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

by Arthur Rimbaud (Author), Wyatt Mason (Translator) "On calm black waters filled with sleeping stars..." (more)
Key Phrases: thousand thalers, hundred francs, Arthur Rimbaud, Red Sea, Monsieur Tian (more...)

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.
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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 -- Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library; First Edition edition (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067964301X
• ISBN-13: 978-0679643012
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,059,946 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 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)

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:

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read for Any RIMBAUD Fan , October 24, 2008

By	RIZZOB "Rizzob" (People's Repubic of Earth) - See all my reviews

Like Henry Miller said in Colossus at Marousi: 'Rimbaud is greatest of the French poets.' The letters offer a glimpse into his life after quitting poetry & taking up life in Africa, etc., & a good diary of what life was like in Africa & the Middle East before planes & railroads. The constant complaints, pleads to his mother to send him engineering equipment, etc., are dull if you're not interested in the guy's life but you should be, if you're a lover of poetry. The mystery as to why he turned his back on Literature (& Western life) isn't answered but it's as close as we'll ever get. A chronicle of his transformation from a 'seer' into the embodiment of his famous maxim: 'Il faut que d' etre absolutement moderne.' A pretty good translation keeping in mind he was writing in the 19th century & language has changed a lot since then. Cheers, Rizzob