Arthur Rimbaud - Illuminations

From the back of the book: The prose poems of the great French Symbolist, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), have acquired enormous prestige among readers everywhere and have been a revolutionary influence on poetry in the twentieth century. They are offered here both in their original texts and in superb English translations by Louise Varese. Rimbaud was indeed the most astonishing of French geniuses. Fired in childhood with an ambition to write, he gave up poetry before he was twenty-one. Yet he had already produced some of the finest examples of French verse. He is best known for 'A Season In Hell', but his other prose poems are no less remarkable. While he was working on them he spoke of his interest in hallucinations - "des vertiges, des silences, des nuits." These perceptions were caught by the poet in a beam of pellucid and strangely active language which still lights up-now here, now there-unexplored aspects of experience and thought. Other: "Situations have ended sad/relationships have all been bad/Mine've been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud" - Bob Dylan, Blood On The Tracks, 'You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go' "I don't think of myself as Bob Dylan. It's like Rimbaud said, 'I is another.'" - Bob Dylan, Biograph liner notes for 'Up To Me'

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G4MBA (2014-04-03)

This is a amateur reading of Rimbaud's Illuminations. But what can you say? This is THE only english reading I have been able to find. The reader has sometimes succumbed to unprofessionalism, when his voice breaks or cracks, yet he did not find it necessary to make a second take. I am unable to find the tracks where this shows the most, but you'll surely notice it as he turns into something that likens Smeagol in The Lord of the Rings. Furthermore, I would say that the reading is a bit tedious overall. There is no real emotion or respect for the individual poem, he views them as all the same. Reading with the same tone, voice and emotion. Someone who views Rimbaud as this, should not read Rimbaud. Respect the work, don't project it upon your own self loathing.

G4MBA (2014-04-11)

Oh yeah and he also mispronounces "Rimbaud". That should tell you something.