A Season in Hell

by Arthur Rimbaud, Andrew Jary (Translator)

Overview

A new translation of Arthur Rimbaud's extraordinary poetic statement, written in 1873. The sensual, violent and anguished emotion in Rimbaud's visionary 'alchemy of the word' remains startling, and continues to inspire poets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781861717894
Publisher:	Crescent Moon Publishing
Publication date:	03/16/2020
Series:	European Writers , #26
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.23(d)

About the Author

A volatile and peripatetic poet, the prodigy ARTHUR RIMBAUD wrote all of his poetry in a space of less than five years. His poem "Voyelles" invoked synesthesia, marking him as a founder of French symbolism, and his Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) is considered one of the first works of free verse. His poetry was subconsciously inspired and highly suggestive; his persona was caustic and unstable. Though brilliant, during his life his peers regarded him as perverse, unsophisticated, and youthfully arrogant, and he died virtually indifferent to his own work. DONALD REVELL is Professor of English & Director of Creative Writing programs at UNLV. Thief of Strings is his tenth poetry collection, published by Alice James. Donald Revell's previous translations include The Illumninations by Arthur Rimbaud, and A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud, both of which were published by Omnidawn. A Season in Hell won the PSA translation award. His books of essays include Invisible Green: Selected Prose, published by Omnidawn. He serves as poetry editor of Colorado Review. Revell lives in the desert south of Las Vegas with his wife, poet Claudia Keelan, and their children Benjamin Brecht and Lucie Ming.

Table of Contents

A Season in Hell     18
"Back when..."     20
Bad Blood     22
Night of Hell     36
Deliriums I     42
Deliriums II     52
The Impossible     66
Lightning     72
Morning     74
Farewell     76
A Translator's Afterword: Outrageous Innocence/Innocence Outraged     81
Morning of Drunkenness     98
Suggested Reading     99

What People are Saying About This

James Longenbach

“Woe to those readers who are doomed to read Rimbaud only in French, for in addition to giving us a bracing translation of Une Saison en Enfer, Donald Revell has given birth to a great poem—a poem that forces us to take Rimbaud at his word: ‘I transcribed the inexpressible.’”

Dean Young

“How lucky we are that after his limber, resourceful translations of the twentieth century's greatest pyrotechnician, Apollinaire, Donald Revell now gives us English for the culminating work of our greatest pyromaniac, Arthur Rimbaud, capturing A Season In Hell's zealous flamboyance and its angelic/demonic purge.”

Editorial Reviews

Winner of The Pen USA Translation Award for 2008

"Revell's method fits Rimbaud's near-madness. . . . This is an inspired new version of a strange, harsh classic."  —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher