A Season in Hell (1873)
A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all the hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing.
One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap. -- And I found her galling. -- And I roughed her up.
I armed myself against justice.
I ran away, O witches, O misery, O hatred, my treasure's been turned over to you!
I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounced on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it.
I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played tricks on insanity.
And Spring brought me the frightening laugh of the idiot.
So, just recently, when I found myself on the brink of the final squawk! it dawned on me to look again for the key to that ancient party where I might find my appetite once more.
Charity is the key. -- This inspiration proves I was dreaming!
"You'll always be a hyena, etc. . . .," yells the devil, who'd crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Deserve death with all your appetites, your selfishness, and all the capital sins!"
Ah! I've been through too much: - But, sweet Satan, I beg of you, a less blazing eye! and while waiting for the new little cowardly gestures yet to come, since you like an absence of descriptive or didactic skills in a writer, let me rip out these few ghastly pages from my notebook of the damned.
Arthur Rimbaud
Translated from the French by Bertrand Mathieu
BIO: Jean-Nicolas-Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) lived a short but brilliant life. Most of his poetry was composed between 1870 and 1875. Always short of money, he worked as a tradesman outside of France, on the African continent. He died of cancer on November 10, 1891. His long-time friend, the poet Paul Verlaine, published his complete body of poetical works in 1895.
