Rimbaud: A Critical Introduction

by C.A. Hackett

Pretty sure this was the first book on Rimbaud that I ever bought. I remember paying three figures for it. I see it on Abebooks, now, for just a few dollars. My copy is getting pretty tattered and I probably need an upgrade.

Hackett is one of the heavy hitters in the world of Rimbaud and this book was way over my head when I bought it as a 20 year old. I learnt a lot from it, though. I should read it again.

I Promise To Be Good

The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud, translated and with introduction by Wyatt Mason.

I love Rimbaud's letters - particularly those from Africa - as much, if not more than, Rimbaud's poetry itself. It has always seemed fascinating to me how Rimbaud was never quite able to sever all ties with his old life, that he kept alive that little sliver of his past, through his constant communicaton via mail with his mother and sister. The letters themselves are a multitude of ambiguities, at once tragic, hilarious, mundane, profound and inexplicable. How I love his tone! "I have not found here what I expected to find and shall soon be moving on" ... "In these accursed zones" ...

Of course, all of the letters are here, not just those from Africa, including the famous Letter of the Voyant. It's fascinating to follow the course of Rimbaud's life through his letters alone - from the early letters to Izambard filled with such youthful exuberance and zest for discovery and life, to the broken spirited, shell of a man in his last days in Marseille.

Rimbaud's Theatre of the Self

by James Lawler.

"In a new interpretation of a poet who has swayed the course of modern poetry - in France and elsewhere - James Lawler focuses on what he demonstrates is the crux of Rimbaud's imagination: the masks and adopted personas with which he regularly tested his identity and his art."

This is undoubtedly a fine book. However, it suffers from the same problem as quite a few other critical works on French writers: it quotes from the original French without offering a translation for the benefit of those who are English-only readers. Oh well.

Delirium

By Jeremy Reed.

This is a fantastic book, one of my favourites. From the blurb: "Reed presents a personal and original interpretation of the poet's life in the crucial peroid in 1873 when Rimbaud was living out the writing of Une saison en enfer."

Reed is particularly successful at conveying the existential anguish our boy must have been feeling during the writing of his "farewell to literature".

Delirium also includes several of Reed's own translations of Rimbaud's work, though he calls them "imitations in the style of Robert Lowell".

My copy is a first edition, hardback, in near mint condition.

The Poetry of Rimbaud

The Poetry of Rimbaud by Robert Greer Cohn.

A major critical work by Robert Greer Cohn, best known for his work on Mallarme.

My copy is in mint condition.

I must admit I found this one fairly heavy going. A big problem for me is that whenever lines of Rimbaud are quoted during the analysis, there is no corresponding English translation, so I'm always having to guess which lines Cohn is actually talking about. Nevertheless, that's more of a personal failing on my part than one of Cohn, since by now I should have learned French, right?

"Perhaps the best study of Rimbaud in any language." - Henri Peyre.

Sketch For A Portrait Of Rimbaud

Brief biography by Humphrey Hare. No publication date but I suspect the 1940s. Put out by the Brendin Publishing Company.

My copy is in fairly ordinary condition with some scuffing to the cover. One of the earliest of the Rimbaud biographies and a reasonably difficult one to source. I think I found mine at Abebooks.

As far as biographies go this one is non-essential, but certainly worth having as part of the collection.

From Absinthe To Abyssinia

Selected Miscellaneous, Obscure and Previously Untranslated Works. Translated by Mark Spitzer.

Quite an interesting little book. Spitzer collects together some less known pieces. He says, "After more than a century of affecting the landscape of poetry, it's amazing that a poet as vital as Rimbaud could have such an important body of work that has gone untranslated and unpublished in the English language up until now."

Spitzer also takes a shot at some of Rimbaud's best known translators - Louis Varese, Wallace Fowlie and Oliver Bernard - for "misunderstanding the poetry, and consequently leaving less than accurate impressions of his work."