New Releases by Arthur Rimbaud

One of the world''s most influential poets, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) is remembered as much for his volatile personality and tumultuous life as he is for his writings, almost all of which he produced before the age of twenty. Paul Schmidt''s acclaimed collection brings together his complete poetry, prose, and letters, including "The Drunken Boat," "The Orphans'' New Year," "After the Flood," and "A Season in Hell." Complete Works is divided into eight "seasons"—Childhood, the Open Road, War, the Tormented Heart, the Visionary, the Damned Soul, a Few Belated Cowardices, and the Man with the Wind at His Heels—that reflect the facets of Rimbaud''s life. Insightful commentary by Schmidt reveals the courage, vision, and imagination of Rimbaud''s poetry and sheds light on one of the most enigmatic figures in letters.

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.

Translated, edited and with an Introduction by Wyatt Mason “The definitive translation for our time.” –Edward Hirsch From Dante’s Inferno to Sartre’s No Exit, writers have been fascinated by visions of damnation. Within that rich literature of suffering, Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell–written when the poet was nineteen–provides an astonishing example of the grapple with self. As a companion to Rimbaud’s journey, readers could have no better guide than Wyatt Mason. One of our most talented young translators and critics, Mason’s new version of A Season in Hell renders the music and mystery of Rimbaud’s tale of Hell on Earth with exceptional finesse and power. This bilingual edition includes maps, a helpful chronology of Rimbaud’s life, and the unfinished suite of prose poems, Illuminations. With A Season in Hell, they cement Rimbaud’s reputation as one of the foremost, and most influential, writers in French literature.

A phenomenonally precicious schoolboy, Rimbaud was still a teenager when he became notorious as Europe''s most shocking and exhilarating poet. During his brief 5-year reign as the enfant terrible of French literature he produced an extraordinary body of poems that range from the exquisite to the obsene, while simultaneously living a life of dissolute excess with his lover and fellow poet, Verlaine. At the age of 21, he abandonned poetry and travelled across Europe before settling in Africa as an arms trader. This edition sets the two sides of Rimbaud side by side with a sparkling translation of his most exhilarating poetry and a generous selection of the letters from the harsh and colourful period of his life as a colonial trader.

This excellently translated collection of witty, sarcastic, and expressive works includes the complete version of Rimbaud''s autobiographical A Season in Hell, his entire Illuminations, a large selection of early verse poems, and "The Drunken Boat," considered by many to be his masterpiece.

Poetry. Translation. Translated from the French by Mark Spitzer. One of the many common beliefs about History''s mostmythic poet is that he gave up writing after vanishing from France.After 130 years of misinformation, FROM ABSINTHE TO ABYSSINIA dispels this rumor and others by presenting works of Rimbaud''s post-Paris prosethat have never before been seen in English. This collection, translated by Mark Spitzer, alsoincludes a section of poetry which includes highly innovative versionsof some of the poet''s most well-known works, as well as many shockingand erotic poems that English-language readers have never had access toprior to the publication of these groundbreaking translations.

From the Publisher: Rimbaud is the enfant terrible of French literature, the precocious genius whose extraordinary poetry is revolutionary in its visionary, hallucinatory content and its often liberated forms. He wrote all his poems between the ages of about fifteen and twenty-one, after which he turned his back on family, friends, and France to roam the world. In his final years he was a trader in the Horn of Africa. Out of this brief, colorful life and wilderness of sensory poetry, a mythic Rimbaud has been created. One of the greatest French poets of all times, Rimbaud has become an enduring icon of youth, rebellion, and freedom-though behind the myth of the man lies a poetic adventure of high ambition and painful rigor, poignant yet heroic. This bilingual edition provides all of Rimbaud''s poems, with the exception of his Latin verses and some small fragments. It also includes some of his prose pieces, chosen because they offer a commentary on his poetic concerns.

1871, c''est l''année où Rimbaud, adolescent de dix-sept ans, fugue une nouvelle fois et part rejoindre Verlaine dans un Paris en pleine insurrection. Avec lui, il fréquente les cénacles littéraires et participe en particulier aux séances du Cercle zutiste, en 1871 et 1872. En compagnie d''artistes blagueurs et bohèmes, le jeune poète insolent s''adonne avec une aisance époustouflante au pastiche,. à la raillerie et à la blague de potache qui n''épargnent aucun des poétes reconnus. À travers les 22 pièces qu''il a laissées dans l''Album zutique, on découvre un Rimbaud provocateur et ludique.

