Rimbaud Birthday poem

[Lawrence French <lrfrench>]

Just got Patti's new 11-track live CD from France,
arriving most appropriately on Rimbaud's 150th
Birthday.

So here's a Rimbaud poem and Patti's Book review from
the VV on Rimbaud to celebrate...  



VOWELLS by Arthur Rimbaud 


A Black, E white, I red, O blue, U green: vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins: 
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies 
Which buzz around cruel smells, gulfs of shadow 

E, whiteness of vapors and of tents, 
Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of
cow-parsley; 
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips 
In anger or in the raptures of penitence; 

U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas, 
The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace
of the furrows 
Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads; 


O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds, 
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels: 
- O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes. 


VOYELLES (original French) 

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu : voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes :
A, noir corset velu des mouches iclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d'ombre ; E, candeur des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons
d'ombelles ;
I, pourpres, sang crachi, rire des lhvres belles
Dans la colhre ou les ivresses pinitentes ;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pbtis semis d'animaux, paix des rides
Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux ;

O, suprjme Clairon plein des strideurs itranges,
Silence traversis des Mondes et des Anges:
- O l'Omiga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux! 

______________ 

PATTI ON THE LEGEND OF ARTHUR 
>From THE VILLAGE VOICE  Literary Supplement
October 2000 
 
RIMBAUD 
By Graham Robb
W.W. Norton & Company, 530 pp., $35 

By PATTI SMITH 

My introduction to Rimbaud, at the age of 16, was a
brief mention in a monograph on the painter Amedeo
Modigliani. I was so taken with the painter that I
wanted to read the poets he admired. This sent me in
search of Dante, Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud. I
found Arthur in a paperback stall across from a bus
terminal in Philadelphia. I was drawn to his face,
intelligent and contemptuous. 
Illuminations became my constant companion. The places
we traveled physically and metaphysically may be
addressed elsewhere. Suffice to say, I recognized a
brother, one of my imagined kind. His work was
indecipherable yet familiar. It presented another
language that part of me grasped immediately. The part
that didn't sneered patiently. 
My next stop on the trail of Rimbaud was Enid
Starkie's Arthur Rimbaud, published in 1947. Parting
the leaves to reveal a farmhouse in the distance, I
was drawn into the landscape of his life. I entered
wholeheartedly, accepting the astute Starkie as my
trusted guide. I stayed the course, then abandoned it.
The better to consider my own point of view. So it was
with trepidation that I opened Graham Robb's Rimbaud.
A new study suggests the possible unearthing of
illuminating material, but I was hesitant to plunge
into a world that had consumed much of my
late-blooming adolescence.  
Tracing Rimbaud with Robb was, in turn, invigorating
and agitating. Robb insinuates himself in all walks of
Arthur's life, scrutinizing and sensationalizing his
every move. Robb is best when he cinematically
describes the geographic settings of the poet's
well-traveled life, from the Ardennes to Abyssinia,
and the shifting political and social structures of
the 19th century. He is adept at scraping some of the
dreary lacquer from thrice-told tales, as we see the
poet, his family, and acquaintances moving about in
fresh light. It would be more gratifying, however,
without the continuous presence of Robb bathing in it
himself.  
Nonetheless, we can be grateful for new research and
the liberal use of obscure material. I was moved by
the description of a school notebook, "a few
inkspotted sheets held together by a pin," containing
notes penned by the 11-year-old boy destined to become
the greatest poet in French literature. I could see
the small bundle of papers and was delighted that it
was quoted in such detail. "Why learn Latin? No one
speaks that language. Sometimes I see some Latin in
the newspapers but I'm not going to be a journalist,
thank God." 
One unexpected pleasure is a more realized portrait of
Captain Rimbaud. Very little has been known of the
father who deserted his family when Arthur was six.
We're offered a sense of the source of Arthur's gifts.
Captain Rimbaud distinguished himself as a chasseura
French infantryman trained for rapid movement. He was
a fine chess man, an avid compiler and annotator, an
orientalist, and a philologistimmersing himself in
the study of historical and comparative linguistics.
He is credited with executing the first parallel-text
translation of the Koran. Envisioning his father at
his writing desk, laboring over the sacred text, with
young Arthur at his feet, gave me my first inkling of
their connection. 
Images emerging from even the smallest details gave me
reason to stay attentive to Rimbaud according to Robb.
We see Rimbaud with his back to the Rembrandts, gazing
through the window frames of the Louvre, longing for
the time when "painters will no longer replicate
objects. Emotions will be created with line, colours
and patterns"for the coming of cubism, Picasso,
Pollock, and modern art. 
 
Arthur and his companion, the poet Paul Verlaine,
exiting Charing Cross Station arm in arm into the
polluted light of industrial Britain. Impressions of
19th-century London as described by Robb"subways,
viaducts, raised canals, steam engines passing over
streets, mastheads suddenly appearing behind chimney
pots"permeated both poets' work. 
 
We picture him through the diary of his sister Vitalie
in a boarding house at 12 Argyle Square. "When the
trunk arrived, Arthur helped to bring it up. After
placing it in our room, he sat on top of it,
laughing." 
 
Rimbaud weeping. At 21 with his shaved head bowed,
standing over the grave of that same sister, who was
said to resemble and adore him. 
 
Rimbaud walking. How swiftly he moved from the
primitive to the promise of science and back again.
With long strides, head erect, swinging his long arms
punctuated with great hands, red with sores. What a
cruel step he seems to have had, devouring territory
thousands of miles on legs that would fail him by the
age of 36. The speed with which he moved was like the
tigers around the Musa tree and he buttered his hair
with their turning. 
 
Rimbaud still. In Harar at his worktable drinking tea
beneath the great banana trees; stitching together his
humble garments of white American cotton, "doing away
with the tedious use of buttons." 
 
Images such as these touched and inspired me and
helped balance my impatience with Robb's presumptive
commentary. He has chosen to retell Rimbaud's journey
from visionary schoolboy to embittered exile. He has
chosen to interpret the expansion and discarding of
his rapidly changing universes as charted in poetry,
letters, and insults. He has done so with consistent
energy. And one is never bored, save by him. For he is
ever commenting, as Bob Dylan would say, "from the
corners of his mouth." He has a journalistic penchant
for nailing his subject with one hand and crowning him
with another. He would have us believe he has the
unique facility of mind to decipher and apply
symbolism to every aspect of the poet's behavior,
whether at six, 16, or 36. Rimbaud cannot be reasoned
or ciphered, for his end was poetryhis own alchemical
formula. Those who are not poets, who are not filthy,
who have not happily camped on horsehair mattresses,
who are not innocently heartless, can never understand
the nomadic truth of a poet. 
Why did I accept this assignment? Perhaps I could not
resist an uncorrected proof entitled Rimbaud.
Biography cannot be looked upon as the Rosetta stone
of a subject. Only Rimbaud could encode the atmosphere
of his being. Arthur Rimbaud has written himself in A
Season in Hell and Illuminations. There you will find
him, with all contradictions intact. Only Rimbaud
could wrestle, refine, and reinvent the civil war of
his personality. And only fools would attach
themselves to any singular notion of the poet; for all
things are irrevocably entwined within the infernal
stump of his existence. 
 


		
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