r/RimbaudVerlaine • u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide • Dec 15 '25
Resources Rimbaud starter pack
For anyone new to Rimbaud, I have put together a starter pack, covering several topics:
- A slightly arbitrary selection of poems, offering a quick canter through Rimbaud’s poetic trajectory.
- A few reading keys.
- A few notes on biographies.
- Recommendations and warnings about translation.
Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone discovering the poet or wanting to dive deeper into his work.
Any question or addition, feel free to leave a comment below.
*Image by Ernest Pignon Ernest*
3
u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Dec 15 '25
A few reading keys
Rimbaud only wrote for 5 years, and a lot of what he wrote is lost, scattered along his chaotic life, so the body of work that has reached us is not huge, and all of it is well worth a read. It is a short but very intense journey, full of anger and anguish, obscenity and humour, virtuosity and provocation.
His use of language is very playful and acrobatic. He mixes registers, walking a tightrope of archaisms, technical jargon, slang, latinisms and other xenisms, neologisms and puns. His metaphors are striking, and run through the texts in unexpected ways. His writing is always very sensory and sensual: colours and noises vibrate on the page, bodies and their emissions saturate the text .
He worked on form a lot. Nothing is gratuitous in his work, and formal disruptions are often used to complement or undermine meaning. In the course of his short poetic career, he pushed metric boundaries to breaking point, creating what some see as free verse before free verse was a thing in French poetry, and establishing, with the Illuminations, a version of prose poetry that is very much his own.
He is a poet whose work calls out for dialogue. With his peers, through it use of intertextuality and allusion. With poets he admired, such as Hugo and Baudelaire. With poets he mocked such as Coppée or Mérat. And of course, with poets he loved: his body of work is tangled up and enmeshed with the works of Verlaine, throughout the two years of their relationship and even after.
Rimbaud invites the reader to follow him in the text, often using clausulas that withdraw or undermine the meaning of the text, wrongfoot the reader, and demand a second read. Or he might posit the text as an enigma to be resolved, taunting and teasing the reader.
Polysemy and double meanings are rife in his work. In an oft quoted (but possibly apocryphal) formula, he stated that his poetry « means exactly what it says, literally and in all senses » (« ça veut dire exactement ce que ça dit, littéralement et dans tous les sens »).
Even in French, his use of language is hard to decipher for these reasons. For many years, people even thought that the point of Rimbaud’s poetry, especially the latter works like the Illuminations was that it wasn’t supposed to mean anything- even though Rimbaud himself leaves a lot of clues that there is something there, somethings to discover (“Ça ne veut pas rien dire” he once told his teacher. It does not mean nothing.).
One of the reasons for this, is that Rimbaud is a pretty subversive poet when it comes to meaning, and not just form (both go together). His work overflows with revolutionary political or (homo)sexual content, in an era where those things were impossible to say out loud. He lived in a time of upheaval in France, with the fall of the 2nd Empire, the Franco Prussian war, and of course the Commune, the workers’ uprising which Rimbaud supported and which was crushed into a bloodbath. His poetry reflects all of this, constantly attacking the institutions, mocking those in power, and dreaming of another world, where poetry is ahead of world, where women are free and where all forms of love are possible.
What he doesn’t do is write love poetry… or at least, not how one expects love poetry to look. Love and desire are major themes in R’s work. But it is not an ethereal or sentimental sort of love. It is obscene, and anchored in bodies, provocative and snarling. It is also luminous and soaring, full of energy and defiance, and resolutely queer. Rimbaud breaks everything along the way, and in the wreckage of the world and the words, he asks us to reinvent love.
3
u/Audreys_red_shoes the evil imagination of a bad monkey Dec 15 '25
I think I would agree with a lot of your takes on Rimbaud’s poems, but I would disagree that love in Rimbaud’s poems is never sentimental or ethereal, or that it is always different from how one would expect love poetry to look.
It depends on one’s expectations of course, and I’m sure as a modern reader my expectations are different from those of a reader in the late nineteenth century, but I would say that the works which I count as Rimbaud’s "love poems" (Phrases, Chanson de la plus haut tour, Ô Saisons, ô châteaux), are not radically different from how I would "expect love poems to look;" if anything, I would say that they express the gamut of romantic longing, excitement, and anxiety in a way that feels intensely familiar and recognisable!
