A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat (Paperback)

by Arthur Rimbaud (Author), Louise Varese (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
New translation of Rimbaud's great, visionary poems.

Product Details

• Paperback: 103 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (June 1961)
• Language: English, French
• ISBN-10: 0811201856
• ISBN-13: 978-0811201858
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #231,104 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic translation, October 23, 2002

By A Customer

This is one of the better translations of a Season in Hell. It's very faithful to the original French without compromising its poetry; many of the passages are nothing short of brilliant. Also, it's a bilingual edition for those who are either able or willing.

However, Varese struggles a bit under the poetic demands of the Drunken Boat. For example:

(Varese):
I can no longer, bathed in your languors, O waves,
Obliterate the cotton carriers' wake,
Nor cross the pride of pennants and of flags,
Nor swim past prison hulk's hateful eyes!

>> But trust me, for the superb quality of translation in A Season in Hell, this book's well worth the price.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Birth of modern poetry, October 13, 1999

By	George Schaefer (Croydon, PA USA) - See all my reviews

A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud is one of the turning points of world literature and poetry. Henry Miller, the Surrealists and the Beat Generation poets as well as rock star Jim Morrison owe a great debt to young Prince Arthur. This passionate leap into the depths of insanity is enthralling. The meek would be well advised to steer clear. This is the granddaddy of modern poetry. Now, is truly the time of the assassins

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars La Voyant, January 13, 2008

By	Draoi "Draoi-Man" (New York USA) - See all my reviews

I was given this book by a Morrocan Jew in exchange for a matt-black Zippo lighter whilst I was working in a North London psychiatric hospital as a cook.

The diabolic devotions and insights from a revolutionary modern french poet, social philosopher and prophet. As a whole his words remind me of that saying in the Gospel of Thomas; "I took my stand in the midst of the world, and in flesh I appeared to them. I found them all drunk, and did not find any of them thirsty..." (28) Rimbaud is perceptive, agonizing, tortured, cruel, and poor. In anguish he struggles to understand life; skimming the horizon of a dysfuntional and chaotic world for some sight of salvation, yet it never comes and he cries out with a piercing lament. Idolatry, science, nobility, justice, war, debauchery, crime, punishment, damnation, delerium... Arthur Rimbaud walks a path of rotten corpses with a crown of thorns in search of honor, reason and restitution. He seeks a God only to find in the discovery that he is at once sent back into the dark impenetrable battle of human existence.

This is a poet that sets the heart and soul on fire, he initiates a frantic search for meaning and relevance. Look! he says, see the world untinted, without all the trappings and trimmings, calculate the length and breadth of despair, circumnavigate the emotions and come back to understand yourself and the inevitability of your extinction. Like a present day Francois Villon he is an explorer of visions, the varied manifestations of humanity and society, he has adopted all the tricks of the trade and speaks the 'lingua' of the professional criminal.

In the end Rimbaud the prophet dies like the rest of us, albeit in a syphilitic fever with an amputated right leg... he can walk no more, but he is the one who can knock us off our comfortable seat in civilisation, inspire us to consider the real world and invent our own sustaining myths. Perhaps that lighter would have come in handy... to ignite the remnaining stagnant swamps in my own breast and burn like a comet across a purple blood sky.