A. Rimbaud

[Avalive]

Anybody here is fond of french poet A. Rimbaud's works? If so, what is ur favorite piece

[mono]

Funny how I also thought about beginning a thread for Arthur Rimbaud not long ago; thank you for starting one, as I might have forgotten. I doubt if I can recognize only one favorite, but I will post a few.

My Gypsy Life (A Fantasy)

With fists in ragged pockets, off I went -
My topcoat too on its way to ideal.
I traveled under skies, muse, your vassal!
Oh! look now! what sumptuous loves I dreamt!

My only trousers were hugely holey,
- And a dreamy Tom Thumb I, seeding rhymes there
Along my way: - I stayed at the Big Bear.
The stars above rustled softly for me,

And I heard them, sitting roadside
In the fine September twilight,
Felt dewdrops on my face like heady wine;
Where amid fantastic shadows I'd rhyme,
While plucking at the laces like a harp,
On my battered shoes, one foot near my heart!

---

The Crows

Lord, when the grasslands have grown cold,
When in villages battered flat,
Tedious bells no longer toll . . .
Over nature there deflowered,
Let the sleek sweet body of crows
Swoop down out of wide open skies.

Outlandish army with harsh cries,
Chill winds are assailing your nests!
Disperse, along yellow rivers.
On roads toward old Calvarys,
Over the ditches and trenches,
All of you, scatter and rally!
By thousands, over fields of France,
Where the dead of yesterday sleep,
Wheel 'round, why don't you, in winter
So each passer-by remembers!
Be then the designated spokesman,
Our black bird of the funerals.

You, skyborne saints, high in the oak,
Tree-top lost in spellbound twilight:
Leave be the singing birds of May,
For those in depth of woods held tight
Under the grass of no escape,
Defeated, with no future day.

---

And since he really relished somber stuff,
When closed up in his barren, shuttered room,
High and blue, stricken with humidity,
He'd read his novel, endlessly plotted,
Heavy with ochre skies and forests drowned,
Flowers of flesh in starry woods unfurled,
Vertigo, wreckage, mayhem and pity! --
Meanwhile, neighborhood noise ran on below
- Alone, and lying on raw linen sheets
While violently envisioning sails

[Avalive]

Smile,My Gypsy Life (A Fantasy) is also one of my fav of Rimb.

It seems the translation is sorta different in some edition

My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)

I went off with my hands in my torn coat pockets ;
My overcoat too was becoming ideal ;
I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal ;
Oh dear me! what marvellous loves I dreamed of !

My only pair of breeches had a big whole in them.
– Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way.
My tavern was at the Sign of the Great Bear.
– My stars in the sky rustled softly.

And I listened to them, sitting on the road-sides
On those pleasant September evenings while I felt drops
Of dew on my forehead like vigorous wine ;

And while, rhyming among the fantastical shadows,
I plucked like the strings of a lyre the elastics
Of my tattered boots, one foot close to my heart !


+ I prefer this translation ,above

The Star has wept rose-colour


The star has wept rose-colour in the heart of your ears,
The infinite rolled white from your nape to the small of your back
The sea has broken russet at your vermilion nipples,
And Man bled black at your royal side.

[mono]

After doing some research on more poetry by Rimbaud, I found the following poem, which I love. I translated it myself, so if any other French speakers find mistakes, please correct them, if any.

Ophélia

I
On the waves, calm and black, where the stars sleep
White Ophélia floats like a large lily,
Floating very slowly, lying in her long veils -
One hears in the distant woods of the birds.

Here, over thousands of years, that sad Ophélia
Passes, phantom white, on the long black river;
Here, over thousands of years, its soft madness
Murmurs its lovesong with the breeze of the evening.

The wind kisses her centres and releases a halo,
Her large veils rocked gently by water;
The shivering willows cry over her shoulder,
Over her great face dreamers incline the ruffled reeds.

Water lilies sigh around her;
She wakes up sometimes, in a sleepy alder,
Some nest, from where a small shiver escapes from the wings:
A mysterious song falls from the pale gold stars.

II
O Ophélia! beautiful like snow!
Yes, you died, child, in a river carried!
It is as if the winds falling from the large mountains of Norway
Had spoken to you silently about rough freedom;

It is as if a breath, twisting your large hair,
And your dreamer spirit carried strange noises;
That your heart listened to the song of Nature
In the complaints of the tree and the sighs of the night;

It is that the voice of the mad seas, immense rail,
Tore your breast, too human and too soft;
It is that one morning of April, a beautiful pale rider,
Poor insanity, sat down dumb with your knees!