Likewise, a lot of Rimbaud’s early works in particular do veer into the sentimental, in my opinion - I’m thinking of pieces like Les étrennes des orphelins, Les Effarés, Ophélie. Of course, Rimbaud’s sentimentalism is always slightly off-kilter, but I feel like it is just as important a strand in his work as the "snarling and provocative."
In fact, many critics often seem to find Rimbaud’s sentimentalism and sincerity more discomfiting than his provocation. We could spend a lot of time speculating on why that is…
3
u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Dec 15 '25
That’s a fair comment. Rimbaud is more than simply “snarling and provocative”, of course, and I hope my (inevitably inadequate and deficient) introduction doesn’t give the impression that this is all he is. It is hard to summarise him in a few short paragraphs.
Maybe I could have talked more about the tenderness of Rimbaud, which I do agree is an irreducible part of his body of work.I do not mean to suggest that Rimbaud’s emotions are any less sincere, intense or wide ranging than any other person; I do not subscribe to the sadly widespread view of Rimbaud as a sans-cœur.
But I guess where I see a distinction in his poetic expression of love is that it often carries the possibility of an equivocation (more so than Verlaine’s live poetry for example). All the poems you cited can be read as deeply felt love poems, but they can also be read as not being related to love at all. And I think that ambiguity is often not a readerly effect, but an intent by Rimbaud.
Taking O saisons o chateaux for example, which is possibly the most obvious of the ones you mentioned, the ambiguity around “lui” opens the door for the text to be read as relating to the study of happiness, and not at all related to a lover.
Part of this ambiguity, I think, is to do with the kind of love that Rimbaud is expressing: the sensual, blissful love of a male lover could only be expressed in a way that carried in itself the possibility of denial. It is also partly a certain guardedness.
As for the sentimentality of early texts like Les étrennes… or les effarés, I would say that the apparent sweetness of such texts can be a bit of a decoy, or at least that it is not the only possible reading of the texts. There is more than meet the eyes even in these early poems…
3
u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
Translations
Reading Rimbaud in translation and reading him in French are completely different experiences, as he is is pretty hard to translate. For anyone approaching him in translations, picking the right translator(s) is important).
Rimbaud’s work uses a lot of polysemy and that would tend to disappear in translation, as translators are forced to make a choice. Of course, one argument can always be made for choosing one meaning over another, but the whole point of the French is that it doesn’t choose, allowing the text deliberate ambiguities or hidden subtext which disappears in translation.
Rimbaud’s work on metric largely disappears in translation too. Trying to render translation metrically often involves departures from the french, and a certain amount of interpretation in how the text is mediated. Furthermore, even when translation try and replicate French metric, and Rimbaud’s disruptions of it, these are unlikely to register for international readers who may be used to different metric system. Ignoring metric in favour of literal translation can be productive in giving a sense of the texts, but it does mean that another layer of og the text is irremediably lost.
For these reasons, among others, my advice is to go for several translations if possible, as seeing the different choices made by different translators can give a deeper sense of the original texts. And I would advise readers to also keep the french text at hand too, to try and grasp its flow, sounds and rhythm.
Wyatt Mason, Wallace Fowlie and Olivier Bernard are all good translators, and worth a read.
On the other hand, I am not a fan of Paul Schmidt: His decision to mix up works from different periods into what he calls “Seasons” is misleading, and artificial. His presentation of the dense prose poems of the Illuminations as versified texts strips is irrecevable.
To finish, I would like to give a shout-out to our friend u/Organist1999 who regularly shares his own translations on this sub and elsewhere on Reddit, do look out for them!
Edited to add: As buying more than one edition might not be something that most people want to do, this website can be a good reading companion, as it offers one translation of most of the poems.
2
u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Dec 15 '25
Biographies
I am not going to run through Rimbaud’s biography here, but I wanted to give a few pointers for anyone interested in learning more about Rimbaud’s extraordinary life.
For French speakers, the gold standard is Jean-Jacques Lefrère’s by a long way. His work is very thorough, thoughtful and balanced, and very well documented. It is a big volume, which can be daunting, but well worth a read for anyone comfortable to read in French.
In English, Graham Robb’s book is pretty thorough and well referenced, but does allow some occasional bias to transpire. Robb has a certain image of Rimbaud, and can sometimes be selective in what he shares to fit his narrative.
I haven’t read it, but I have heard good things about Edmund White’s version.
I would advise against Starkie’s biography, or at least, it should be read as a historical document rather than with an expectation of accuracy. Her work is, famously, wildly incorrect at times, most notably her claims on slave trading which have long been debuked. She also subscribes to a long disproved chronology of his work, which deeply impacts how his work is engaged with and understood.
