Total Eclipse Quotes

QUOTES

Verlaine: What do you think of my wife?
Rimbaud: I don't know. What do you think of her?
Verlaine: She's still only a child.
Rimbaud: So am I. (pause)
Verlaine: (to the bartender) Absinthe two..



Rimbaud: You're last book
Verlaine: yes..
Rimbaud: .. wasn't good enough.
Verlaine You don't think so.
Rimbaud: ..premarital garbage.
Verlaine No... love poems. a lot of people found them very beautiful.
Rimbaud: But they're all lies.
Verlaine They're not lies, I love her.
Rimbaud: Love..
Verlaine yes..
Rimbaud: ..no such thing.
Verlaine What do you mean?
Rimbaud: Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist.
Verlaine You're wrong..
Rimbaud: Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented.
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Rimbaud: The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.
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Rimbaud: So do you love her?
Verlaine Of course. She's ideal. 18, beautiful, plenty of money, all the wife of virtues and she's about to give me a baby.
Rimbaud: Do you have anything in common?
Verlaine No..
Rimbaud: Is she intelligent?
Verlaine No..
Rimbaud: Does she understand you?
Verlaine (smiles) No.
Rimbaud: The only thing she can give you is sex.
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Rimbaud: I understood that what I needed to become the first poet of this century is to experience everything in my body. It's no longer enough for me to be one person, I decided to be everyone. i decided to be a genius. I decided to originate the future.
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Verlaine I love her body.
Rimbaud: There are other bodies
Verlaine ..no..i love Mathilde's body.
Rimbaud: But not her soul?
Verlaine I think it's less important to love her soul than to love the body after-all the soul may be immortal. ' have plenty of time for the soul, but flesh..
Rimbaud: (snoring)
Verlaine what?.. it's my love of flesh that keeps me faithful.
Rimbaud: Faithful. What do you mean?
Verlaine I'm faithful to all my lovers cause once I loved them I will always love them...and when I'm alone in the evening or in the early morning I close my eyes and I celebrate them all.
Rimbaud: That's not faithfulness. That's nostalgia.
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Rimbaud: Don't expect me to be faithful to you
Verlaine ahh (groan) ..why are you so harsh with me?
Rimbaud: Because you need it.
Verlaine Isn't it enough for you to know that I love you more than I've ever loved anyone and I'll always love you?
Rimbaud: Shut up you sniveling drunk.
Verlaine Tell me that you love me.
Rimbaud: oh for God's sake..
Verlaine Please.. please it's important to me... say it..
Rimbaud: ... You know I'm very fond of you.
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Rimbaud: We have to leave.. yes it's time. The happiest days of my life was last year when I ran away from home.
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Verlaine Wait!
Rimbaud: Why should I?
Verlaine It's not what you think. It's something else. She suggested we immigrate.
Rimbaud: Immigrate?
Verlaine Yes... to New Caledonia. It will be a change for me quite likely if i could stop drinking. Don't you think it's a good idea?
Rimbaud: No.
Verlaine You don't care about me that much do you?
Rimbaud: No and neither should you.
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Rimbaud: What does it matter. She's your wife. You love her right? Go back to her.
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"I have researched the magic shapes of the happiness no one escapes." - Rimbaud
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Verlaine What is your greatest fear?
Rimbaud: That other people would see me as i see them.
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Rimbaud: The writing has changed me.
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Rimbaud: I suppose you think I've been just lying here all these weeks in a state of paralyzed sloth
Verlaine: Well, not necessarily
Rimbaud: oh I have... but bubbling beneath the surface and rising slowly to the layers of indifference comes a new system. Harden up, reject romanticism, abandon rhetoric, get it right. And finally I have seen where my attempt to conquer the world has led me.
Verlaine: Where has it led you?
Rimbaud: Here. My search for universal experience has led me here. To live an idle, pointless life of poverty, is the menial of a bald, ugly, aging, drunken lyric poet who clings to me because his wife won't take him back.
Verlaine: How can you bring yourself to say anything like that?
Rimbaud: It's easy, it's the truth.
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Rimbaud: You're here living like this because you have to. Drunk and sex and the kind of complaisant melancholy and enough money to soak your self oblivious every night. But me, I'm here because I chose to be.
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Verlaine: Do you know what day it is tomorrow?
Rimbaud: Friday.
Verlaine: It's my wedding anniversary. And I haven't seen her, my wife, since we made love here in Brussels nearly a year ago. She won't answer my letters. Do you know I wrote to her last week and told her if she didn't come to Brussels within 3 days I'd commit suicide and she didn't even reply.
Rimbaud: Oh but you didn't commit suicide.
Verlaine: I suppose you think that's funny?
Rimbaud: No, It's pitiful. Tell me how many people did you write and tell them you'd commit suicide? Huh? I'm surprise you didn't send out invitations.
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Verlaine: You know if you leave me you'll kill me, I can't bear to be alone. I don't exist without someone else. I don't care if you stay with me out of pettiness.
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Verlaine: I did some shopping this morning. I bought a gun.
Rimbaud: What for?
Verlaine: For you, for me, for everybody.
Rimbaud: Hope you bought plenty of ammunition.
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Verlaine: I didn't mean to I'm sorry.
Rimbaud: look..
Verlaine: Oh for God's sake, kill me, shoot me...Shoot me!
Rimbaud: How can I, you stupid fuck, you'd just blown a hole on my hand.
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Verlaine: It seemed to me that the only thing that I could do is to submit myself to God, ask Him to forgive me and help me face my situation and He did. I promise you He did.
Rimbaud: And now you want us to love each other in Jesus, am I right?
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Rimbaud: I no longer write.
Verlaine: Why not?
Rimbaud: 'Cause I have nothin' more to say, if I ever had anything to say in the first place.
Verlaine: Nonsense.
Rimbaud: I used to think that what I did would make a difference, you know, change the world. That nothin' would ever be the same again. But it's no good. The world is too old and there's nothin' new. It's all been said.
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Rimbaud: You changed have you?
Verlaine: yes..
Rimbaud: I'm here, in the wilderness. I offer you an architypal choice. The choice between my body and my soul. Choose... choose...
Verlaine: Your body..
Rimbaud: Let the 98 wounds of our Savior burst and bleed.
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Verlaine: We were always happy, always, I remember...
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Rimbaud: I found it.
Verlaine: ..What?
Rimbaud: ...Eternity. Where the sun mingled with the sea.

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