Product Description
Even the most accurate and faithful translators of Rimbaud (Louis Varese, Wallace Fowlie, and Oliver Bernard) have misunderstood the poetry, and consequently, have left less-than-accurate impressions of his work. Mark Spitzer asserts "No translation should ever be trusted, especially when the text is so complex that even the experts in the original language are stumped by multiple meanings, secret syntax and elusive argot. Such is the case with Rimbaud."

With From Absinthe to Abyssinia, Spitzer strives to retain the meaning of the original text, honoring the imagination of the poet. He offers a balance in what we know about Rimbaud, in relationship to what we pretend to know. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Must-Have for the Rimbaud Enthusiast
(This review was originally written for www.violetcrown.net)

For this fairly random collection, translator Mark Spitzer picked rare items that either particularly interested him or had never been published in English before. It includes poems from Rimbaud's childhood, early drafts of more famous works, parodies of other poets, letters from his sojourn in Africa and even police reports of the incident in which his lover, Paul Verlaine, shot and wounded him.

A major fan of Rimbaud, I enjoyed this book thoroughly. It provided yet another blurry glimpse into the bizarre life and mind of a genius. The childhood poems display Rimbaud's mastery of language at an incredibly early age - he may have written one of these poems as early as ten. Other poems reflect his typically clever wordplay and fondness for parody and obscene humor.

In contrast, the letters from Africa suggest a sudden shift of interest from self-exploration, religion and abstract expression to science, history and trade. The reader sees Rimbaud's surprising transformation from poet to businessman in all its perplexing, paradoxical glory. To a lover of Rimbaud's poetry, or anyone who seeks to write creatively, it's an unsettling thing to behold. While Rimbaud's time in Africa certainly involved a great deal of adventure, it's hard to see it in these dry, unpoetic letters.

Spitzer's insightful endnotes proved indispensable throughout. Without them, the many obscure references and allusions in Rimbaud's poetry and letters would have lost me. In fact, without a previous knowledge of Rimbaud's works and biography, I would have found much of this collection excruciating. It's not meant as a sampling of Rimbaud's finest. He might well cringe if he were alive to see some of these childhood works and rough drafts in print. But for the Rimbaud enthusiast who has exhausted existing translations of the more famous works and yearns to read more, I wholeheartedly recommend ABSINTHE TO ABYSSINIA. ... Read more

Product Description
This new translation, with the French text on the facing pages, captures the tone and rhythm of Rimbaud's language as well as the quality of his thought. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

crappy kindle format
I bought this book on the kindle, and was extremely dissappointed t find that the format was mucked up. The translations and the original french in the hard copy of the book lie on opposite pages; in the kindle format, the french and the english are interspersed and the poems are completely unreadable.

Rimbaud the Great in a Poor Translation
Rimbaud's crackling poetic prose and gorgeous poetry is full of inventive energy in French: in this translator's English, it is flat, stilted, awkward and energyless. If you read French, the book's OK, because you have the original on facing pages. But if you read French, why buy this? ... Read more

Product Description
Rimbaud's vagrant and dissolute life in Paris and England with fellow poet, Paul Verlaine, which ended with a shooting drama in Brussels, is the stuff of legend and led to Rimbaud's being mythologized and idolized, particularly by the French surrealists.His poetry - visionary, unnerving, idiosyncratic, disorientating - has had a profound influence on modern writing. A Season in Hell (1873) reviews his visionary claims for poetry - his ideal of the poet as seer, through the systematic disordering of the senses, of poetry as part of life and of action. His is an agonized, divided voice, pulled in all directions by instabilities of emotion and belief. Illuminations (pub. 1886), an extended prose poem, is both a series of visual images - landscapes, cityscapes, clowns, circuses, interiors - and of mood pictures, with no one voice or identity. Fragmented, hallucinatory, decentred, the poet, in a series of shifting roles, explores pluralistic notions of the self. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Rimbaud is a deadent genius
Arthur Rimbaud is one of the great poetic geniuses in the canon of world history. His brilliance manifests itself in his iconoclastic criticism of the world at large, a world which condemns him in his relentless pursuit oftruth. These poems are a vision of personal truth, one rooted in pain andexperience, in the lessons of a life which was bled out of him in thestreets of Paris and the crumbling cities of the Old World. Rimbaud, likeBaudelaire, is a decadent genius, offering insights into the human soul andits relation to a world which offers nothing but alienation. His verses arestrange and unfamiliar, breaking conventional poetic forms to such anextent that it cannot be considered rebellion; it is almost as though hedisregards the work of every poet before him to find a perfectly honestform of expression. And the results are striking. If sometimes a bitobtuse, his poems have the feeling of a revelatory hymn: each word conveyslayers of meaning, and when taken together they form a sort of gestalt forthe human spirit. Rimbaud, like those he inspired--from Jim Morrison toAlan Ginsberg--is voice of suffering and redemption that should not beignored.

