Clearance Sale
For what the Jews have not sold,
what neither nobility nor crime have tasted,
what is unknown to monstrous love
and to the infernal probity of the masses!
what neither time nor science need recognize: The Voices restored;
fraternal awakening of all choral and orchestral energies
and their instantaneous application; the opportunity, the only one,
for the release of our senses! For sale Bodies without price,
outside any race, any world, any sex, any lineage! Riches gushing at every step!
Uncontrolled sale of diamonds!
For sale anarchy for the masses;
irrepressible satisfaction for rare connoisseurs;
agonizing death for the faithful and for lovers!
For sale colonization and migrations, sports,
fairylands and incomparable comforts,
and the noise and the movement
and the future they make!
For sale the application of calculations
and the incredible leaps of harmony.
Discoveries and terms never dreamed of,
-- immediate possession.
Wild and infinite flight toward invisible splendors,
toward intangible delights--
and its maddening secrets for every vice
-- and its terrifying gaiety for the mob.
For sale, the bodies, the voices,
the enormous and unquestionable wealth,
that which will never be sold.
Salesmen are not at the end of their stock!
It will be some time before travelers have to turn in their accounts.
Arthur Rimbaud
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Youth
Youth
I.
_Sunday_
Problems put by, the inevitable descent of heaven
and the visit of memories and the assembly
of rhythms occupy the house,
the head and the world of the spirit. --
A horse scampers off on the suburban track,
and along the tilled fields and woodlands,
pervaded by the carbonic plague.
A miserable woman of drama, somewhere in the world,
sighs for improbable desertions.
Desperados pine for strife, drunkenness and wounds.
-- Little children stifle their maledictions along the rivers.
Let us resume our study to the noise of the consuming work
that is gathering and growing in the masses.
II.
_Sonnet_
Man of ordinary constitution,
was not the flesh a fruit hanging in the orchard;
O child days; the body, a treasure to squander;
O to love, the peril or the power of Psyche?
The earth had slopes fertile in princes and in artists,
and lineage and race incited you to crimes and mournings:
the world, your fortune and your peril.
But now, that labor crowned,
you and your calculations,-- you and your impatiences--
are only your dance and your voice, not fixed and not forced,
although a reason for the double consequence
of invention and of success, -- in fraternal
and discreet humanity through an imageless universe;--
might and right reflect your dance and your voice,
appreciated only at present.
III.
_Tewnty Years Old_
Instructive voices exiled... Physical candor bitterly quelled...
--Adagio.-- Ah! the infinite egotism of adolescence,
the studious optimism: how the world was full of flowers that summer!
Airs and forms dying... --A choir to calm impotence and absence!
A choir of glasses, of nocturnal melodies...
Quickly, indeed, the nerves take up the chase.
IV.
You are still at Anthony's temptation.
The antics of abated zeal,
the grimaces of childish pride, the collapse and the terror.
But you will set yourself at this labor:
all harmonic and architectural possibilities
will surge around your seat.
Perfect beings, never dreamed of,
will present themselves for your experiments.
The curiosity of ancient crowds
and idle wealth will meditatively draw near.
Your memory and your senses
will be simply the nourishment of your creative impulse.
As for the world, when you emerge, what will it have become?
In any case, nothing of what it seems at present.
Arthur Rimbaud
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I.
_Sunday_
Problems put by, the inevitable descent of heaven
and the visit of memories and the assembly
of rhythms occupy the house,
the head and the world of the spirit. --
A horse scampers off on the suburban track,
and along the tilled fields and woodlands,
pervaded by the carbonic plague.
A miserable woman of drama, somewhere in the world,
sighs for improbable desertions.
Desperados pine for strife, drunkenness and wounds.
-- Little children stifle their maledictions along the rivers.
Let us resume our study to the noise of the consuming work
that is gathering and growing in the masses.
II.
_Sonnet_
Man of ordinary constitution,
was not the flesh a fruit hanging in the orchard;
O child days; the body, a treasure to squander;
O to love, the peril or the power of Psyche?
The earth had slopes fertile in princes and in artists,
and lineage and race incited you to crimes and mournings:
the world, your fortune and your peril.
But now, that labor crowned,
you and your calculations,-- you and your impatiences--
are only your dance and your voice, not fixed and not forced,
although a reason for the double consequence
of invention and of success, -- in fraternal
and discreet humanity through an imageless universe;--
might and right reflect your dance and your voice,
appreciated only at present.
III.
_Tewnty Years Old_
Instructive voices exiled... Physical candor bitterly quelled...
--Adagio.-- Ah! the infinite egotism of adolescence,
the studious optimism: how the world was full of flowers that summer!
Airs and forms dying... --A choir to calm impotence and absence!
A choir of glasses, of nocturnal melodies...
Quickly, indeed, the nerves take up the chase.
IV.
You are still at Anthony's temptation.
The antics of abated zeal,
the grimaces of childish pride, the collapse and the terror.