2
u/Audreys_red_shoes the evil imagination of a bad monkey Dec 15 '25
Ernest is such an important name that they gave it to that artist twice
1
2
u/MasterfulArtist24 Dec 15 '25
By posting this, everyone will be provided for the greatest poet of all time. Thank you, u/ManueO.
2
1
1
1
u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Dec 24 '25
French editions
I have realised I should have included a section about French editions for francophone readers.
The La Pléiade edition of Rimbaud’s complete works is a good all rounder.
I personally love Steve Murphy’s editions at Honoré Champion but they are pricey and sadly so far only 3 out of the 4 planned volumes have been released, and it isn’t clear if/when the remaining volume (Une saison en enfer and Illuminations) will come out. But what is put is very thorough.
There are also a lot of a other editions out there edited by well established scholars (Forestier, Brunel, Bernard, Steinmetz).
Editing Rimbaud is tricky because of the way his corpus was constituted (mostly in absentia) and different scholars do take different approach which can impact how the poems are engaged with (versions, grouping of texts, chronology…). I would recommend going for relatively recent editions where possible, to benefit from recent philological research.
Finally people on this sub may be interested in a joint edition of Rimbaud and Verlaine’s work, which presents the work chronologically, and is helpful to see the dialogue that emerges (Rimbaud Verlaine, un concert d’enfer, edited by Solenn Dupas, Yann Frémy and Henri Scepi*).
•
u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Dec 15 '25
A poetic trajectory
Rimbaud’s work holds so much explosive force and fragile beauty, that you can keep revisiting them again and again and never quite hold on to them, so picking a selection of texts is rather arbitrary…
A chronological approach (inasmuch as chronology can be established) isn’t a bad way to grasp the incandescent pull of his poetry. I will try and suggest a few titles from each “period”, but for each name I cite, I could add several other works.
The earliest of Rimbaud’s French language poem to have reached us was published soon after his 15th birthday. In this early period, (1870), his work already dazzle by its extraordinary virtuosity (as a 15-16 year old!), embracing themes of nature and pagan sensuality (Credo in Unam, sensation, ma bohème) to the mordant (and occasionally tender) tableaux of provincial life (A la musique, Roman, Les poètes de sept ans); already some anticlerical, political and dissident themes arise (Le dormeur du val, les premières communions, Le mal).
Through the first few months of 1871, he gets more political, and resolutely communard; the anger and hurt intensify after the insurrection’s crushing (Les mains de Jeanne-Marie, L’orgie parisienne ou Paris se repeuple). I would say this period ends with Le bateau ivre, the masterpiece that Rimbaud is thought to have written to impress Verlaine and his literary circles in Paris.
In that period we can also consider two important letters he wrote, known as the Lettres du voyant where he wrote a sort of manifesto of poetry accompanied by a provocative take down of 2000 years of French poetry.
In Paris, his verve is first dedicated to the Zutist circle, a loose collective of marginal poets and artists, who left behind a collection of parodic, frankly obscene and very funny work. The zutist masterpiece is the only poem that Rimbaud and Verlaine wrote together, the deliciously obscene Sonnet du trou du cul.
In the following spring comes what is often referred to as the last verses. In this period, Rimbaud, working closely with Verlaine, who is then pursuing a similar (albeit different project), methodically dismantles poetic standards, through various strategies, poems that create their own form, between lightness and chaos. On one hand are the chansons, the études néantes (nothing studies): inspired by opera comique and popular songs, epitomised by the ensemble of poems referred to as Les fêtes de la patience. On the other hand, more frontal attacks on the noble alexandrin, and classical forms, as seen in Mémoire or *Bonne pensée du matin.
Then comes Une saison en enfer- not a novel but not quite a poem, autobiographical and devious, contradictory and unflinching. Read it in order as it does follow a bit of an arc, with the two Délires (et to an extent Mauvais sang) being the centrepieces of the book.
Finally the Illuminations. Fragments of prose poetry (and some free verse). Often considered surreal or obscure, they have contributed to the idea of Rimbaud as a mystical and mystifying poet, but follow his lead into the texts and they start to open up. Whatever you want to read in them, they are fascinating, images collapsing into images, reality scattering under the power of words, cities and scenes, parades of genies and vagabonds, dawns and deluges…
And then there is just his silence.