Gaya Scienza

Of Insdispensible things...

Peter Parker is, also, very positive in his review of Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child, concluding: 'Beautifully written, ambitious in its scope and structure, confident in its execution, The Stranger's Child is a masterclass in the art of the novel.' (TLS, July 1) While The Band of Thebes writes: 'I've read the Hollinghurst, to be released here in October, and while you'll want to too, it is not so magnificent that you need to import it immediately from the UK.'

And Edmund White contrasts Verlaine’s with Rimbaud's recent translations: Poems Under Saturn (Poème saturniens, translated by Karl Kirchwey, Princeton University Press) from the former, Illuminations (translated by John Ashbery, Norton) from the latter, in the July 22 edition of the TLS. Of Illuminations, he writes: 'No one is better suited to translating this poetry than John Ashbery.' He concludes by using the words 'deft, accurate and above all beautiful.'

Maybe the FT weekend edition is not that indispensable after all, even if Rowley Leigh’s recipe of Spelt spaghetti with prawns, in the last issue, is rather inspiring...

Rimbaud in Pléiade, version 3.0

The last edition of Rimbaud's Œuvres complètes in La Pléiade, edited by André Guyaux, is a disappointment...

The works are provided according to the chronological order in which they were written. This is now the standard editorial policy when publishing the poems of Rimbaud who, with the exception of Une Saison en Enfer, never produced a book. Unfortunately, André Guyaux's decision to print the text in small characters when a manuscript by Rimbaud is not available produces a strange effect when some of his masterpieces appear in incredibly tiny characters... This is the case for Le Bateau ivre (The Drunken Boat), and some parts of Illuminations.

The notes to the poems are too few. They are not of great help for someone looking forward to entering into Rimbaud's inner world and understanding his obscure poetry. Is it, as writes Suzanne Bernard in the foreword of her edition of Rimbaud's Œuvres, because: "To provide an annotated edition of Rimbaud's work might appear as a reckless enterprise"? She accepted the challenge, though, in her 1960 edition. Or is it because the book is aimed at insiders?

Finally, Rimbaud's attraction to men (not to use the term 'homosexuality', a word and a concept which did not exist at the time) and its influence on his poetry which is largely autobiographical, are almost absent in the commentary and notes. The Préface, otherwise uninspired, provides the only following hint:

True confession is lacking in Rimbaud's work (sic), except possibly in the Foreward of Deserts of Love: 'Not having loved women, - yet full-blooded!' The image of another desire appears later, in Illuminations, particularly in Story, Circus ou Ancient. Hermeneutics, in Rimbaud, is not only a poetic conquest. It remains closely linked to the unacceptable.

Let's take a few examples.

(1) Le Cœur du Pitre (generally known as The Stolen Heart in English) is a abstruse poem composed by Rimbaud in the spring of 1871. He enclosed it in letters to Georges Izambard, his former schoolteacher, and to the poet Paul Demeny (In the famous Letter of the Seer). "It does not mean nothing" did he warn.

Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe,
Mon coeur est plein de caporal;
Ils y lancent des jets de soupe
Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe.
Sous les quolibets de la troupe
Qui pousse un rire général,
Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe
Mon coeur est plein de caporal!

Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques
Leurs insultes l'ont dépravé:
À la vesprée, ils font des fresques
Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques:
Ô flots abracadabrantesques
Prenez mon coeur, qu'il soit sauvé:
Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques
Leurs insultes l'ont dépravé!

Quand ils auront tari leurs chiques,
Comment agir, ô coeur volé?
Ce seront des refrains bachiques
Quand ils auront tari leurs chiques:
J'aurai des sursauts stomachiques
Si mon coeur triste est ravalé:
Quand ils auront tari leurs chiques,
Comment agir, ô coeur volé?

My sad heart slobbers at the poop
my heart covered with tobacco-spit
They spew streams of soup at it
My sad heart drools at the poop
Under the jeerings of the soldiers
who break out laughing
my sad heart drools at the poop
mt heart covered with tobacco-spit.

Ithypallic and soldierish
Their jeerings have depraved it
In the rudder you see frescoes
Ithypallic and soldierish
O, abracadabratic waves
Take my heart, let it be washed!
Ithypallic and soldierish
their jeerings have depraved it.

When they have used up their quid
How will I act, O stolen heart?
There will be Bacchic hiccups
When they have used up their quid
I will have stomach retchings
If my heart is degraded;
When they have used up their quid
How will I act, O stolen heart?

(translation by Wallace Fowlie)

The poem expresses such a disappointment and such a disgust that it must point to some personal bitter and painful experience. Several commentators have hypothesized that it alluded to a rape that Rimbaud might have suffered in a military barrack during a stay in Paris. Izambard found the poem obscene and ridiculous. André Guyaux only provides two notes: the first for 'caporal' ("A type of cheap tobacco."), the second for 'Ithyphalliques' ("The word is used by Flaubert and in the Journal of the Goncourts"). In his commentary he ignores the rape hypothesis.

