Overview

Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations reissued as a Carcanet Classic. Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations, first published in 1886, changed the language of poetry. In John Ashbery the book has a translator whose virtuosic originality brings Rimbaud's visions alive. The `crystalline jumble' of Illuminations, Ashbery writes, is still emitting pulses of energy. `If we are absolutely modern - and we are - it's because Rimbaud commanded us to be.' Ashbery relays the kaleidoscopic dazzle of the original, a Splendide Hotel `built amid the tangled heap of ice floes and the polar night', where the Witch `will never want to tell us what she knows, and which we do not know'.

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9781784106638

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`One of the strongest, most exuberant and closely engaged translations of Rimbaud's work.' - The Guardian

'One of the strongest, most exuberant and closely engaged translations of Rimbaud's work.' - The Guardian; `More than a century after Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.' - Harold Bloom

Author Information

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) is one of France's most controversial and influential poets, though he gave up his career at a young age. He spent the first part of his life in Charleville before moving to Paris in 1871 at the invitation of Paul Verlaine, who became his lover. After abandoning poetry at the age of twenty one Rimbaud travelled widely, eventually settling in Aden in the Yemen. Ill health forced a return to France in 1891; the same year he died in Marseilles, aged thirty seven.; John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. The winner of many prizes and awards both nationally and internationally, including the Griffin and Pulitzer Prizes, in 2011 he received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, and in 2012 he received a National Humanities Medal, presented by President Obama at the White House. He lived in New York until his death, aged ninety, in 2017.

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