Une saison en enfer et le bateau ivre d’Arthur Rimbaud

Cela doit sûrement être le cas – jamais un poète n’a laissé autant de personnes se demander autant, sur si peu de mots…

4 1/2

une Préface…

par Patti Smith. Plus une appréciation imaginative.

(voir spoiler)[In his confessional masterpiece, A Season in Hell, Arthur Rimbaud imparts the formula for the alchemical transformation of the soul, even as he simultaneously acknowledges the futility of acting upon it. No one could exact a more brutal analysis of this sublime scrap of illuminated consciousness than the poet himself. In his o

Surely it must be – never has a poet left so many wondering so much, over so few words …

4 1/2

a Preface …

by Patti Smith. More an imaginative appreciation.

(view spoiler)[In his confessional masterpiece, A Season in Hell, Arthur Rimbaud imparts the formula for the alchemical transformation of the soul, even as he simultaneously acknowledges the futility of acting upon it. No one could exact a more brutal analysis of this sublime scrap of illuminated consciousness than the poet himself. In his own private Gethsemane he is at once savior and betrayer, extending one hand as he slyly withdraws the other. On sheets of gold he spews of the loathsome sheets where he has lain with the fallen angel, Verlaine. He beholds his ancestors; he berates his ancestors. Grappling with the civil war of his personality, he prays bitterly to be good but he is not able. He ridicules his inventiveness, his weariness, his flowering heart. But believe it! It is not a pose, but a confusion. He is nineteen years old and within his cosmology excrement and roses equally offend. As he rolls in piss and thorns he consciously offends himself. He is Hamlet, tossing off dazzling soliloquies as if they were but disgruntled mumblings. To be spent, wrung out, is his dream. And how shall he be spent? Rimbaud knows too well the unfortunate answer. The alchemist must descend within himself, a journey more terrifying than trudging the White Pass or scaling the immense, tragic cliffs of Bhutan. Only by navigating the chaos of his being can he initiate the process of mapping out this small unholy guide. Vows erupt! He shudders as he writes, generating a superb and nasty shedding of skins. Engulfed by a wave of nothingness, he is like an old man who can no longer distinguish tears from laughter. He speaks of abandoning everything, and eventually does, in concert with those who come clean, turn their backs, then burn their poems, to be purified in the flames of their folly. Ignited by the fireworks of his despair, he exhausts us with beauty, but is also the flayed youth, a hyena etc. He articulates the battlements of the besieged soul. What he fears most is to be judged a fraud by God. A Season in Hell brought him nothing but misery. In misery’s company you will find him, tramping the luminous sewer of his own circulatory system with all his marvelous contradictions intact. His hell distilled – rubies strewn in hard places – he arrives, with his infernal stump, at heaven’s gate bowed. Think of me he cries – and we must – immersing ourselves, as his compassionate translator Louise Varese did, in an infinite affair. We pray for him, offering love. History praises him, offering laurels. Mercy sings of him, offering absolution. Arthur Rimbaud, in his long suffering, has at last attained God’s favor. (hide spoiler)]

Ouf! Trop exagéré, mais il capture le style fou, les divagations obscènes, les mots eux-mêmes de ce jeune de dix-neuf ans moderne (hyper-moderne ?!) performance en 1873. Le livre auto-édité, peu après brûlé, ayant une première vie de quelques mois seulement, le jeune iconoclaste n’écrira plus jamais de poésie. Il avait déjà dépassé le milieu de sa vie.

truc ennuyant

(voir spoiler)[The slim volume pictured includes a chronology based on Enid Starkie’s definitive biography of Rimbaud. Born 1854, died 1891. Such interesting events as Rimbaud’s running off to Paris to join the Commune in 1871, at the age of 17.

For additional info on Rimbaud’s life, see my review of Disaster Was My God, Bruce Duffy’s amazing post-modern fictionalized biography of Rimbaud, undoubtedly a more exciting read than any mere biography. (Here)
(hide spoiler)]

poésie

La femme mentionnée dans la préface de Smith, Louis Verese, est bien la traductrice de cette édition. Si vous lisez le français, vous pouvez évaluer vous-même ses traductions – le livre a le français face à l’anglais tout au long.

