Images from Alain Bardel’s recent edition of the manuscripts.

Today’s post is quite long, but it was hard to split it. It touches on a crucial point about the Illuminations, still hotly debated!

Images 1-2: Fénéon’s article in Le symboliste on 7 April 1886.

Images 3-4: extracts of the exchanges between Fénéon and Bouillane de Lacoste (published in the latter’s edition of the Illuminations)

Image 5: Félix Fénéon

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Images of the manuscripts from Alain Bardel’s recent facsimile edition, which does a great job of showing the aspects of the various pages in all their materiality.

Rimbaud l’indésirable by Xavier Coste
Voleur de feu (vol. 1 and 2) by Damien Cuvillier

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Images: facsimile of R.’s letter from March 1875

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Images: the manuscripts of Enfance I and the 1874 letter to Andrieu

This passage comes from a book about Rimbaud written by Renato Minore, an Italian scholar. I picked it up because I was curious, but i found it a bit romanticized (like loads of books about R.) and dated since it came out in the 90s. However, there was some interesting information about his family members and other stuff, like this specific part that I had never heard of before.

Translated in English it goes something like this:

"In 1880, Arthur arrives in Aden from Cyprus. He has the appearance of an authentic fugitive, and his physical and mental state appear very altered. He is running away from a murder, which he is involved in. During a quarrel, he has thrown a rock against a worker: the strike was fatal. To his boss, Alfred Bardey, he confesses being born in Dole, in the Jura. Strange way to throw off the scent: Dole was the birthplace of the captain (meaning his father)."

Then he goes on to explain a theory of a certain psychoanalyst (he never specifies who the hell this guy is) that claims that Arthur was trying to subconsciously recreate his father's life/personality when he went to Africa, but I don't care about all of this. I just wanted to know if R. was really a murderer, because that's a crazy statement to make lol.

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Image from Rimbaud et le problème des Illuminations, by Bouillane de Lacoste

I have seventy or so images from the limited edition with Remarque (75 printed) and about a dozen of them feature Verlaine. I am starting to list them on Etsy but I wanted this community to be aware in case this is something you had been looking for. DM me if you have questions.

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All images from Berrichon and Delahaye’s 1898 edition. The first image is from La librairie antique, the others from the copy on Gallica

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Images of La Vogue from here

I had a great time ! I bought many books from the Rimbaud bookshop. The museum was nice and there were many murals which I liked as well.

I discovered Rimbaud last year when starting university in my home country. I had studied French for 3 years so I could read some of his poems. My French improved so much because I really got interested in Rimbaud.

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I’ve loved the poem since I first heard it in the film Un carnet de bal, but I disliked all the English translations I could find, so I summoned up my schoolboy French and tried my hand at translating it. Any comments or advice are much appreciated.

I am particularly torn on the penultimate line, which is “Tels ils marchaient dans les avoines folles” and which I have rendered as “Across the wild oats, the figures fled.” Marchaient does not mean fled, but I liked the line so much that I left it in (I know, I know, darlings should be killed, but everything else I could think of, mostly using tread, was clunkier).

Regardless, here’s Verlaine:

Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé,
Deux formes ont tout à l’heure passé.

Leurs yeux sont morts et leur lèvres sont molles,
Et l’on entend à peine leurs paroles.

Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé,
Deux spectres ont évoqué le passé.

— Te souvient-il de notre extase ancienne?
— Pourquoi voulez-vous donc qu’il m’en souvienne?

— Ton cœur bat-il toujours à mon seul nom?
Toujours vois-tu mon âme en rêve? — Non.

— Ah! Les beaux jours de bonheur indicible
Où nous joignions nos bouches! — C’est possible.

— Qu’il était bleu, le ciel, et grand l’espoir!
— L’espoir a fui, vaincu, vers le ciel noir.

Tels ils marchaient dans les avoines folles,
Et la nuit seule entendit leurs paroles.

And here’s me:

In gardens lone and gray in winter’s blast,
Two figures, finding form, have flurried past.

The figures’ lips were limp, their eyes were dead,
And you could hardly hear what words they said.

In gardens lone and gray in winter’s blast,
Two phantoms, finding form, brought forth the past.

‘Do you remember, dear, the joys we knew?’
‘You’d bring that up? That’s really what you’d do?’

‘But does your heart still flutter for me, though?
Do you see my soul in dreams, as once you—?’ ‘No.’

‘O happy, happy days we had, when we
Would join our lips in love—’ ‘Well, possibly.’

‘How blue the sky was, how our hopes were high!’
‘Hope’s gone, defeated in a darker sky.’

Across the wild oats, the figures fled,
And only night could hear what words they said.

EDIT: Oops, I miscopied my own second line. Fixed now.

Translation by Wallace Fowlie.

Images of Prince Louis and La lanterne de Boquillon from Rimbaud et la ménagerie impériale.

Un 10 de Julio de 1873, el poeta Paul Verlaine acabaría disparado contra su amante, y poeta por igual, Arthur Rimbaud.

Como tributo a tal fúnebre aniversario, ¡dejo algunos versos del mismo en español!

Rimbaud- lettre de protestation

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The English translation here is by Samuel Rosenberg, from his collection Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Selection of His Verse.