probably removes the mythical aspect of it.
December 7, 2020
A well constructed assemblage of a poet's mind.
January 1, 2024
Personal letters of Rimbaud from his time in Ethiopia. What a life.
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