Illuminations
First published in 1886, Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations―the work of a poet who had abandoned poetry before the age of twenty-one―changed the language of poetry. Hallucinatory and feverishly hermetic, it is an acknowledged masterpiece of world literature, still unrivaled for its haunting blend of sensuous detail and otherworldly astonishment. In Ashbery's translation of this notoriously elusive text, the acclaimed poet and translator lends his inimitable voice to a venerated classic. \ W. H....
Search in google:
Slipcased, signed, limited edition of the new translation by John Ashbery. "If we are absolutely modern—and we are—it's because Rimbaud commanded us to be."—John Ashbery, from the prefacePublishers WeeklyCelebrated poet Revell (The Bitter Withy) received the 2007 PEN USA Translation Award for his ravishing take on Rimbaud's A Season in Hell. Rendered into English with utmost sympathy and flare, this bilingual edition of Rimbaud's prose masterpiece is sure to receive comparable acclaim. Considered by many to be the infamous French wunderkind's highest achievement, the book's (mostly) prose poems present the still teenage poet's acrobatic efforts to resist the stranglehold of habit, logic and bourgeois respectability: “I've strung ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I'm dancing.” Revell's version is no more or less accessible than previous translations, and dips into the contemporary idiom are thankfully infrequent and unobtrusive. What distinguishes Revell's work is its exquisite, carefully modulated musicality. His phrasing is rich and fluid (“The soft perfume of the stars and of the sky and of everything drifts down from the hilltop”) or crisp and strident (“Unsought air and unsought world. Life./ —Was that it, then?/ —And the dream grows cold”), in perfect keeping with the protean, inestimably influential original, making this among the finest of its English translations yet produced. (Sept.)
\ Lydia Davis…a meticulously faithful yet nimbly inventive translation…It takes one sort of linguistic sensitivity to stay close to the original in a pleasing way; another to bring a certain inventiveness to one's choices without being unfaithful. Ashbery's ingenuity is evident at many moments in the book…We are fortunate that [he] has turned his attention to a text he knows so well, and brought to it such care and imaginative resourcefulness.\ —The New York Times\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyThe prose poems of Illuminations include Rimbaud's most exotic ecstasies and most insistent contradictions, as well as (most likely) his last completed works: "crystal boulevards rise up and intersect, immediately populated by poor families who shop for groceries at the fruit seller's," while "the inevitable descent of the sky and visiting memories and the séance of rhythms occupy the home, the head and the world of the mind." Some may wonder whether we need yet another version of this much-translated book. But anything Ashbery does deserves attention, given his own towering reputation. Ashbery also lived in France for much of the 1960s and has translated several French moderns before. His versions of Rimbaud can be playful, even flirtatious, with an undercurrent of malice wholly true to the original ("Very robust rascals" for "Des drôles très solides"), and they pay attention to the ear: the poem "Bottom," for example, begins with a tussle of long "e" and short "i" sounds: "Since reality was too prickly for my lavish personality." Ashbery's Rimbaud (perhaps paired with Donald Revell's) should spark fresh discussion of the mercurial and evasive original, given often to dreamy reverie, yet just as likely to turn and spit in the unsuspecting reader's face. Presented with the original French en face. (Apr.)\ \