CHARLES NICHOLL, author of SOMEBODY ELSE: ARTHUR RIMBAUD IN AFRICA 1880-91 has written of Dennis J. Carlile''s translation of RIMBAUD:THE WORKS. "These are the best renditions of Rimbaud in English since Wallace Fowlie''s nearly forty years ago, and many of them surpass that high standard. These poems have been wrestled with, which is the very least they demand, and successfully brought back home. Carlile gets the difficult switches and swoops of tone mostly right, and the linguistic detail is impressive-- for ''un voix etraignait mon coeur gele'' you can''t get much better than ''a voice would hobble my frostbitten heart''." This new translation of Rimbaud is the first in English to include the fragments and a "Found Poem" in English. Notes and commentary along with a life-chronology and "selected further media" assist the reader in delving into these darkly brilliant visions. RIMBAUD: THE WORKS is the first new English version of this poet''s work in 25 years. It contains all of his extant work from 1869 to 1875. The book is laid out in four parts. PART ONE contains "A Season In Hell" (1873) along with Delmore Schwartz''s perceptive introduction (out of print for over half a century). PART TWO contains all the poetry and prose pieces composed between 1869 and 1875, including THE DRUNKEN BOAT, the "Album Zutique" and the fragments called "Bribes" first published by Gallimard in 1954. PART THREE consists of "Illuminations" (c. 1872 74) with a brief preface culled from Enid Starkie´s ARTHUR RIMBAUD. "Illuminations" is lineated according to the author''s manuscript (published in facsimile with facing print text by Editions Bibliothèque de l''Image 1998) and the order of the text is that of the manuscript. A set of notes for each section defines obscure geographic, linguistic, historical, and mythological allusions found in the text. PART FOUR presents a chronology of the poet''s life, followed by selected commentary from Aldous Huxley, William H. Gass, Marie-Louise von Franz, Paul Verlaine, Jefferson Humphries, Bertrand Mathieu, Sean Lennon, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, among others. A guide to selected further media (books, music, CD-ROM, video, and film) is also included. [Aside from "Illuminations," which is based on the manuscript copy, the French texts utilized for the translation were those of Gallimard (ed. Forestier) and Flammarion (ed. Steinmetz).] Cover portrait and frontispiece of Rimbaud plus three illustrations by Alexia Montibon.

Verslag in proza en poëzie van een identiteitscrisis.

Features A Season in Hell, one of the great works of modern literature, and many of the verse poems which Rimbaud wrote between March 1870 and August 1872.

Cette édition du centenaire, qui a mobilisé de nombreux collaborateurs, a également bénéficié de précieux concours que nous tenons à mentionner ici avec reconnaissance. Messieurs Alain Tourneux, conservateur du musée Rimbaud, et Gérard Martin, directeur de la bibliothèque municipale de Charleville-Mézières, nous ont facilité l''accès aux différents documents ou manuscrits dont ils ont la garde. Monsieur Jean Voellmy a accepté de relire attentivement la composition des lettres de Rimbaud à Alfred Ilg que les éditions Gallimard, pour leur part, nous ont autorisés à reproduire. Madame Nicole Grégoire a bien voulu se charger, dans des conditions difficiles, de la toute première saisie du corpus des œuvres de Rimbaud. Monsieur Francis Bueb, responsable de la communication culturelle de la FNAC, nous a constamment encouragés et soutenus pour ce qui concerne l''information destinée au public et la promotion de ce livre. Enfin, cette édition bénéficie du haut patronage de l''UNESCO.

''The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. . .'' Rimbaud was sixteen when he made this famous declaration. By 1886, then thirty-two and an explorer, trader and slave-trader on the Red Sea, he had absolutely no interest in the fate or success of the poetry infused with mysticism, alchemy and magic that he had written in his teens. That same year, in Paris, Les Illuminations was being published as the work of ''the late'' Arthur Rimbaud, first in a Symbolist periodical and then in book form, with an Introduction by his former lover, Verlaine. Seldom has a writer''s vision of changing the world through words failed so spectacularly as did Rimbaud''s. That failure turned him into an incomparable tragic poet: not only ''a wild undisciplined genius, a mystic philosopher and thinker, an inspired poet'' but also, according to Enid Starkie, ''one of the most finished artists . . . a supreme master of prosody and style''. This Penguin Classic reproduces the text of the Pléiade edition, 1954, with selected letters and prose translations that have been highly acclaimed.

Although he abandoned poetry before he was twenty-one years old, and wrote for only five or six years in all, Arthur Rimbaud has had an extraordinary influence on modern poetry. His work helped inspire poetic Symbolism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. Rimbaud dreamed of re-creating life through his words. Not content merely to describe the world, he longed to reorder it through his revolutionary poetry. He rebelled against all forms of hypocrisy, as well as against conventional concepts of love, morality, religion, and art. He even dreamed of liberating women from "endless servitude." Written a century ago, A Season in Hell and The Illuminations read like the works of an avant-garde poet of today. In her Introduction dealing with Rimbaud''s life and work, Enid Rhodes Peschel discusses his concept of the voyant, the poet-visionary he dreamed of becoming through a "reasoned deranging of all his senses." A Season in Hell, which combines autobiography with self-appraisal, vision and hallucination, reflects Rimbaud''s tortures in trying to be a voyant. The forty-two poems of The Illuminations, kaleidoscopic evocations of a universe in continual evolution, are further evidence of his attempts to reach this transcendent state. Enid Rhodes Peschel has succeeded in not only translating these works but in recreating them. Eye, ear, mind, and heart have all been engaged in her effort to capture the tone and rhythm of Rimbaud''s language as well as the quality of his thought. Book jacket.