But you will set yourself at this labor:
all harmonic and architectural possibilities
will surge around your seat.
Perfect beings, never dreamed of,
will present themselves for your experiments.
The curiosity of ancient crowds
and idle wealth will meditatively draw near.
Your memory and your senses
will be simply the nourishment of your creative impulse.
As for the world, when you emerge, what will it have become?
In any case, nothing of what it seems at present.
Arthur Rimbaud
Read more...
Genie
Genie
He is love and the present because he has opened our house
to winter's foam and to the sound of summer,
He who purified all that we drink and tea;
He is the charm of passing places,
the incarnate delight of all things that abide.
He is affection and the future,
the strength and love that we,
standing surrounded by anger and weariness,
See passing in the storm-filled sky and in banners of ecstasy.
He is love, perfect and rediscovered measure,
Reason, marvelous and unforeseen,
Eternity: beloved prime mover of the elements, of destinies.
We all know the terror of his yielding, and of ours:
Oh delight of our well-being, brilliance of our faculties,
selfish affection and passion for him, who loves us forever...
And we remember him, and he goes on his way...
And if Adoration departs, then it sounds, his promise sounds:
'Away with these ages and superstitions,
These couplings, these bodies of old!
All our age has submerged.' He will not go away,
will not come down again from some heave.
He will not fulfill the redemption of women's fury
nor the gaiety of men nor the rest of this sin:
For he is and he is loved, and so it is already done.
Oh, his breathing, the turn of his head when he runs:
Terrible speed of perfection in action and form!
Fecundity of spirit and vastness of the universe! His body!
Release so long desired, The splintering of grace before a new violence!
Oh, the sight, the sight of him!
All ancient genuflections, all sorrows are lifted as he passes.
The light of his day! All moving and sonorous
suffering dissolves in more intense music.
In his step there are vaster migrations than the old invasions were.
Oh, He and we! a pride more benevolent than charities lost.
Oh, world! and the shining song of new sorrows.
He has known us all and has loved us.
Let us discover how, this winter night, to hail him from cape to cape,
from the unquiet pole to the château,
from crowded cities to the empty coast,
from glance to glance, with our strength and our feelings exhausted,
To see him, and to send him once again away...
And beneath the tides and over high deserts of snow
To follow his image, his breathing, his body, the light of his day.
Arthur Rimbaud
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He is love and the present because he has opened our house
to winter's foam and to the sound of summer,
He who purified all that we drink and tea;
He is the charm of passing places,
the incarnate delight of all things that abide.
He is affection and the future,
the strength and love that we,
standing surrounded by anger and weariness,
See passing in the storm-filled sky and in banners of ecstasy.
He is love, perfect and rediscovered measure,
Reason, marvelous and unforeseen,
Eternity: beloved prime mover of the elements, of destinies.
We all know the terror of his yielding, and of ours:
Oh delight of our well-being, brilliance of our faculties,
selfish affection and passion for him, who loves us forever...
And we remember him, and he goes on his way...
And if Adoration departs, then it sounds, his promise sounds:
'Away with these ages and superstitions,
These couplings, these bodies of old!
All our age has submerged.' He will not go away,
will not come down again from some heave.
He will not fulfill the redemption of women's fury
nor the gaiety of men nor the rest of this sin:
For he is and he is loved, and so it is already done.
Oh, his breathing, the turn of his head when he runs:
Terrible speed of perfection in action and form!
Fecundity of spirit and vastness of the universe! His body!
Release so long desired, The splintering of grace before a new violence!
Oh, the sight, the sight of him!
All ancient genuflections, all sorrows are lifted as he passes.
The light of his day! All moving and sonorous
suffering dissolves in more intense music.
In his step there are vaster migrations than the old invasions were.
Oh, He and we! a pride more benevolent than charities lost.
Oh, world! and the shining song of new sorrows.
He has known us all and has loved us.
Let us discover how, this winter night, to hail him from cape to cape,
from the unquiet pole to the château,
from crowded cities to the empty coast,
from glance to glance, with our strength and our feelings exhausted,
To see him, and to send him once again away...
And beneath the tides and over high deserts of snow
To follow his image, his breathing, his body, the light of his day.
Arthur Rimbaud
Read more...
War
War
When a child, certain skies sharpened my vision:
all their characters were reflected in my face.
The Phenomena were roused.
-- At present, the eternal inflection of moments
and the infinity of mathematics
drives me through this world where
I meet with every civil honor,
respected by strange children
and prodigious affections.
-- I dream of a War of right and of might,
of unlooked-for logic.
It is as simple as a musical phrase.
Arthur Rimbaud
Read more...
When a child, certain skies sharpened my vision:
all their characters were reflected in my face.
The Phenomena were roused.
-- At present, the eternal inflection of moments
and the infinity of mathematics
drives me through this world where
I meet with every civil honor,
respected by strange children
and prodigious affections.
-- I dream of a War of right and of might,
of unlooked-for logic.
It is as simple as a musical phrase.
Arthur Rimbaud
Read more...
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