Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud (20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet.

Quotes

Ô mes petites amoureuses,
Que je vous hais !
- Oh my little mistresses,
  How I hate you!
- Poésies (1871), "Mes petites amoureuses"

J'allais sous le ciel, Muse! et j'étais ton féal.
- I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.
- Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 1

Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse.
Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou.
- My tavern was the Big Bear.
  My stars in the sky rustled softly.
- Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 2

Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe.
- My sad heart foams at the stern.
- Le Coeur Volé (The Stolen Heart, st. 1

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes !
- Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: vowels,
  Someday I shall recount your latent births.
- Voyelles (Vowels (1871)

O saisons, ô châteaux,
Quelle âme est sans défauts ?
- O seasons, O castles,
  What soul is without flaws?
- Bonheur (Happiness)

J'ai embrassé l'aube d'été.
- I have embraced the summer dawn.
- Illuminations. Aube (Dawn) (1874)
- Variant translation: I have kissed the summer dawn.

Il pleut doucement sur la ville.
- It rains softly on the town.
- From a lost poem^{[specific citation needed]}

Plus léger qu'un bouchon j'ai dansé sur les flots.
- Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves.
- St. 4

Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sures,
L'eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin.
- Sweeter than apples to children
  The green water spurted through my pine-wood hull.
- St. 5

Un soir, j'ai assis la Beauté sur mes genoux. - Et je l'ai trouvée amère. - Et je l'ai injuriée.
- One evening, I sat Beauty in my lap. — And I found her bitter. — And I cursed her.

Je parvins à faire s'évanouir dans mon esprit toute l'espérance humaine.
- I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.

La vie est la farce à mener par tous.
- Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient.
- Once, I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

La vieillerie poétique avait une bonne part dans mon alchimie du verbe.
- Old poetics played a large part in my alchemy of the word.

L'amour est à réinventer, on le sait.
- Love is to be reinvented, that is clear.

Moi ! moi qui me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu au sol.
- I! I who fashioned myself a sorcerer or an angel, who dispensed with all morality, I have come back to earth.

Je me crois en enfer, donc j'y suis.
- I believe I am in Hell, and so I am there.

Je dis qu'il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens.
- I say one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by an immense, long, deliberate derangement of all the senses.
- Letter to Paul Demeny (May 15, 1871) Dickey, Daulton (August 7, 2018). Derangement of the Senses: Arthur Rimbaud and His Quest for Poetic Vision. Litfunhouse.com. Retrieved on October 8, 2021.

Anna Margolin was greatly influenced by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; among the Germans, by Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke; and among the Yiddish poets, by Itsik Manger and Avrom Sutzkever.
- Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin by Shirley Kumove (2005)

What Rimbaud did for language, and not merely for poetry, is only beginning to be understood. And this more by readers than by writers, I feel. At least, in our country. Nearly all the modern French poets have been influenced by him. Indeed, one might say that contemporary French poetry owes everything to Rimbaud. Thus far, however, none have gone beyond him — in daring or invention.
- Henry Miller, (1984). The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud. London: Quartet Books.

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Arthur Rimbaud