A Season in Hell the Illuminations

By Arthur Rimbaud

Book Overview

Although he abandoned poetry before he was twenty-one years old, and wrote for only five or six years in all, Arthur Rimbaud has had an extraordinary influence on modern poetry. His work helped inspire poetic Symbolism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. Rimbaud dreamed of re-creating life through his words. Not content merely to describe the world, he longed to reorder it through his revolutionary poetry. He rebelled against all forms of hypocrisy, as well as against conventional concepts of love, morality, religion, and art. He even dreamed of liberating women from "endless servitude." Written a century ago, A Season in Hell and The Illuminations read like the works of an avant-garde poet of today. In her Introduction dealing with Rimbaud's life and work, Enid Rhodes Peschel discusses his concept of the voyant, the poet-visionary he dreamed of becoming through a "reasoned deranging of all his senses." A Season in Hell, which combines autobiography with self-appraisal, vision and hallucination, reflects Rimbaud's tortures in trying to be a voyant. The forty-two poems of The Illuminations, kaleidoscopic evocations of a universe in continual evolution, are further evidence of his attempts to reach this transcendent state. Enid Rhodes Peschel has succeeded in not only translating these works but in recreating them. Eye, ear, mind, and heart have all been engaged in her effort to capture the tone and rhythm of Rimbaud's language as well as the quality of his thought. Book jacket.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195017609
• ISBN13: 9780195017601
• Release Date: May 1974
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 181 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Rimbaud is a deadent genius

Arthur Rimbaud is one of the great poetic geniuses in the canon of world history. His brilliance manifests itself in his iconoclastic criticism of the world at large, a world which condemns him in his relentless pursuit of truth. These poems are a vision of personal truth, one rooted in pain and experience, in the lessons of a life which was bled out of him in the streets of Paris and the crumbling cities of the Old World. Rimbaud, like Baudelaire, is a decadent genius, offering insights into the human soul and its relation to a world which offers nothing but alienation. His verses are strange and unfamiliar, breaking conventional poetic forms to such an extent that it cannot be considered rebellion; it is almost as though he disregards the work of every poet before him to find a perfectly honest form of expression. And the results are striking. If sometimes a bit obtuse, his poems have the feeling of a revelatory hymn: each word conveys layers of meaning, and when taken together they form a sort of gestalt for the human spirit. Rimbaud, like those he inspired--from Jim Morrison to Alan Ginsberg--is voice of suffering and redemption that should not be ignored.

A Season in Hell : Illuminations

It's been well over a century since Arthur Rimbaud penned "A Season in Hell" and "Illuminations" in his native French. It is said by many that "Illuminations" was the most complex collection that Rimbaud wrote in his short span of writing, but this translation by Mark Treharne truly captured the essence of Rimbauds work. "A Season in Hell & Illuminations" embodies Rimbauds thoughts and state of being at the time with his amazing use of metaphors and grasp of the written word. This book is definately a must have for the most zealous Rimbaud fans and new readers alike.

POWERFUL AND AMAZING FOR A 16 YEAR OLD!!

I FOUND THE WORK OF ARTHUR RIMBAULD STIMULATING AND BEAUTIFUL THE MOVIE "TOTAL ECIPSE" MADE ME AWARE OF HIS WORK IT'S AMAZING WORK FOR ONE AS YOUNG AS 16 I'D RECOMEND IT TO SERIOUS POETS

best work ever by genius Rimbaud.

This is the best work ever, by THE genius, Arthur Rimbaud. This is written when he was 18, and it is his last work. This book is full of rebelious thoughts, very thought-provoking, and it throughoutly inspired me. really. whoever likes/admires/don't know of/curious of this genius Rimbaud, please read this, amazement guaranteed!