A Season in Hell : Illuminations
It's been well over a century since Arthur Rimbaud penned "A Season in Hell" and "Illuminations" in his native French.It is said by many that "Illuminations" was the most complex collectionthat Rimbaud wrote in his short span of writing, but this translation byMark Treharne truly captured the essence of Rimbauds work."A Seasonin Hell & Illuminations" embodies Rimbauds thoughts and state ofbeing at the time with his amazing use of metaphors and grasp of thewritten word.This book is definately a must have for the most zealousRimbaud fans and new readers alike. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Good translation of Rimbaud's works
Rimbaud's poetry is shaped by powerful events in his life.
The translations are, on the whoe, well done. ... Read more

Product Description
Written by Rimbaud at the age of 18 in the wake of his tempestuous affair with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, "A Season in Hell" has been a touchstone for anguished poets, artists, and lovers for more than a century. This stunning volume presents Rimbaud's poem in the original French and in English translation. Each of the poem's eight sections if accompanied by a dazzling Mapplethorpe photograph that brilliantly complements the work's shifting moods . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

very pleased with my order
Am pleased with my order. Item is as it was described and was received quickly. Would purchase from this seller again.

An edition good enough for gift giving
There are several editions of this book published.They have been thoroughly reviewed, so I will just review this edition, not the material itself.

As you can see by the photograph, it has a red cover and black spine.On the front cover and the title page there is a picture of a shirtless horned man.This book contains black and white photographs, by Robert Mapplethorpe, placed just about at the beginning of every section.I do not like them and I think they are a distraction from the text.

This is a very well constructed book.The pages are made out of a high grade thick paper.On the left side of the book is the original text in French.On the right side is the translation in English, which is done byPaul Schmidt.Since I can not read French, I completely enjoyed the English version.

Brilliant
This is a brilliant encapsulation of the rage of the artist. He has a contempt for mankind, society, it's progress, and yet can't escape society. He can be a "..." as artists where called back then, refuse to live a middle class existence, live a life of drunken debauchery, and yet that is just another societal role.
His imagery is powerful, his language self-deprecating andinsanely sincere. It draws you in with its suffering.
At the end he finds his life as an artist, his passion, empty. It all ended with the gunshot to the hand that ended his affair with Verlaine. In short, he equates his artistry and homosexual affairs with hell, and a return to society redemption. This explains how he became a materialist later on in his life, a trader, even considering trading slaves.
It is a sad fate for someone who had such a poetic gift.
I still enjoy reading A Season In Hell, even after having read it many times. Ultimately, the work is flawed; it has a little too much affected insanity, angst, the sign of an adolescent work, but it is also full of pure poetry and promise.

The hell within
These are the brilliant and mystical hallucinations of the original "enfant terrible" and his visionary raptures about poetry, innocence and guilt. Verbal deliriums suffused with pain and hatred, remorse and desperation, but also with a parodic, pathetic and fatalistic megalomania. The "mystical rage" transformed into pyromaniac wording. Poems in prose, of very high quality, which reflect the fury of the love-hate relationship of Rimbaud with life and Universe.

Anguished and Brilliant
In the collection of prose poems and verse fragments that make up the short book A Season in Hell, begun in April 1873 in an outbuilding at Rimbaud's family farm at the village of Roche and completed by the end of August, he looks back in despair over his life as a poet.In one of the fragments, titled "Ravings number two" he talks about "the history of one of my follies.""I invented the colors of the vowels!" he claims, and goes on:"I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible...to all the senses...I expressed the inexpressible.I defined vertigos...I ended up regarding my mental disorder as sacred."

