I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (Modern Library Classics) [Paperback]

Arthur Rimbaud (Author), Wyatt Mason (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Modern Library Classics | Publication Date: November 9, 2004

One of the most written-about literary figures in the past decade, Arthur Rimbaud left few traces when he abandoned poetry at age twenty-one and disappeared into the African desert. Although the dozen biographies devoted to Rimbaud’s life depend on one main source for information—his own correspondence—a complete edition of these remarkable letters has never been published in English. Until now.

A moving document of decline, Rimbaud’s letters begin with the enthusiastic artistic pronouncements of a fifteen-year-old genius, and end with the bitter what-ifs of a man whose life has slipped disastrously away. But whether soapboxing on the essence of art, or struggling under the yoke of self-imposed exile in the desert of his later years, Rimbaud was incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence. As translator and editor Wyatt Mason makes clear in his engaging Introduction, the letters reveal a Rimbaud very different from our expectations. Rimbaud—presented by many biographers as a bohemian wild man—is unveiled as “diligent in his pursuit of his goals . . . wildly, soberly ambitious, in poetry, in everything.”

I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud is the second and final volume in Mason’s authoritative presentation of Rimbaud’s writings. Called by Edward Hirsch “the definitive translation for our time,” Mason’s first volume, Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library, 2002), brought Rimbaud’s poetry and prose into vivid focus. In I Promise to Be Good, Mason adds the missing epistolary pieces to our picture of Rimbaud. “These letters,” he writes, “are proofs in all their variety—of impudence and precocity, of tenderness and rage—for the existence of Arthur Rimbaud.” I Promise to Be Good allows English-language readers to see with new eyes one of the most extraordinary poets in history.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The story, of course, is the stuff of legend: after a painful affair with the older, married poet Paul Verlaine, Rimbaud (1854-1891) put poetry behind him at age 21 and became a commercial traveler in Africa and Arabia, returning home to Charlevoix and his family only at the end of his brief life and dying painfully of gangrene complications. Mason, the American translator who last year published Rimbaud's collected poems in English, gives us a Rimbaud that's a far cry from the Dionysian figure who inspired Jim Morrison, Patti Smith and David Wojnarowicz with his call for a slow derangement of the senses. In the 27 letters included here that were written before Rimbaud's departure (the first, from 1870, left in a teacher's mailbox), Mason unveils instead an Apollonian craftsman, one who took infinite pains to achieve perfection of expression and who comes clear in the letters "not with rubbery biographical inventions or facile psychological putty" but as a "clear, deliberate personality." Rimbaud quits France after seeing Verlaine for the last time in 1875 for five years of poorly documented sojourns in Europe and the U.K., for which there are only five letters. From there, the interest level of the 149 epistles that follow plunges way down. Mason's an agile, skillful translator, and he does his best to enliven the long litany of profit and loss in Rimbaud's African commercial adventures, but when he tells us he has excluded 34 letters to Alfred Ilg, a trading colleague of Rimbaud's, on the ground that they're too boring, anyone who has read through this whole volume will not feel it a loss.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Wyatt Mason’s translation of Rimbaud’s letters is a swashbuckler of a book, nothing less than a resurrection of a remarkable life. As such, it is a worthy companion to Mason’s fine translation of the poems. No admirer of Rimbaud will want to be without it.” —Arthur Goldhammer, translator of more than eighty books from the French

“These letters, together with the poems, provide as direct a record as possible of what the archetypal bohemian boy-genius did with his gift. They brim with curiosity, ambition, spite, self-pity, and a giant talent; his art is as impervious to time as that of Catullus or Heine. Thanks to Wyatt Mason’s masterly translations, Rimbaud has, after a century and a half, recovered his gift.” —Askold Melnyczuk, author of What Is Told and Ambassador of the Dead


From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library; Modern Library Pbk. Ed edition (November 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812970152
• ISBN-13: 978-0812970159
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,481,854 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Above All . . ., June 8, 2004

By 

Christopher Nelson (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (Modern Library) (Hardcover)

Rimbaud liked to use the phrase, "above all" in many of his early letters, which according to Wyatt Mason is indicative of his imperious personality. As one reads on, Rimbaud's demands serve a desperate purpose: he wants to improve himself through literature, and get out of town. He demands freedom.