(voir spoiler)[

the first poem

A SEASON IN HELL

Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.
One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her.
I armed myself against justice.
I fled. O Witches, O Misery, O Hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted!
I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope. On all joy, to strangle it, I pounced with the stealth of a wild beast.
I called to the executioners that I might gnaw their rifle-butts while dying. I called to the plagues to smother me in blood, in sand. Misfortune was my God. I laid myself down in the mud. I dried myself in the air of crime. I played sly tricks on madness.
And spring brought me the idiot’s frightful laughter.
Now, only recently, being on the point of giving my last squawk, I thought of looking for the key to the ancient feast where I might find my appetite again.
Charity is that key. – This inspiration proves that I have dreamed!
« You will always be a hyena… » etc., protests the devil who crowned me with such pleasant poppies. « Attain death with all your appetites, your selfishness and all the capital sins! »
Ah! I’m fed up: – But, dear Satan, a less fiery eye I beg you! And while awaiting a few small infamies in arrears, you who love the absence of the instructive or descriptive faculty in a writer, for you let me tear out these few, hideous pages from my notebook of one of the damned.

miscellaneous passages and phrases.

Let’s hear now a hell-mate’s confession:
« O heavenly Bridegroom, my Lord, do not reject the confession of the saddest of your handmaidens. I am lost. I am drunk. I am unclean. What a life!… « 
[p.35]

… Jamais un homme n’a eu un tel souhait. J’ai réalisé, – sans aucune crainte de lui, – qu’il pouvait être un grave danger pour la société. Peut-être qu’il a des secrets pour changer de vie ? Non, je me dirais qu’il ne cherche qu’eux. Bref, sa charité est ensorcelée, et moi, sa prisonnière…
[p. 41]

Ah ! Cette vie de mon enfance, la grande route par tous les temps, surnaturellement sobre, plus désintéressée que le meilleur des mendiants, fière de n’avoir ni patrie, ni amis, comme c’était stupide ! Et je ne le vois que maintenant !
– J’avais raison de mépriser ces pauvres gens qui ne manqueraient jamais l’occasion d’une caresse, parasites de la propreté et de la santé de nos femmes, maintenant qu’elles sont si peu d’accord avec nous.
[p. 69]

… Vous qui déclarez que les bêtes sanglotent dans leur douleur, que les malades désespèrent, que les morts font de mauvais rêves, essayez de raconter ma chute et mon sommeil. Quant à moi, je ne peux plus m’expliquer que le mendiant avec son interminable Pater et Ave Maria. Je ne peux plus parler !
Cependant, j’ai fini, je pense, le récit de mon enfer aujourd’hui. C’était vraiment l’enfer ; le vieil enfer, celui dont les portes ont été ouvertes par le fils de l’homme.
[p. 81]

Oui, la nouvelle heure est au moins très sévère.
Car je peux dire que la victoire est gagnée : les grincements de dents, les sifflements de feu, les soupirs pestilentiels s’estompent. Tous les souvenirs nuisibles s’estompent. Mes derniers regrets s’envolent, envie des mendiants, des brigands, des amis de la mort, des arriérés en tout genre. O damnés, et si je me vengeais !
Il faut être absolument moderne.
Pas d’hymnes ! Tenir le terrain gagné. Nuit pénible ! Le sang séché fume sur mon visage, et je n’ai rien derrière moi que cet horrible buisson ! … Le combat spirituel est aussi brutal que le combat des hommes : mais la vision de la justice est le plaisir de Dieu seul.
[p. 87]

le début du Bateau Ivre, « Le Bateau Ivre », écrit en 1871. L’orateur à la première personne est, oui, le bateau lui-même.

Alors que je descendais les fleuves infranchissables,
Je ne sentais plus les mains des bateliers qui me guidaient,
Cibles pour crier les peaux rouges qu’ils ont été cloués
Nu aux poteaux.

Qu’est-ce que je me souciais des équipages,
Porteurs de coton anglais ou de grain flamand !
Les bateliers et tout ce brouhaha laissés derrière,
Les eaux m’ont laissé suivre mon propre chemin.

Dans le fouettement furieux des marées,
Plus vide que l’esprit des enfants, j’ai traversé cet hiver
Couru ! Et de grandes presqu’îles non amarrées
Je n’ai jamais connu de tumulte plus triomphant que je ne l’ai connu.

La tempête a béni mon réveil sur la mer.
Léger comme un bouchon, j’ai dansé sur les vagues,
Rouleaux éternels des morts engloutis,
Ni manqué la nuit les yeux idiots des lanternes !
[p. 93]

il continue pendant 21 strophes supplémentaires

(masquer le spoiler)]