Rimbaud draws a picture of his affair with Verlaine in cynical terms, painting Verlaine as a weak and foolish virgin and himself as an "infernal bridegroom," a monster of cruelty.It wasn't far from the truth.

The last chapter of A Season in Hell is titled "Farewell."It has an air of exhaustion and relief about it."I have tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues.I believed I had acquired supernatural powers.Well!I must bury my imagination and my memories.A fine fame as an artist and story-teller swept away!I!I who called myself magus or angel, exempt from all morality, I am given back to the earth, with a task to pursue, and wrinkled reality to embrace.A peasant!" A Season In Hell was finished in August 1873.Rimbaud somehow persuaded his thrifty mother to pay to have the book printed in Belgium.He sent his six author's copies to his friends and to men of letters in Paris.Many people see this manuscript as his farewell to literature.It certainly reads like that, although Enid Starkie believes that it was Rimbaud's farewell to a certain kind of literature--visionary, mystical, growing out of the selfish and hallucinatory lifestyle that had crashed to a halt only a few months before with his shooting and the jailing of Verlaine--and a commitment to something more humble and realistic."Well, now I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies," Rimbaud wrote.He hoped that the French literary world would offer him the forgiveness that he was now prepared to seek, and give his book favorable reviews.He the proceeded to Paris to see how his book had fared.

Favorable reviews?He must have been mad.To those literary men, the dilettantes Rimbaud had mocked and despised a year or two earlier, Rimbaud was the insolent catamite who had destroyed their old friend Verlaine:sponged off him, wrecked his marriage, corrupted his soul and ruined his life, and then, when he had used him up, had turned him in to the police to face hard labor in a Belgian jail.

We have an eyewitness account of Rimbaud on the day when the last door in Paris had been slammed in his face, at the moment when he realized that the literary career he'd embraced so passionately was over.It was the evening of the first of November, 1873, a holiday, and the cafés and restaurants were crowded.The poet Poussin had joined some writer friends at the Café Tabourey.He noticed a young man alone in a corner, staring into space.It was Rimbaud.Poussin went over and offered to buy him a drink."Rimbaud was pale and even more silent than usual," he later recalled."His face, indeed his whole bearing, expressed a powerful and fearsome bitterness."For the rest of his life Poussin "retained from that meeting a memory of dread."

When the café closed, Rimbaud--who hadn't spoken to anyone all evening--set out to walk home through the late autumn countryside.It took him about a week.When he got to Charleville he built a bonfire and burned all his manuscripts.He didn't bother to collect the remaining five hundred copies of his book from the printer--they moldered there until they were discovered by a Belgian lawyer in 1901.That should have been the end of it.But Rimbaud couldn't quite let go.The following year in London he carefully copied out his prose poems, gathered under the title Illuminations.The year after that he tried to get them published.For the anguished but brilliant Rimbaud, giving up poetry must have been akin to weaning himself from a potent drug. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a solid rendering of a french master
This work provides a very thorough, readable compilation of Rimbaud's best. A thoughtful introduction and timeline help place the poems in a larger context. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Wonderful Translation
Put simply, I have read most other translations of Rimbaud. In my opinion, Oliver Bernard and Paul Schmidt are the best. Best of luck.

Perfectly Viable (an erudite translation)
I neither care to fret with regard to missing lines of certain poems within, but due to the uncalled for hue and cry concerning this transcribed text I must take great offense. This translation is six-fold more erudite than Wyatt Mason's "Rimbaud: Complete." This happens to be one of Peguins best translations as opposed to its hideous Goethe's works.
The exquisite locution more than compensates for the parts from which the translator exempted inclusion. I would rather see an excellent translation (amended to convey sophistry in English)than a more accurate but slovenly done rendition of detriment by inordinate dedication to accuracy.

Has the French, at least.
I bought this volume for only two reasons, that it had the french with unobstrusive footnoted translations; and that it was cheaper than the fowlie.

This has turned out to be quite a mistake.I had thought that "Collected Poems" meant that every known poem would be included.Well, this volume doesn't.I couldn't find avertissment (ces ecritures ci sont des un toute jeune homme...) anywhere in it, and wondered if it was by some other French author.I later found it in the Fowlie edition.

If you have a good deal of French, this may not be too bad an introductory edition, but if you had any French, you'd want a complete edition.Don't buy this book.

