Illuminations

The Drunken Boat

Arthur Rimbaud

Translated into English by R J Dent

Arthur Rimbaud (20 October 1854–10 November 1891) was a French poet known for the visionary, transgressive and surreal themes in his work, and for the influence of his poetry on modern literature and arts. He is also credited as being a major inspiration for the Surrealists.

Born in Charleville, he started writing as soon as he was able to read and write. During his late adolescence and early adulthood, he produced the bulk of his literary output.

By the age of seventeen, having been inspired by Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, Rimbaud had written The Drunken Boat, which is generally regarded as his most important poem. It is a one-hundred line symbolist poem that describes the drifting and sinking of a boat lost at sea. The poem’s powerful central metaphor has meant that The Drunken Boat has had a significant influence on modern poetry.

A year later, Rimbaud wrote A Season in Hell, which is an extended poem of secular and spiritual damnation. It is loosely divided into nine parts in which the individual poems are either autobiographical, self-appraising, confessional, visionary, apologetic or hallucinatory, sometimes simultaneously.

Rimbaud’s final significant work was Illuminations, a collection of forty-two prose poems that provide a clear example of Rimbaud’s visionary sensibility, a sensibility that established him as a logical successor to William Blake. Illuminations has been acknowledged as the inspiration for the Symbolists, the Dadaists and the Surrealists.

At the age of twenty, Rimbaud abandoned poetry. He spent the remainder of his life travelling around the world. He lived in Africa for several years, writing nothing but a few terse letters to acquaintances, before returning to France, where he died, aged thirty-seven.

The three works (A Season in Hell, Illuminations and The Drunken Boat) collected in this volume represent Arthur Rimbaud at his visionary, confessional and hallucinatory best.

Book details:

Title: A Season in Hell Illuminations The Drunken Boat
Author: Arthur Rimbaud
Translator: R J Dent
ISBN: 978-1-291-753-691
Cover Image: ‘Die Hand der Philosophen’ by Johann Isaac Hollandus
Cover design: D M Mitchell
Language: English and French (Bilingual Edition)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 190
Publisher: Incunabula
Book details and purchase link: https://incunabulamedia.com/r-j-dent-1