Tue, 03 Jun 2008
Rimbaud: Wyatt Mason
Wyatt Mason, translator and editor, various Rimbaud titles,
The Modern Library Classics website
Arthur Rimbaud is well-known to lit students and sundry other people
as a wild boy-poet from 19th century France. He kicked over the traces
more than somewhat and scandalised Paris with lots of drinking, rowdy
behavior, and an interesting love life which included taking up with
Paul Verlaine, who had a pregnant wife at the time. He stopped writing
poetry (mostly) at 21 and went on, after a few wanders, to live and work in
Aden. He died aged 37 in Marseilles from a nasty unidentified disease.
But his name hasn't stayed alive just because he had an interesting
and short life, but rather because of the quality of his work which
is vibrant, exciting, and a little scary in parts - as well as being
abundantly louche in others (if you get the references). But beauty is
certainly in the eye of the beholder and in his time not too many saw
it at all, Now, though, is different and some regard him as the father
of modern poetry.
Wyatt Mason is the newest translator of Rimbaud and experts say he
has injected an extra jolt of vibrancy and has tuned the English more
to modern usage. He's also a Rimbaud scholar in other ways as well and
has studied his life as completely as records will allow. His
introductions make very interesting reading and his arrangement of the
last volume of letters shows his wide scholarship well.
Moderately
advanced French language scholars might quibble with some of the
translation as "modern" can sometimes be just ungracious and the
occasional dumbing-down of tenses just plain ignorant. Let's get
away from the idea that the lowest common denominator is the valid
way ... please.
Still, there are mysteries - in the Season of Hell, written while he
was healing a bullet wound inflicted upon him by Paul Verlaine (and
which resulted in Verlaine going to prison) it is widely suggested
that here are the whinings of a willful and most unapologetic young
hell-raiser, and yet the references to redemption are many, and the
wish for the tranquility of that state also seems clear, even though
the author clearly thought it out of reach - then, anyway.
Whichever way you look at it (and the literal and utilitarian is not
the path to joy or wisdom here) there is still lots to set an
imagination along a path never travelled. And if you're reading in
English then perhaps you have a new guide.
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pre Dec 04 reviews are here