There are some 250 letters collected here, some for the first time in English. Of these, only 30 were written during the time when he was writing poetry. This is all that has been found and collected. Additionally, a few photographs Rimbaud took while in Abyssinia are printed, along with others of Africa, including the slick cover photograph of what appears to be Rimbaud and his co-workers in Aden - never before printed as far as I know. Mason's introduction goes a long way to get to the heart of the real vs. the mythical Rimbaud, and he takes to task previous biographers for simultaneously debunking and promoting the Rimbaud myth. He goes on to compare Rimbaud's letters with those of Van Gogh (I would also include Gauguin, for they all lived & wrote in the same years). The main difference of course being that Van Gogh wrote extensively and confessionally about art and life, while Rimbaud only briefly outlined his thoughts on poetry in the so-called "seer letters". Comparing the relative "salaciousness" and quality of the artist's letters, Mason writes: "There is little of that register in Rimbaud's correspondence. Rather, a sober impatience running from first letter to last. And it is the uniqueness of this tone - a relentless striving - that so informs our understanding of Rimbaud, both as poet and trader."

For those readers unacquainted with Rimbaud and hoping for first-hand accounts of his Parisian adventures, his European travels, debauched meetings with other poets and artists, and poetical inspirations they will likely be disappointed in the long run. Those who are familiar with Rimbaud know that once he left for Africa, he stopped writing poetry. He had gained nothing positive from it, and the Verlaine affair probably pushed him over the edge once and for all. And so he sought his riches in "business"; although, quite unordinary, and therefore, interesting business as a trader in the far reaches of the French colonial empire. To enjoy these letters one must be willing to look past Rimbaud the "genius, maudit, child poet", and open their eyes to the "Somebody Else" of Charles Nicholl's 1997 titled biography. Whether or not you already have a collection of Rimbaud's poems, or intend to buy Mason's Volume I "Rimbaud Complete", Volume II: "I Promise to Be Good" is an invaluable counterpart to the poems, and are the sources for many conjectures and "facts" found in the biographies. On the other hand, if you want to stay away from biographies altogether, but still want to get closer to Rimbaud the person than otherwise possible via his sometimes illusive poems, then "I Promise to Be Good" is the most direct way to go. There is a biographical chronology, reprints of his actual handwritten letters, the poems he included as part of the letters, photographs (including the rare, unprinted cover I mentioned above), maps of his travels, and Above All . . . the letters themselves. It doesn't get much more "complete" than this.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Read, April 20, 2010

By 

S. Smith (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (Modern Library) (Hardcover)

How sad it is that so little is known of Arthur Rimbaud, who is arguably one of the greatest poets to have ever lived. If not for his letters, we would know even less. As it is, these letters give us an autobiographical glimpse into Rimbaud's mind and personality. Wyatt Mason has done a great job here, translating and chronologically organizing this companion piece to his brilliant Rimbaud Complete. I don't know which is more fascinating: That Mason was able to collect so many of Rimbaud's letters, or that the letters still existed after all these years. Clearly his family and acquaintances had an inkling of Rimbaud's importance, and they must have suspected that his artistry would leave an indelible mark on the literary world.

For all its detail, however, the one thing missing from this volume is an appendix of the French text accompanying the English translation - which definitely enhanced Rimbaud Complete. There are a few reproductions of original letters here, as well as some other interesting photographs, but I think the book would have benefited greatly from the same treatment as Wyatt's previous work. I find it odd that he would omit such an important element to this particular publication. A full-scale reproduction of the documents would have been perfect. Barring that, the French text would be most logical. After all, the book is subtitled, The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud. A reader might expect to see more of the letters.

4 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't you want French poet's letters in French as well?, February 4, 2009

By 

Wallace Smith "TN435" (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

As usual, the English-speaking American reader is apparently too much of a monophone (let alone Anglophone or, heaven forbid, Francophone) to allow for the original French letters to be included in this abridged and edited publication of Rimbaud from Modern Library. The reader must rely on what appear to be lovely and credible English translations by Wyatt Mason of the French Symbolist poet's letters, but is the reader able to know it for sure? When any reader bothers to read Rimbaud - and no less than his personal letters - the original French text accompanying the English translation should be, ahem, de rigueur [of rigor]. Either wait for a complete French-English presentation of these interesting letters or read right now instead Wallace Fowlie's Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters that includes the French text facing the English translation.