Avoid
It's a scandal that Penguin are keeping Oliver Bernard's lame translations in print.His are the worst translations of Rimbaud that I've ever read - lazy, limp and boring, and Rimbaud in French is _never_ boring.

If you want a more-or-less complete and faithful translation of Rimbaud, try the Wallace Fowlie edition. But don't waste your money on Bernard.

One Of The Better Rimbaud Collections
This book collects Rimbaud's poetry focusing mainly on the original French poems. The English translations are placed below the French poems in smaller type. This allows the reader to view Rimbaud's work as he wanted it seen. And the translations are placed more like footnotes (although stilleasily read). The translations are also some of the best. Although Schmidtdid do a good job, as well as Varese, Oliver Bernard's translation comesclosest to the orginal French as possible. I recommend this book if youwould like to see Rimbaud's work as he originally wrote it withtranslations added as an addition to the work. (Also, there are helpfulfootnotes that aid in finding meanings in some of Rimbaud's writing as wellas a biography of the poet.) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Amazing, simply amazing.
This collection of poems was beautifully done and I commend the translatoron his work.He was able to capture the insanity and darkness of Rimbaudin his best form.I truly believe this is one for the ages. ... Read more

Product Description

With perfect pitch for contemporary audiences, this new translation offers all the immediacy, hallucinatory surrealism, and wit that secured Arthur Rimbaud's esteemed position. As a major poet renowned for his strangely seductive power and innocence, Rimbaud was a dangerous and exhilarating force whose break with literary forms and conventions is aptly displayed in this volume. Published with the French on facing pages and an insightful afterword, this compilation plunges into the heart of Rimbaud's mysterious, revelatory beauty. This is a lucid and lively translation of a seminal work that remains essential and relevant to this day.

Product Description
Here, for the first time, the work of three of Frances greatest poets has been published in a single volume: the sensual and passionate glow of Charles Baudelaire, the desperate intensity and challenge of Arthur Rimbaud, and the absinthe-tinted symbolist songs of Paul Verlaine.

To bring the essence of these three giants of modern poetry to the American public, Joseph M. Bernstein, a noted interpreter and translator of French literature, has selected the most representative of their writings and presented them along with a biographical and critical introduction.

"Not to know these three poets", he points out, "is to deprive oneself of a pleasure as rare as it is indispensable to any real understanding of the aims and direction of modern literature.

The volume includes Arthur Symons' unabridged translation of Flowers of Evil and the Prose Poems of Baudelaire; Louise Varese's translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell and Prose Poems from "Illuminations"; J. Norman Cameron's translation of the verse from the Illuminations; and a representative selection from Verlaine's verse translated by Gertrude Hall and Arthur Symons. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Rather spotty
I am disappointed to find that the selections in this book are rather spotty.A number of major poems are left out, while some less good ones are included.Also,I dislike the concept of trying to duplicate the French meter in English.The translator has to twist and torture the author's text to the point that the English "equivalent" is often far removed from the original French.In my view it is best to avoid trying to convey rhyme and rhythm and sounds in English and stick to the the words, the concepts and connotations of the French text. I am very familiar with a number of the poems listed, but on first reading these English versions I just couldn't recognize the original at all.

Symbolist Poets Highlighted in Tight Volume
"Baudelaire Rimbaud Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems" carries with it a strong selection of each poet's better known poems. Collecting these three, specifically, is in tune with their own sense of language and image.

The translations work splendidly for all three poets, as executed by several different translators. As such, the pieces chosen are encumbered or glorified by their own merit, and not of the hurdles and interpretative biases of language.

I first learned of Arthur Rimbaud, ironically, from my religion teacher at a Catholic high school. As the first French poet I was introduced I felt, then, obligated to like his work. However, now, in seeing him compared to the much greater Baudelaire, Rimbaud comes across self-indulgent and meaningless. I gain no pleasure from reading his work, and consider, of these three, him to be far overrated.

Paul Verlaine, for me, is somewhere in-between. His romance with Rimbaud (scandalous then, as he dumped his infant daughter and young wife for Rimbaud) luckily did not reduce his poetry to wandering colors and images. Occasionally, he is even cliche:

Oh, heavy, heavy my despair
Because, because of One so fair.
(from Verlaine's "Oh, Heavy, Heavy")

And occasionally brilliant:

Hills and fences hurry by
Blent in greenish-rosy flight,
And the yellow carriage-light
Blurs all to the half-shut eye
(from Verlaine's "Brussels")

Baudelaire's prose poem selections are too many here. They do not meet up in quality with his more tightly articulated poetry. The section, "Flowers of Evil," though, is a masterful, though bitter, book within a book.

