Arthur Rimbaud: The Poems

by Rimbaud, Arthur; Bernard, Oliver

• ISBN13: 9780856464409
• ISBN10: 0856464406
• Edition: Bilingual
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-01
• Publisher: Anvil Press Poetry

Summary

Arthur Rimbaud's meteoric career was crammed into four teenage years in which he wrote two masterpieces, The Illuminationsand A Season in Hell, and some wonderful short poems. At nineteen he then rejected the literary life and left France. Oliver Bernard, poet and translator of Guillaume Apollinaire, presents both the French and Latin poems in bilingual form with lively and accurate prose versions and a useful and entertaining introduction. A selection of letters is also included. This is the best and most helpful presentation of the French genius' work for English-language readers and students of French poetry. Oliver Bernard's most recent collection of poems was Verse &c(Anvil Press, 2001). He lives in Norfolk, England.

Author Biography

Arthur Rimbaud: Rimbaud was born at Charleville in northern France in 1854. He was already a poet by the age of fifteen. In 1871 he began his stormy affair with Paul Verlaine, travelling with him to London in 1872. He gave up writing poetry after completing A Season in Hell at the age of nineteen. After travelling widely in Europe, he left for Aden via Cyprus and Egypt and worked there as a trader and gun-runner. He died in Marseilles in 1891 from complications after a tumour had resulted in a leg amputation.

Oliver Bernard: Born in 1925, Oliver Bernard is a poet and translator who has lived in Norfolk for over thirty years. His publications include Poems (1983), Apollinaire: Selected Poems (Penguin, 1965; Anvil, 1986 and 2004) and Verse &c. (2001), also published by Anvil. He has worked as an advisory teacher of drama. A volume of autobiography, Getting Over It (1991), described his Soho days in the company of poets and artists in the mid twentieth century.