(2) Les Déserts de l'Amour (Deserts of Love) is the first known prose poem by Rimbaud. It is short, either because unfinished, or because some parts were lost. In the first part, Foreword, Rimbaud writes: "Not having loved women, - yet full-blooded! - his heart, his soul, all his strength grew up in strange and sad mistakes." No note is appended to this text. In the introductory comment to the poem, André Guyaux writes: "Linked to the confession in the Foreword ('Not having loved women...') the two 'successive dreams', described as dreamed 'loves', combine the themes of purity ('maternal'), obstacles ('cushions', 'canvasses', 'laces'), definitive absence and tears in order to suggest inhibition"...

(3) The untitled poem starting with Ô saisons, ô châteaux (O seasons, O castles) is one of Rimbaud's most famous work. It was later included in Alchimie du verbe (Alchemy of the Word) in Une Saison en enfer (A Season in Hell). No English translation of this poem retains all its mystery.

Ô saisons, ô châteaux
Quelle âme est sans défauts?
Ô saisons, ô châteaux!
J'ai fait la magique étude
Du Bonheur, que nul n'élude.

Ô vive lui, chaque fois
Que chante son coq Gaulois.

Mais! je n'aurai plus d'envie
Il s'est chargé de ma vie.

Ce Charme! il prit âme et corps
Et dispersa tous efforts.

Que comprendre à ma parole?
Il fait qu'elle fuie et vole!
Ô saisons, ô châteaux.

O seasons, O castles,
What soul is without blame?
O seasons, O castles,
I carried out the magic study
of happiness that no one eludes.

Oh! may it live long, each time
The Gallic cock crows.

But I will have no more desires,
It has taken charge of my life.

That charm! it took my soul and body,
and dispersed every effort.

What can be understood from my words?
It makes them escape and fly off!
O seasons, O castles

(translated by Wallace Fowlie)

The only note for the poem is inserted after coq Gaulois: "Robert Goffin reminds the sexual meaning of coq gaulois in Wallony and in the Ardennes and identifies lui, from the preceding verse, to Verlaine (Rimbaud vivant. Documents et témoignages inédits, Paris, Corrêa, 1937); for Sergio Sacchi, lui is more probably the poem's subject, happiness, and the coq gaulois 'the symbol of resurrection, carved in the christian canvasses of the first centuries' ('Le Chant du coq gaulois', Il confronto letterario, novembre 1993)." What is André Guyaux's opinion? We don't know, except that the more recent date of the second reference would point to its stronger relevance... A draft of the poem is however available. Rimbaud had first written: "Je suis à lui, chaque fois / Si chante son coq gaulois" ("I am his, each time / If his Gallic cock sings") which is even more explicit.

The second part of the volume, titled Vie et Documents, "intended to give a better understanding of his life", does not directly address Rimbaud's attraction to men, although it provides documents pointing, sometimes crudely, to it. Most of the known documents pertaining to the 'Brussel's affair' are reproduced. I did not see, however, the 'inverted' sonnet by Verlaine, Le Bon disciple (The Good Disciple), which was found then among some letters in Rimbaud's pockets. Verlaine had given a manuscript copy of it to Rimbaud in May 1872. It provides a rare insight into the relationship between the two lovers:

Je suis élu, je suis damné!
Un grand souffle inconnu m'entoure.
Ô terreur! Parce, Domine!

Quel ange dur ainsi me bourre
Entre les épaules tandis
Que je m'envole au paradis?

Fièvre adorablement maligne,
Bon délire, benoît effroi!
Je suis martyr et je suis roi,
Faucon je plane et je meurs cygne!

Toi, le Jaloux qui m'as fait signe,
[...*] me voici; voici tout moi!
Vers toi je rampe encore indigne!
- Monte sur mes reins, et trépigne!

* début du vers perdu.

I am saved, I am lost!
Mysteriously tempest-tossed!
Oh Terror! Spare me, Oh Lord!

What cruel Angel has gored
Me in the back just as I
Off to Heaven would fly?

Pleasing delirium, cunning fever,
I am martyred, I am Caesar.
Soaring like the falcon I fly,
Singing my swan-song I die!

You beckon, you the Green-Eyed,
Here I am, here all of me!
I crawl to you, though unworthy!
Mount on my back and ride!

(translation by Drewey Wayne Gunn in Ardennian Boy, William Maltese and Wayne Gunn, MLR Press, 2007: an astonishing erotica based on the relationship between Verlaine and Rimbaud, closely following their lives)

So what is Rimbaud's best edition of his Œuvres complètes? Any idea?

2009.03.29