Name: A Season in Hell
ISBN: 9780679643272

Arthur Rimbaud

Authoritative editions of great classics of world literature feature introductions by acclaimed writers, meticulous translations of foreign literature, commentary by distinguished writers and critics, biographical notes, and a comprehensive Reading Group Guide bound into each volume.

& Illuminations

A Season in Hell

A  season in hell

there are very few things that can persevere as much as youthful rage. or angst. or agony; being done to yourself, to others than yourself, to the things you want to hold dear or otherwise, but largely, anyway, to yourself still it returns. that return, deliberate, is what it felt like to read a season in hell. a barrage of responses from a miserable mind. this is my first rimbaud; i've had no chances to read him whatsoever nor any powerful desire to at any point in my life, not that i considered him for a long time in any case, and i am, after reading a season in hell, overcome with a sense of affinity for rimbaud.

i have not finished reading anything in quite a few months (four?). rimbaud's language, i have no doubt, is difficult to translate. i have no sense of the fidelity the version i read him in has. considering this, he still writes a cross between levels/registers; it makes him accessible to the modern reader, but only so in disjointed parts. he makes it a habit to, seemingly, use all kinds of speaking and writing he knew of from the world (at eighteen!). coupled with everything he makes it difficult to put him down; the brevity of this work notwithstanding. even a short story with 20 pages can seem dull & a dredge without heart. regardless i am not really coherent right now. so rimbaud's a season in hell: you dive into misery for there seems to be no possibility for anything else, the no chance rimbaud (at times hysterically) rationalizes through all he knows, or deigns to know: life, sin, religion, art, reason, himself

shen

I had to travel, to dissipate the enchantments that crowded my brain. On the sea, which I loved as if it were to wash away my impurity, I watched the compassionate cross arise. I had been damned by the rainbow. Felicity was my doom, my gnawing remorse, my worm: my life would forever be too large to devote to strength and to beauty.


there are very few things that can persevere as much as youthful rage. or angst. or agony; being done to yourself, to others than yourself, to the things you want to hold dear or otherwise, but largely, anyway, to yourself still it returns. that return, deliberate, is what it felt like to read a season in hell. a barrage of responses from a miserable mind. this is my first rimbaud; i've had no chances to read him whatsoever nor any powerful desire to at any point in my life, not that i considered him for a long time in any case, and i am, after reading a season in hell, overcome with a sense of affinity for rimbaud.

i have not finished reading anything in quite a few months (four?). rimbaud's language, i have no doubt, is difficult to translate. i have no sense of the fidelity the version i read him in has. considering this, he still writes a cross between levels/registers; it makes him accessible to the modern reader, but only so in disjointed parts. he makes it a habit to, seemingly, use all kinds of speaking and writing he knew of from the world (at eighteen!). coupled with everything he makes it difficult to put him down; the brevity of this work notwithstanding. even a short story with 20 pages can seem dull & a dredge without heart. regardless i am not really coherent right now. so rimbaud's a season in hell: you dive into misery for there seems to be no possibility for anything else, the no chance rimbaud (at times hysterically) rationalizes through all he knows, or deigns to know: life, sin, religion, art, reason, himself

jess

vii. lives : what is my nothingness, in comparison with the stupor that awaits you?

that charm has captured soul and body
and dissipated my endeavours.

o seasons! o chateaux!

xx. vigils : it is repose illuminated, neither fever nor languor, on the bed or on the meadow.

alas! the hour that it flies
will be the hour of my demise.

quant au monde, quand tu sortiras, que sera-t-il devenu?
as for the world, when you depart, what will it has become?

o seasons! o chateaux!

la crevaison pour le monde qui va.
let the rest of the world drop dead.
and, that is finished. i know today how to hail beauty.

Gavin

asha

Luis Ponce

Elena Kuran

humita gomita

Emma

Hayley

Karen Scarlet 

Dennis Jacob Rosenfeld

A reissue of Rimbaud's highly influential work, with a new preface by Patti Smith and the original 1945 New Directions cover design by Alvin lustig.

A Season in Hell & Illuminations