Most Popular Books by 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 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.

"To each being, several other lives seemed due." -Arthur Rimbaud Having closely studied and admired the visionary masterpieces of 19th-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud for years, Christopher Bakka has translated them for himself. Born from a desire to deeply engage with the original French texts and to apprehend, as clearly as is possible, the words that Rimbaud wrote, these translations of A Season in Hell and The Illuminations are free from the wildly creative liberties in diction and syntax that make most translations of Rimbaud unreliable. Pure translation, is, of course, impossible, especially where poetry is concerned; devoted readers of Rimbaud, therefore, are encouraged to engage with the music and ambiguity of the poet''s original French, presented here en face.

Enduring icon of creativity, authenticity, and rebellion, and the subject of numerous new biographies, Arthur Rimbaud is one of the most repeatedly scrutinized literary figures of the last half-century. Yet almost thirty years have elapsed without a major new translation of his writings. Remedying this state of affairs is Rimbaud Complete, the first and only truly complete edition of Rimbaud’s work in English, translated, edited, and introduced by Wyatt Mason. Mason draws on a century of Rimbaud scholarship to choreograph a superbly clear-eyed presentation of the poet’s works. He arranges Rimbaud’s writing chronologically, based on the latest manuscript evidence, so readers can experience the famously teenaged poet’s rapid evolution, from the lyricism of “Sensation” to the groundbreaking early modernism of A Season in Hell. In fifty pages of previously untranslated material, including award-winning early verses, all the fragmentary poems, a fascinating early draft of A Season in Hell, a school notebook, and multiple manuscript versions of the important poem “O saisons, ô chateaux,” Rimbaud Complete displays facets of the poet unknown to American readers. And in his Introduction, Mason revisits the Rimbaud myth, addresses the state of disarray in which the poet left his work, and illuminates the intricacies of the translator’s art. Mason has harnessed the precision and power of the poet’s rapidly changing voice: from the delicate music of a poem such as “Crows” to the mature dissonance of the Illuminations, Rimbaud Complete unveils this essential poet for a new generation of readers.

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.

A new translation of the best and most provocative work by France''s infamous rebel poet, in a bilingual edition Poet, prodigy, precursor, punk: the short, precocious, uncompromisingly rebellious career of the poet Arthur Rimbaud is one of the legends of modern literature. By the time he was twenty, Rimbaud had written a series of poems that are not only masterpieces in themselves but that forever transformed the idea of what poetry is. Without him, surrealism is inconceivable, and his influence is palpable in artists as diverse as Henry Miller, John Ashbery, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith. In this essential volume, renowned translator Mark Polizzotti offers authoritative and inspired new versions of Rimbaud’s major poems and letters, including generous selection of Illuminations and the entirety of his lacerating confession A Season in Hell—capturing as never before not only the meaning but also the daredevil attitudes and incantatory rhythms that make Rimbaud’s works among the most perpetually modern of his or any other generation. This bilingual edition includes the original French versions of each poem.

''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.

"With skill and imagination, Bertrand Mathieu gives us an intimacy of the spoken American that allows readers to absorb themselves in Rimbaud''s private drama as in an obsessive dream of our own.... Mathieu has earned our gratitude and praise for his accomplishment: to have given Rimbaud his contemporary relevance for us."--David Ignatow

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.

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.