Sky! Love! Freedom! What a dream, of poor Insanity!
You based yourself with him like a snow with fire:
Your great visions strangled your word,
And the terrible Infinite one frightened your blue eye!

III
And the Poet says to the star's rays
You come to seek, the night, the flowers that you gathered,
And that it saw on the water, laid down in her long veils,
White Ophélia to float, like a large lily.

[Avalive]

Mono,it's great you speak french. I always feel unsatisfied reading Rimbaud's french poems in english but I have to. I read some other translation of Ophelia before. I do think your translation of " Ophelia " is pretty good. Even though I can't compare it to the original write in french.

[mono]

Thank you, *blush, I try. My French does not flow as thoroughly as my English, but reading anything in its original French will never compare to its translations.

[mono]

After performing more searching, I found a good website featuring much of Arthur Rimaud's poetry, for anyone interested.
http://translate.google.com/translat...en-US:official

[Avalive]

Thank you,Mono,that's quite useful

[Sitaram]

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/2238/rimb.htm

http://www.necessaryprose.com/crux.html


http://www.coppoweb.com/poetes/rimb/fr.bateau.php


"The Drunken Boat" by Arthur Rimbaud



As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers, I no
longer felt myself steered by the haulers: gaudy
Redskins had taken them for targets, nailing them
naked to coloured stakes.

I cared nothing for all my crews, carrying Flemish
wheat or English cottons. When, along with my
haulers, those uproars were done with, the Rivers
let me sail downstream where I pleased.
Into the ferocious tide-rips, last winter, more
absorbed than the minds of children, I ran! And the
unmoored Peninsulas never endured more triumphant
clamourings.


The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves which
men call eternal rollers of victims, for ten
nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the
harbor lights!


Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
the green water penetrated my pinewood hull and
washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the
splashes of vomit, carring away both rudder and
anchor.


And from that time on I bathed in the Poem of the
Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, devouring
the green azures; where, entranced in pallid
flotsam, a dreaming drowned man sometimes goes
down;
where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses- deliriums
and slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
stronger than alcohol, vaster than music-ferment
the bitter rednesses of love!


I have come to know the skies splitting with
lightnings, and the waterspouts, and the breakers
and currents; I know the evening, and Dawn rising
up like a flock of doves, and sometimes I have seen
what men have imagined they saw!



I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with
mystic horrors lighting up long violet coagulations
like the performers in antique dramas; waves
rolling back into the distances their shiverings of
venetian blinds!


I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled
snows, the kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the
seas, the circulation of undreamed-of saps, and the
yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!


I have followed, for whole months on end, the
swells battering the reefs like hysterical herds of
cows,-never dreaming that the luminous feet of the
Marys could muzzle by force the snorting Oceans!
I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas,
where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers in
human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles under
the seas-horizon to glaucous herds!



I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps
where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm, and
distances cataracting down into abysses!


Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of
red-hot coals! Hideous wrecks at the bottom of
brown gulfs where the giant snakes, devoured by
vermin, fall from the twisted trees with black
odours!


I should have liked to show to children those
dolphins of the blue wave, those golden, those
singing fishes.- Foam of flowers rocked my
driftings, and at times ineffable winds would lend
me wings.


Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones, the
sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings lifted my
shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks
toward me, and I hung there like a kneeling
woman...


[I was] almost an island, tossing on my beaches the
brawls and droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring
birds. And I was scudding along when across my
frayed cordage drowned men sank backwards into
sleep!...


But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether; I,
whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished
up;
free, smoking, risen from violet fogs, I who bored
through the wall of the reddening sky which bears a
sweetmeat good poets find delicious: lichens of
sunlight [mixed] with azure snot;
who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity, a
crazy plank with black sea-horses for escort, when
Julys were crushing with cudgel blows skies of
ultramarine into burning funnels;


I who trembled to feel at fifty league's distance
the groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense
Maelstroms; eternal spinner of blue immobilities, I
long for Europe with it's age-old parapets!


I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
whose delirious skies are open to sailers: -Do you
sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights, O
million golden birds, Life Force of the future?


But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are
heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every
sun bitter: sharp love has swollen me up with heady
langours. O let my keel split! O let me sink to the
bottom!

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
black cold pool where into the scented twilight a
child squatting full of sadness launches a boat as
fragile as a butterfly in May.


I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons; nor
undergo the pride of the flags and pennants; nor
pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.



Translation by Oliver Bernard