What a poem! And what an excellent translation by John Ashbery! The poet's voice is so elated that he may well be drunk. In any case, he is joyously celebrating some moments of madness and insight before he is restored to the old discord of the usual daily world. And what language he uses to describe those moment:
'It began in all loutishness, now it's ending
among the angels of flame and ice.'
I love Rimbaud, He himself was one of those rare angels of poetry who broke every rule in the book and invented his own.
Drunk on finding the truth of who he is, but like too many then and even now, afraid that the revelation- and his acceptance of it, will destroy all he was raised to believe
Thank you, Patris. That is a great explanation. And I think he is also very drunk in actuality and in some kind of fake heaven that he doesn't want to leave because it seems like some form of death to him. Perhaps, between us we are pretty close to explaining It?
My friend, Michael R. Burch has translated this poem also. I'll print his version here, with his permission, and I don't think the good people from Poetic Outlaws will mind because it might bring more clarity to the poem.
Drunken Morning, or, Morning of Drunkenness
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Oh, my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!
Hideous fanfare wherein I won’t stumble!
Oh, rack of splendid enchantments!
Huzzah for the virginal!
Huzzah for the immaculate work!
For the marvelous body!
It began amid children’s mirth; where too it must end.
This poison? ’Twill remain in our veins till the last trumpet’s silenced,
when we return to our former discord.
May we, so deserving of these agonies,
may we now recreate ourselves
after our body’s and soul’s superhuman promise—
that promise, that madness!
Elegance, senescence, violence!
They promised to bury knowledge in the shadows—the tree of good and evil—
to deport despotic respectability
so that we might effloresce pure-petaled love.
It began with hellish disgust but ended
—because we weren’t able to grasp eternity immediately—
in a panicked riot of perfumes.
Children’s laughter, slaves’ discretion, the austerity of virgins,
loathsome temporal faces and objects—
all hallowed by the sacredness of this vigil!
Though it began with loutish boorishness,
behold! it ends among angels of ice and flame.
My little drunken vigil, so holy, so blessed!
My little lost eve of drunkenness!
Praise for the mask you provided us!
Method, we affirm you!
Let us never forget that yesterday
you glorified our emergence, then each of our subsequent ages.
Also a powerful and poignant translation- i only hope what ecstasy he discovered and celebrated here consoled him when he abandoned poetry later in his life. Again, I make assumptions. My only defense is that I knew boys who had been tortured by virtue.
My guess is that the title character is a reference to the ancient Roman poem by Longus entitled Daphnis et Chloe.
As in that story your central character, akin to Daphnis, is strongly attracted to the beauty and innocence of Chloe but, also being virgin, has no knowledge of sexual matters.
In the Roman story Daphnis is educated by an older woman on how to make love but, when he mentions this to his foster father, an old shepherd, he’s advised against it for it will cause Daphne great pain and loss of blood.
Consummation, though, eventually occurs with the inevitable loss of innocence for both lovers.
“There were skies onyx at night…moons by day” seems to speak of night’s favorable conditions for rendezvous and continuous presence even by day, a magnetic attraction. But this onyx presence also represents the loss of innocence, haunting them even in daylight with the presence of a pale moon, “pale as her eyes”.
The “breathless winds” personify his astonishment at Daphne’s physical beauty as he, like the wind, undressed the tall elm.
His reaction, that by having coitus they have sinned and thereby lost their innocence, is reflected in the sagging of the impatiens (a play on the word referencing his impatiens and, in the flower’s drooping, a symbolic expression of his penis after ejaculation) and the wilting of his crocus, an emblem of not only his youth, as the flower has been known to rise through melting snow, but also of the male organ prior to climax. For Chloe it represents a deflowering, the death of a once “golden-rimmed…brightness”.
The “paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed” now is all about him as an omen of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden of Eden, that hard experience will beset him with suffering and sadness from now on. These are typified by the “distant mountains that loomed in our way” and through the howling voice of a stern god, “thunder booming down / valleys dark hymned”.
I have a theory that Byron's dark and troubled relationship with his Creator, along with his clubfoot, inspired the creature of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."
I also believe Robert Frost's masterpiece "Directive" is about his childhood terrors caused by the dark dogma of predestination. The guide who only wants you get lost is the Jesus who misleads his followers so they "can't get saved."
I forget what it's like to read Rimbaud. Not sure whether the fact that he was so young makes the the creation of this poem unbelievable or makes it the only possible answer.
The cool thing about translation is that I've never read this poem but I have. Just not quite this way. Not a bad thing. Not a good thing. Just different so, thank you for that. :)
Better to be ‘drunk in the Spirit’ as to see things as they are and not as they are supposed to be. This way we can live a true life in faith, hope and love with love being the greatest of all. (1CORINTHIANS13:13). To be drunk in the Spirit might look like Joss Stone’s song “Wake up”, which embodies a song of God rejoicing over us from Saint Paul’s pleading in Ephesians 5:14.
What a poem! And what an excellent translation by John Ashbery! The poet's voice is so elated that he may well be drunk. In any case, he is joyously celebrating some moments of madness and insight before he is restored to the old discord of the usual daily world. And what language he uses to describe those moment:
'It began in all loutishness, now it's ending
among the angels of flame and ice.'
I love Rimbaud, He himself was one of those rare angels of poetry who broke every rule in the book and invented his own.
Martin, I agree—John Ashbery’s translation truly captures the elation and joyous madness of the original 🙂↕️ I’m checking out more of his work now!
Let me know if you find anything outstanding. Then I'll check it out.
Drunk on finding the truth of who he is, but like too many then and even now, afraid that the revelation- and his acceptance of it, will destroy all he was raised to believe
Thank you, Patris. That is a great explanation. And I think he is also very drunk in actuality and in some kind of fake heaven that he doesn't want to leave because it seems like some form of death to him. Perhaps, between us we are pretty close to explaining It?
