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There's a good translation of Une Saison en Enfer and Les Illuminations by Enid Rhodes Peschel (O.U.P.); this edition also contains a useful essay on his life and work.
Often discussions of Rimbaud take their cue from his famous, arrogant 'Lettre du voyant', his manifesto about poetry. For him being a poet entails being a voyant, a prophet and visionary who reaches a state of transcendence (the 'unknown') by the 'long, immense and reasoned deranging of all his senses'. Hence his liking for alcohol, hashish and other substances. Rimbaud also expressed his desire to experience 'all the forms of love'. His tempestuous two-year relationship with Paul Verlaine (10 years his senior and married, with a baby son) shocked Paris literati in 1871-3. Rimbaud was only 18 when he finished A Season in Hell. |
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