Rimbaud - Une Saison en Enfer Part Deux - A Mouthful of Poison

Painting by Brett Whiteley - Oh Pen and Chose!

I come again to my favorite poet: Arthur Rimbaud
"You have to pass an exam, and the jobs that you get are either shining shoes, or herding cows, or tend to pigs. Thank God, I don't want any of that! Damn it! And besides that they smack you for a reward; they call you an animal and it's not true, a little kid, etc.... Oh! Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn!"

I am working on a new translation of Une Saison en Enfer - I know... Pretentious much??

An amazing work - completed in his LATE TEENS! What were you doing when you were 18?? lol

It reports his suffering and descent to madness... passing close to but not through the gates of death.... a grand and glorious failure to become a seer. He speaks of his delusions... his doubts... his fears.. but also.. his hopes and desires.

Let us pass a “Night in Hell”. The opening lines are powerful:

I have just swallowed a terrific mouthful of poison.
-- Blessed, blessed, blessed the advice I was given! --
My guts are on fire.
The power of the poison twists my arms and legs, cripples me, drives me to the ground.
I die of thirst, I suffocate, I cannot cry.
This is Hell, eternal torment!
See how the flames rise! I burn as I ought to.
Go on, Devil!

The poison represents the drugs and other methods he used to derange his senses in order to become a visionary. Despite being tortured by hallucinations, Rimbaud vaunts of his talent and his imagination:

I will tear the veils from every mystery: mysteries of religion or of nature, death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony, and nothingness.
I am a master of phantasmagoria.

The night in hell is followed by two “Deliriums.” The first, “Delirium I” or “The Foolish Virgin -- The Infernal Bridegroom”, is a dialogue by the Foolish Virgin (Verlaine) describing the traits of the Infernal Bridegroom (Rimbaud). We get a hard look at the relationship of the two men, and Rimbaud does not spare himself. The Virgin at one point says “I go where he goes, I have to. And lots of times he gets mad at me, at me, poor sinner. That Devil! He really is a Devil, you know, and not a man.”