Rimbaud Problems
M. BOUILLANE DE LACOSTE, one of the greatest authorities on Rimbaud, is the first to have published a scholarly and accurate edition of the verse poems and also the best edition of Une Saison en Enfer, and now he has given us Les Illuminations, a much more difficult and controversial task. He considers that the work consists solely of prose poems— and not, as hitherto, of a mixture of prase and verse—and there is justification for this opinion since the manuscript of Les Illuminations, which came to light during the war, contains only prose. Yet Verlaine, at the time of ptiblication, did not object to the inclusion of verse under that title. M. Bouillane de Lacoste gives as sub-title " painted plates," though this—as well as the other " coloured plates "—came froth- Verlaine alone and there is no proof that Rimbaud ever used it, for it does not appear on any of the pages of the manuscript. I have alwaYs, considered that it reflects a misunderstanding of the real quality orLes M. Bouillane de Lacoste.§ most revolutionary theory is that all the Illuminations were composed after tine Saison en Enfer, but he flogs a dead horse when he maintains that all critics have stated that the latter was Rimbaud's farewell to literattire. He misinterprets me when he declares that I say,. in.my book, that it is not possible to determine whether the Illierninati5ns were written after Une Saison en Enter or before, but, in the.passage which he quotes, I was not referring to the IllOminations as a whole, but only to the V illes which I felt were definitely comprised in London; though whether in 1873 just before Une Saison en Enfer, :or in London in 1874 just after, I did not think could now be determined. Even in my first book on Rimbaud of 1938 1 stated my belief that Une Saison en Enfer was not a farewell to literature as a whole, but only to "voyant" litera.
ture, and in the new version of 1947 I actually gave the names of certain Illuminations which I felt had been written in 1874. I believe that there arefiluminations of two different climates—those written when he believed in his mystical powers, those before the fall From grace, and those afterwards ; those that were spiritual in inspiration, and those that were materialistic Verlaine, in a letter to his friend Lepelletier, written from London in November, 1872, mentions amongst the papers which he left at his father-in-law's house, when he fled with Rimbaud in the summer, a number of prose poems by the latter written some months before. This is sufficient to prove that Rimbaud had written prose poems during his " voyant " period and before Une Saison en Enfer. These may well have been poems like Matinee d'Ivresse and Genie. If there were no Muni/flat/um before Une Saison en Enfer, what then was Rimbaud writing in London in the last months of 1872 and the early months of 1873 ? It does not seem possible that he was writing nothing while Verlaine was composing Les Romances sans Paroles. If there were no Illumi- nations before Une Saison en Enfer, what literature was he repudia- ting in Alchimie du Verbe of that last work ? If M. Lacoste's thesis is correct, then the mystery of Rimbaud's career becomes even more obscure than it has been hitherto. On psychological grounds it seems to me impossible that the mystical poems should have been written after his fall from power, after he had ceased being a voyant. He was certainly saying farewell to mysticism as he emerged from his Saison en Enfer, determined to cling to the top.
most rung of the ladder of common sense. On stylistic grounds also
it seems to me difficult to believe that these spiritual poems should have been written at the same time as poems such as Soir Historique. M. Lacoste has elsewhere written a doctorate thesis on the problem of dating Les Illuminations, but here he has only sum- marised his argument and has been unable, for lack of space, to give all his evidence. I have read his thesis also but am not con- vinced by his deductions, though I think that, otherwise, he has made a valuable contribution, by his researches, to the subject. His thesis is based largely on graphological grounds. He has I studied examples of Rimbaud's writing at various ages and proves —1 am not competent to judge how much reliance can be based en such proofs—that the writing in the manuscript of Les Illumina- tions is not that of 1870, 1871 or 1872. Even if such a contention could be accurately proved—to my ignorant eyes specimens of his writing said to be of the same period seem to be vastly different— it could not be relied on as proof of anything definite, for Rimbaud might have copied out the poems later, as seems probable.
Une Saison en Enfer is very much easier for the general reader than Les Illuminations, and it is also the best approach to Rimbaud. There comes now this exquisite edition with the French on one page and the English on the other, to make his task easier. It is en- hanced by lithographs which are beautiful apart from their context, and which evoke dramatically the atmosphere of spiritual anguish and tension of the work. The translator states, in his preface, that this is the last work that Rimbaud composed, but this is misleading.
He does me the honour of including my book in his bibliography,
but I would have preferred him to have suggested the last version, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1947, which expresses my most recent deductions. The other is in any case unprocurable. The translation is poetically excellent and reflects the mood of the poet with great felicity ; it does not read like a translation, which is high praise. There are, however, some errors which show lack of know- ledge of French idiom. The word "sorcieres" is a frequent one with Rimbaud, and I believe indicates his interest in magic. It should be rendered " witches " rather than " enchanteresses." "Que les vines s'allument le soar ' is, I think, " Let the towns light up at evening " rather than " How the towns light up." "Feu ! feu ser moi ! La ! ou je me rends" should be " Fire or I give myself up," and not " See I offer myself." "Et dire que je tiens la virile" is not " And to think that I contain truth," but rather " I am holding or " I am grasping truth." "II en veut mon esprit" is an ironic and colloquial expression meaning something like " It wants a lot, my mind! " and not "A spiteful thing in my mind." When Rimbaud says, "Dure null ! le sang siche fume sur ma face. et le n'ai derriere moi, que cet horrible arbrisseau ! " he is, I believe, referring to the tree of knowledge which has been shrivelled up in the struggle of the night. He is now going to be completely up-to-date and free of all superstition, so that the tree of knowledge will no longer be a menace to him. That is lost in the rendering " thicket " which is.'in any case, a mistranslation. EIYID STARMS.
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