Rimbaud by Arthur Rimbaud
'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 Pleiade edition", 1954, with selected letters and prose translations that have been highly acclaimed.
The poetic genius of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) blossomed early and burned briefly. Nearly all of his work was composed when he was in his teens. During the century following his death at thirty-seven, Rimbaud's work and life have influenced generations of readers and writers. Radical in its day, Rimbaud's writing took some of the first and most fundamental steps toward the liberation of poetry from the formal constraints of its history, and now represents one of the most powerful and enduring bodies of poetic expression in human history. Wyatt Mason is a contributing editor of Harper's magazine, where his essays regularly appear. He also writes for The London Review of Books and The New Republic. The Modern Library has published his translations of the complete works of Arthur Rimbaud in two volumes. His translations of Dante's Vita Nuova and Montaigne's Essais are in progress.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780140420647 |
| ISBN 10 | 0140420649 |
| Title | Rimbaud |
| Author | Arthur Rimbaud |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1986-11-27 |
| Number of pages | 384 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |