Arthur Rimbaud
Paperback | Pages: 182 pages Rating: 4.37 | 10154 Users | 305 Reviews
Itemize About Books Illuminations
| Title | : | Illuminations |
| Author | : | Arthur Rimbaud |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 182 pages |
| Published | : | January 17th 1957 by New Directions (first published 1875) |
| Categories | : | Poetry. Cultural. France. Classics. European Literature. French Literature. Literature. 19th Century |
Narrative During Books Illuminations
The prose poems of the great French Symbolist, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), have acquired enormous prestige among readers everywhere and have been a revolutionary influence on poetry in the twentieth century. They are offered here both in their original texts and in superb English translations by Louise Varèse. Mrs. Varèse first published her versions of Rimbaud’s Illuminations in 1946. Since then she has revised her work and has included two poems which in the interim have been reclassified as part of Illuminations. This edition also contains two other series of prose poems, which include two poems only recently discovered in France, together with an introduction in which Miss Varèse discusses the complicated ins and outs of Rimbaldien scholarship and the special qualities of Rimbaud’s writing. Rimbaud was indeed the most astonishing of French geniuses. Fired in childhood with an ambition to write, he gave up poetry before he was twenty-one. Yet he had already produced some of the finest examples of French verse. He is best known for A Season in Hell, but his other prose poems are no less remarkable. While he was working on them he spoke of his interest in hallucinations––"des vertiges, des silences, des nuits." These perceptions were caught by the poet in a beam of pellucid, and strangely active language which still lights up––now here, now there––unexplored aspects of experience and thought.Details Books As Illuminations
| Original Title: | Illuminations |
| ISBN: | 0811201848 (ISBN13: 9780811201841) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating About Books Illuminations
Ratings: 4.37 From 10154 Users | 305 ReviewsJudge About Books Illuminations
This book was harshly disappointing. I hardly found a single page worth re-reading or reminiscing about. The style was dynamic and sharp, but on the whole, I felt the content can be best described as "Sophomoric".I can't stop reading books alongside Infinite Jest.Today I checked out Ashbery's new translation of Illuminations from the library and read it in one sitting in my kitchen. I'm glad I did it. It's a beautiful book. I don't know much French, but I will fight anyone who says this is not a good translation.Really, we should all be singing these poems to each other. We should've fought for the last copies in bookstores and read them all the first night they were published. If we care about poetry
Either Rimbaud is a bit like a popular brand of salty yeast extract or I have no poetic sensibility at all. Oh well.
Haunting and surreal - resonates in the hollowness we all try to fill.
Frankly, I do not know why I still bother with poetry. It is not, and apparently never will be a favourable genre of mine. Unjust rating, perhaps; but this very much resembles plain text to me.
Stars seem difficult here (for translation? for R or A or both?), because I read another translation of *Illuminations* some time ago, and remember feeling like I was reading a translation. But Ashbery's Rimbaud is something quite different, more immediate, and perhaps one way of living out "I is someone else" ("Je est un autre.") To reference lines I'll use "R/A" (Resident Assistant? Recycled Author?).In "Historic Evening" R/A bemoans the Romantic hangover: "...it's no longer possible to submit
I doubt my own worthiness to review such sublime material. Although I usually avoid deifying literature, what Rimbaud does here is not the stuff of mortals. He truly is the only one capable of the savage slideshow he presents here as illuminations. Sheer brilliance, this. It's such a shame that I do not have a working knowledge of French to read the original but Ashberry seems to have done as stellar job with the translation. Recommended reading for anyone and everyone who chooses to rise above
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