Before Beat and Surrealism | Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library Classics)

book: Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library Classics) | Arthur Rimbaud

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	• Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library Classics) Arthur Rimbaud Modern Library, 2003 - 656 pages average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Definitive Collection of Rimbaud

Wyatt Mason has put together what is arguably the most concise volume of Rimbaud's work. It's all here; the poems that made him famous, as well as his lesser-known pieces. It's exhausting to imagine the amount of time and energy that must have gone into collecting all this information. The translations are, from all accounts, spot-on. And for those devotees to the craft, Mason has also included the original French texts for anyone interested in reading Rimbaud's poetry as it was written. If you're a lover of Rimbaud, you'll love this book.

Before Beat and Surrealism

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was a French poet who experimented with many verse structures at an early age. Always interested in the theme of liberty, Rimbaud's work challenged the boundaries of traditional poetic expression. Wyatt Mason, the translator of the poet's work in Rimbaud Complete (2003), wrote a wonderful description of Rimbaud's style. "And the poems - vessels of indeterminacy, ambiguity and frequently strange beauty - are easily disfigured by a blunt critical blade." Reading this description, the reader can understand the popularity of the poet's work with the "Beat" generation and the surrealists. Much of the work translated by Mason is reminiscent of Alan Ginsberg's beat poem "Howl" and Andre Breton's surrealist novel, Nadja.

Mason's translation is an attempt to remain true to the French but also help the reader experience Rimbaud's images with contemporary English expressions. This process produces art that is very different from other translations of the poet's work. The reader has to be open to free association of images, tangential emotions, and surprising personal reactions. Later, this would be the `stuff' of Kerouac, Kesey, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Breton, Genet and others.

I read the book with frequent surprising flights of fancy that I scribbled in the margins of the book. This is the best way to stay in tune with Rimbaud who I believe meant his work to produce such reader reaction. Of course, he meant the work for the few free spirits who might someday chuck it all and hit the road as he did. Timothy Leary's infamous line, "Tune in, turn on, drop out" captures the insightful reader's approach to the work of Arthur Rimbaud.

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Enduring icon of creativity, authenticity, and rebellion, and the subject of numerous new biographies, Arthur Rimbaud is one of the most repeatedly scrutinized literary figures of the last half-century. Yet almost thirty years have elapsed without a major new translation of his writings. Remedying this state of affairs is Rimbaud Complete, the first and only truly complete edition of Rimbaud?s work in English, translated, edited, and introduced by Wyatt Mason.

Mason draws on a century of Rimbaud scholarship to choreograph a superbly clear-eyed presentation of the poet?s works. He arranges Rimbaud?s writing chronologically, based on the latest manuscript evidence, so readers can experience the famously teenaged poet?s rapid evolution, from the lyricism of ?Sensation? to the groundbreaking early modernism of A Season in Hell.

In fifty pages of previously untranslated material, including award-winning early verses, all the fragmentary poems, a fascinating early draft of A Season in Hell, a school notebook, and multiple manuscript versions of the important poem ?O saisons, ô chateaux,? Rimbaud Complete displays facets of the poet unknown to American readers. And in his Introduction, Mason revisits the Rimbaud myth, addresses the state of disarray in which the poet left his work, and illuminates the intricacies of the translator?s art.

Mason has harnessed the precision and power of the poet?s rapidly changing voice: from the delicate music of a poem such as ?Crows? to the mature dissonance of the Illuminations, Rimbaud Complete unveils this essential poet for a new generation of readers.

From the Hardcover edition.

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