Could be - though I presume to know how much the myths he was churched in condemned him, like some chorus reminding him he was damned.
My friend, Michael R. Burch has translated this poem also. I'll print his version here, with his permission, and I don't think the good people from Poetic Outlaws will mind because it might bring more clarity to the poem.
Drunken Morning, or, Morning of Drunkenness
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Oh, my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!
Hideous fanfare wherein I won’t stumble!
Oh, rack of splendid enchantments!
Huzzah for the virginal!
Huzzah for the immaculate work!
For the marvelous body!
It began amid children’s mirth; where too it must end.
This poison? ’Twill remain in our veins till the last trumpet’s silenced,
when we return to our former discord.
May we, so deserving of these agonies,
may we now recreate ourselves
after our body’s and soul’s superhuman promise—
that promise, that madness!
Elegance, senescence, violence!
They promised to bury knowledge in the shadows—the tree of good and evil—
to deport despotic respectability
so that we might effloresce pure-petaled love.
It began with hellish disgust but ended
—because we weren’t able to grasp eternity immediately—
in a panicked riot of perfumes.
Children’s laughter, slaves’ discretion, the austerity of virgins,
loathsome temporal faces and objects—
all hallowed by the sacredness of this vigil!
Though it began with loutish boorishness,
behold! it ends among angels of ice and flame.
My little drunken vigil, so holy, so blessed!
My little lost eve of drunkenness!
Praise for the mask you provided us!
Method, we affirm you!
Let us never forget that yesterday
you glorified our emergence, then each of our subsequent ages.
We have faith in your poison.
We give you our lives completely, every day.
Behold, the assassin's hour!
Also a powerful and poignant translation- i only hope what ecstasy he discovered and celebrated here consoled him when he abandoned poetry later in his life. Again, I make assumptions. My only defense is that I knew boys who had been tortured by virtue.
I have a poem about a boy who was tortured by virtue, but he couldn't help himself.
-------------------------
Chloe
by Michael R. Burch
-------------------------
There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
undressing tall elms ... she would say
that we’d loved, but I figured we’d sinned.
Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.
Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.
What I found, I found lost in her face
by yielding all my virtue to her grace.
----------------------------------------------
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall”
My guess is that the title character is a reference to the ancient Roman poem by Longus entitled Daphnis et Chloe.
As in that story your central character, akin to Daphnis, is strongly attracted to the beauty and innocence of Chloe but, also being virgin, has no knowledge of sexual matters.
In the Roman story Daphnis is educated by an older woman on how to make love but, when he mentions this to his foster father, an old shepherd, he’s advised against it for it will cause Daphne great pain and loss of blood.
Consummation, though, eventually occurs with the inevitable loss of innocence for both lovers.
“There were skies onyx at night…moons by day” seems to speak of night’s favorable conditions for rendezvous and continuous presence even by day, a magnetic attraction. But this onyx presence also represents the loss of innocence, haunting them even in daylight with the presence of a pale moon, “pale as her eyes”.
The “breathless winds” personify his astonishment at Daphne’s physical beauty as he, like the wind, undressed the tall elm.
His reaction, that by having coitus they have sinned and thereby lost their innocence, is reflected in the sagging of the impatiens (a play on the word referencing his impatiens and, in the flower’s drooping, a symbolic expression of his penis after ejaculation) and the wilting of his crocus, an emblem of not only his youth, as the flower has been known to rise through melting snow, but also of the male organ prior to climax. For Chloe it represents a deflowering, the death of a once “golden-rimmed…brightness”.
The “paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed” now is all about him as an omen of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden of Eden, that hard experience will beset him with suffering and sadness from now on. These are typified by the “distant mountains that loomed in our way” and through the howling voice of a stern god, “thunder booming down / valleys dark hymned”.
This is gorgeous
Good for both of you. For myself, it always seemed that the least sinful thing, especially when we were young, was our bodies.
I have a theory that Byron's dark and troubled relationship with his Creator, along with his clubfoot, inspired the creature of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."
I also believe Robert Frost's masterpiece "Directive" is about his childhood terrors caused by the dark dogma of predestination. The guide who only wants you get lost is the Jesus who misleads his followers so they "can't get saved."
Yes - the genius of Christianity - the ‘get out of jail free’ card.
(As cynical as I can be I still dream of the demons and angels who flew on church walls)
Get out of jail free, but leave billions of your neighbors behind. So much for loving your neighbors as yourself, or even liking them a little.
They’re positively gleeful at the thought.
I forget what it's like to read Rimbaud. Not sure whether the fact that he was so young makes the the creation of this poem unbelievable or makes it the only possible answer.
I agree with you on both points.
Magnificent!
The cool thing about translation is that I've never read this poem but I have. Just not quite this way. Not a bad thing. Not a good thing. Just different so, thank you for that. :)
Better to be ‘drunk in the Spirit’ as to see things as they are and not as they are supposed to be. This way we can live a true life in faith, hope and love with love being the greatest of all. (1CORINTHIANS13:13). To be drunk in the Spirit might look like Joss Stone’s song “Wake up”, which embodies a song of God rejoicing over us from Saint Paul’s pleading in Ephesians 5:14.
Never got on the fan train for this poet. He has to revert to religious language to describe being drunk. I understand that.
àpropos. I was in texas when jfk was shot, in califas when mlk and rfk were shot…remember all the other attempts. Chaos loves violence.
I don’t understand this poem. Can someone clarify?
It’s the celebration of the poet’s night of drinking, culminating in sex and a very rebellious take towards establishment values.
Same
Behold the time of the Assassins
Love it.