|
Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2010 18:54:14 GMT
The evening news just spent 5 minutes on the subject of a photo of Arthur Rimbaud having been authentified after a 2-year investigation. Basically, the only clear known photo of Rimbaud was as the 17 year old romantic, and you see the same one every time. The new photo shows Rimbaud with a group of other people, in Yemen as an adult. He looks fatigued and very adult. I'll bet that if in coming years it supplants the other photo of Rimbaud, it will make people think differently about his poetry. He is the second person from the right.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2010 18:57:17 GMT
Dance of the Hanged Men
On the black gallows, one-armed friend, The paladins are dancing, dancing The lean, the devil's paladins The skeletons of Saladins.
Sir Beelzebub pulls by the scruff His little black puppets who grin at the sky, And with a backhander in the head like a kick, Makes them dance, dance, to an old Carol-tune!
And the puppets, shaken about, entwine their thin arms: Their breasts pierced with light, like black organ-pipes Which once gentle ladies pressed to their own, Jostle together protractedly in hideous love-making.
Hurray! the gay dancers, you whose bellies are gone! You can cut capers on such a long stage! Hop! never mind whether it's fighting or dancing! - Beelzebub, maddened, saws on his fiddles!
Oh the hard heels, no one's pumps are wearing out! And nearly all have taken of their shirts of skin; The rest is not embarrassing and can be seen without shame. On each skull the snow places a white hat:
The crow acts as a plume for these cracked brains, A scrap of flesh clings to each lean chin: You would say, to see them turning in their dark combats, They were stiff knights clashing pasteboard armours.
Hurrah! the wind whistles at the skeletons' grand ball! The black gallows moans like an organ of iron ! The wolves howl back from the violet forests: And on the horizon the sky is hell-red...
Ho there, shake up those funereal braggarts, Craftily telling with their great broken fingers The beads of their loves on their pale vertebrae: Hey the departed, this is no monastery here!
Oh! but see how from the middle of this Dance of Death Springs into the red sky a great skeleton, mad, Carried away by his own impetus, like a rearing horse: And, feeling the rope tight again round his neck,
Clenches his knuckles on his thighbone with a crack Uttering cries like mocking laughter, And then like a mountebank into his booth, Skips back into the dance to the music of the bones!
On the black gallows, one-armed friend, The paladins are dancing, dancing The lean, the devil's paladins The skeletons of Saladins.
|
|
|
Post by spindrift on Apr 15, 2010 19:15:26 GMT
..... so graphic, the horror of it.... catch me, I'm falling!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2010 19:35:39 GMT
I am always so envious of those of you who get to read Rimbaud in the original text. I am most familiar with Louise Varese's translations. Accordingly,she acknowledges the difficulties she encountered in doing so. Thanks for this Kerouac.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Apr 16, 2010 3:10:52 GMT
That is a great, truly great poem. Can those of you who are French-speakers comment on the various translations of Rimbaud?
|
|
|
Post by fumobici on Apr 16, 2010 3:29:04 GMT
The French should've got like a beefier lookin' dude to play Rambo. Ya know?
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Apr 16, 2010 5:07:15 GMT
;D ;D ;D
Maybe he bulked up for the part.
|
|
|
Post by spindrift on Apr 16, 2010 16:14:39 GMT
Perhaps someone knows why Rimbaud visited the Yemen? I recall that he became some sort of administrator, left Europe and went to Africa. Perhaps he got off the ship at the Yemen?
|
|
|
Post by onlymark on Apr 16, 2010 16:57:17 GMT
In 1880 Rimbaud finally settled in Aden as a main employee in the Bardey agency. He was a coffee agent.
|
|
|
Post by Jazz on Apr 16, 2010 17:03:39 GMT
The French should've got like a beefier lookin' dude to play Rambo. Ya know? ;D Rimbaud led an often mysterious later life...explorer, entrepreneur, arms dealer/gun runner....It is interesting to look at his mature face that has come to know much more of life. rimbaud6d.blogspot.com/#yemenwww.kirjasto.sci.fi/rimbaud.htm
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Apr 17, 2010 2:34:28 GMT
But it was the brain behind the teenaged face that wrote the poetry.
I'd never read any English translations of Rimbaud.
|
|