Throughout "Flowers," Baudelaire defies God, but never denies his existence or power, as seen here in"St Peter's Denial,"

What has God done with all this flood of sacrifices?
Which rises to his Seraphim divine?
As a tyrant intoxicated with his wine
His fearful sleep is haunted by his vices.

I fully recommend "Baudelaire Rimbaud Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems." While I cannot so I am an exuberant fan of any of them, their influence on poets I completely embrace I acknowledge, and am pleased to have become better aware of them.

Anthony Trendl
HungarianBookstore.com

poets of evil
I think I have a better instinctual understand of these "decadents" who were the clear marking of the break between the old aesthetic rationality and the surrealism, symbolism, etc. thatfollowed--those who actually blend the periods, smudge and blur the twoworldviews, like Poe and Blake and, here, Baudelaire do. I likeBaudelaire's phantasmagoria, his exoticism put in service of delivering aconcrete insight. And I especially like it when the poetic histrionics of"Flowers of Evil" give way to the fascinating prose poems--like"The Confiteor of the Artist" or the marvellouswar-against-poetry volley "The Courteous Marksman." Other fineones (reminding me also of Lovecraft)--"The Evil Glazier,""At One O'Clock in the Morning," "Solitude." There'smisanthropy, insight and occult broodishness here of the most useful sort.

Rimbaud and Verlaine didn't grip me as strongly--I appreciate that theystretched artistic boundaries, but what they have done intrinsically Idon't find as rich. Rimbaud's religious ravings and visions I findintelligent but obscurant (like Wallace Stevens)--he's doing someconstructive deconstruction, but it's hardly readable (though I do like themore coherent symbolism of the famed "Drunken Boat"). AndVerlaine, while he has the occasional dead-on whimsical insight, is a bittoo florid in verbiage, classical in form, and even conventional for me.With these latter two poets, I think my concern with translated poetry alsomust come in at full force--this sort of wordplay and deliberatesuggestiveness must be highly dependent on the nuance of the originalwords, and must therefore lose something considerable in English.--J.Ruch ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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poetry, tr Bertrand Mathieu, bilingual ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Jive
If this translation were listed as French-Jive, I would award it 5 stars. Otherwise . . .

Horrible Innacurate Translation
Anyone purchasing this translation of Rimbaud's work should only do so as a case study in translation faux pas. The translator shows a weak command of the English language, particularly for someone attempting a translation of the works of an author as intricate and complex as Rimbaud. Typically, a translator should translate into their own native tongue, not into a foreign language. There are countless instances in this translation where the French text used would be most clearly understood if directly translated into English, and yet, the translator has unnecessarily chosen to create his own verbiage and syntax. In many instances the original French meaning is totally lost, and the English text carries an entirely different meaning.

Buyer Beware! The translator should be shot!
This Volume is beautifully illustrated. Unfortunately that is the best that could be said for it. The translation is a travesty, as Mathieu's takes it upon himself to express some of his own "artisticexpressions" by inserting outdated and anachronistic euphemisms fromthe 60's! Shame on him for being so self-serving and egotistical to take onthis poetry as though it were his own. I would compare his actions tovandalism!

POWERFUL AND AMAZING FOR A 16YEAR OLD!!
I FOUND THE WORK OF ARTHUR RIMBAULD STIMULATING AND BEAUTIFUL THE MOVIE "TOTAL ECIPSE" MADE ME AWARE OF HIS WORK IT'S AMAZING WORK FOR ONE AS YOUNG AS 16I'D RECOMEND ITTO SERIOUS POETS

best work ever by genius Rimbaud.
This is the best work ever, by THE genius, Arthur Rimbaud.This is written when he was 18, and it is his last work.This book is full of rebelious thoughts, very thought-provoking, and it throughoutly inspired me.really.whoever likes/admires/don't know of/curious of this genius Rimbaud, please read this, amazement guaranteed! ... Read more

Product Description
Poesies Completes 1895 ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more