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Arthur Rimbaud
Rimbaud, aged 17, by Étienne Carjat, probably taken in December 1871.

Today is the birthday of Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (Charleville, Ardennes; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891 Marseille); poet who is known for his influence on modern literature and arts, which prefigured surrealism.  Rimbaud started writing at a very young age and was a prodigious student, but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away from home amidst the Franco-Prussian War.  After running away, during his late adolescence and early adulthood, he began the bulk of his literary output, but completely stopped writing at the age of 21, after assembling one of his major works, Illuminations.

Rimbaud was known to have been a libertine and for being a restless soul, having engaged in a volatile romantic relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, which lasted nearly two years.   After the end of his literary career, he traveled extensively on three continents as a merchant before his death from cancer just after his thirty-seventh birthday.  As a poet, Rimbaud is well-known for his contributions to Symbolism and, among other works, Une Saison en Enfer 1873 (A Season in Hell), which was a significant precursor to modernist literature.

Versi (Verse)

• Je est un autre.
  • I am another.
  • Letter to Georges Izambard; Charleville, 13 May 1871
• Ô mes petites amoureuses,
  Que je vous hais !
  • Oh my little mistresses,
    How I hate you!
  • Poésies (1871), “Mes petites amoureuses”

• J’allais sous le ciel, Muse! et j’étais ton féal.
  • I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.
  • Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 1

• Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse.
  Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou.
  • My tavern was the Big Bear.
    My stars in the sky rustled softly.
  • Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 2

• Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe.
  • My sad heart foams at the stern.
  • Le Coeur Volé (The Stolen Heart, st. 1

• A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
  Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes !
  • Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: vowels,
    Someday I shall recount your latent births.
  • Voyelles (Vowels (1871)

• Elle est retrouvée,
  Quoi ? — L’Éternité.
  C’est la mer allée
  Avec le soleil.
  • It is found again.
    What? Eternity.
    It is the sea
    Gone with the sun.
  • L’Éternité (1872)
  • Variant translation:
    It has been recovered.
    What? — Eternity.
    It is the sea escaping
    With the sun.

• O saisons, ô châteaux,
  Quelle âme est sans défauts ?
  • O seasons, O castles,
    What soul is without flaws?
  • Bonheur (Happiness)

• J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été.
  • I have embraced the summer dawn.
  • Illuminations. Aube (Dawn) (1874)
  • Variant translation: I have kissed the summer dawn.

• Il pleut doucement sur la ville.
  • It rains softly on the town.
  • From a lost poem

• Je dis qu’il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens.
  • I say one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by an immense, long, deliberate derangement of all the senses.
  • Letter to Paul Demeny (May 15, 1871)

Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat) (1871)

• Plus léger qu’un bouchon j’ai dansé sur les flots.
  • Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves.
  • St. 4

• Plus douce qu’aux enfants la chair des pommes sures,
  L’eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin.
  • Sweeter than apples to children
    The green water spurted through my pine-wood hull.
  • St. 5

• Je me suis baigné dans le Poème
  De la Mer…
  Dévorant les azurs verts.
  • I have bathed in the Poem
    Of the Sea…
    Devouring the green azures.
  • St. 6

• J’ai vu le soleil bas, taché d’horreurs mystiques,
  Illuminant de longs figements violets,
  Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques.
  • I have seen the sunset, stained with mystic horrors,
    Illumine the rolling waves with long purple forms,
    Like actors in ancient plays.
  • St. 9

• J’ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles
  Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur:
  Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t’exiles,
  Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur ?
  • I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands
    Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager:
    Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile,
    A million golden birds, O future Vigor?
  • St. 25

Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) (1873)

• Un soir, j’ai assis la Beauté sur mes genoux. – Et je l’ai trouvée amère. – Et je l’ai injuriée.
  • One evening, I sat Beauty in my lap. — And I found her bitter. — And I cursed her.

• Je parvins à faire s’évanouir dans mon esprit toute l’espérance humaine.
  • I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.

• La vie est la farce à mener par tous.
  • Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

• Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s’ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient.
  • Once, I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

• Je suis esclave de mon baptême.
  • Baptism enslaved me.

• La vieillerie poétique avait une bonne part dans mon alchimie du verbe.
  • Old poetics played a large part in my alchemy of the word.

• L’amour est à réinventer, on le sait.
  • Love is to be reinvented, that is clear.

• Moi ! moi qui me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu au sol.
  • I! I who fashioned myself a sorcerer or an angel, who dispensed with all morality, I have come back to earth.

• Il faut être absolument moderne.
  • One must be absolutely modern.

• Je me crois en enfer, donc j’y suis.
  • I believe I am in Hell, and so I am there.

Portrait of a Young maid holding a cooking pot full of dumplings, ca. 1652

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  Landscape with cattle (c. 1639-1649) National Gallery of Victoria.

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  A View of the Maas at Dordrecht (about 1645-1646) J. Paul Getty Museum

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  Herdsmen with Cows (circa 1645) Dulwich Picture Gallery

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  Cattle near the Maas, with Dordrecht in the distance

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  Avenue at Meerdervoort

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  The Mussel Eater, circa 1650, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

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  Cows in a River, c. 1654

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  The Negro Page circa 1652, Royal Collection

   

• And today is the birthday of Frits Thaulow (Christiania, 20 October 1847 – Volendam, 5 November 1906); Impressionist painter, best known for his naturalistic depictions of landscape.

  Thaulow was married twice.  In 1874 he married Ingeborg Charlotte Gad (1852–1908).  The marriage dissolved in 1886.  In 1886 he married Alexandra Lasson (1862–1955), the daughter of Carl Lasson (1830–1893), a noted Norwegian attorney.

  Gallery

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  Norsk vinterlandskap 1890

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  Fra Akerselven, 1897 until 1901

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  Fra Dieppe med elven Arques 1895

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  La Dordogne 1903

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  The Priest, Unknown date

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  Marmortrappen 1903

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  Rialto
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  1894