Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read Rimbaud in French and English, May 27, 2001
I really don't understand any of the negative reviews on this page. Fowlie's translations are considered some of the best, even by scholars, and yes, this is the version that has inspired many other artists, actors, musicians, poets, and so forth. Fowlie's introduction is fitting and his inclusion of selected letters gives us an insightful look into the very language of Rimbaud.This is why I wanted to learn French. This keeps me learning French, and Rimbauds poems are absolutely stunning. If you want a good introduction to Rimbaud, select this volume of translations and then read Enid Starkie's wonderful biography of Rimbaud. Keep in mind this simple philosophy: the search for truth, history, and art is sometimes elusive and beyond our grasp. Rimbaud, to a certain extent, is always going to be elusive to the modern reader, and certainly personal and controversial for many reasons. However don't let this elusiveness stop you from buying this wonderful book.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Rimbaud to get, August 12, 2002
While the Penguin and Oxford Classics editions claim to be complete, they are not. This edition has several later works that those other editions simply do not include.The literal translation provided does not attempt to be its own art, which is often a translator's greatest virtue. It serves best as a set of cribs for someone who has some French, but whose French isn't perfect.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Indispensable Translation of Rimbaud's Works, April 13, 2002
Wallace Fowlie's translation of Rimbaud's complete poeticworks, together with a selection of Rimbaud's letters, provides themost complete and reliable English translation of Rimbaud's poetry and a useful companion to the many books on Rimbaud's life. While Fowlie's translations are workmanlike and somewhat unimaginative, they are generally faithful to the original French text. Moreover, because the original French version and the English translation are on facing pages, the reader can easily compare Fowlie's translation with the reader's own understanding and interpretation of the French text. In this respect, the book is particularly useful if you have some French fluency. All translations are, by their nature, inauthentic since there is never a perfect correspondence between the resonant images and meanings of the original language and the new language into which a text is translated. Translation is, as one critic has said, "like kissing someone through a veil"; the sensations (meanings) of the original are occluded by the translative process. Recognizing this inevitable deficiency, all that a reader can ask is that a translation approximate, as closely as possible, the linguistic meaning of the original. Fowlie has achieved this, more so than many other translators of Rimbaud, who have corrupted the integrity of Rimbaud's original meanings by their own creative and symbolistic interpretive renderings. Fowlie also has provided solid translations of Rimbaud's important letters, particularly the letters of May, 1871, to George Izambard and Paul Demeny which articulate Rimbaud's precocious and iconoclastic aesthetic view of the role of the poet. If the book has any real shortcoming, it is the truncated and relatively unintersting biographical section and a lack of detailed notes. However, those failings can be excused by the fact that Wylie's book achieves its main objective--bringing a complete text of Rimbaud's poems to the English speaking world. If you are studying Rimbaud and the biographical details of his early life, and you cannot read the original French, Wylie's collection is indispensable
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