Arthur Rimbaud Quotes

La vie est la farce à mener par tous.

I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands
Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager:
Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile,
A million golden birds, O future Vigor?

And this is what we call life! − If damnation truly is eternal! Isn’t the man who tries to mutilate himselfdamned then? I think I am in hell, therefore I am. It’s the fault of the catechism. I’m a slave to my baptism.

Against snow, a tall Beautiful Being. Whistlings of death and circles of muffled music make this adored body rise, swell and tremble like a ghost; scarlet and black wounds open in the magnificent flesh.

فظيعٌ كلّ قمرٍ، مريرةٌ كلّ شمس
الحب اللاذع نفخني بخَدرٍ مسكر
!حبّذا لو تَفجّرت عارضتي
!حّبذا لو مضيتُ إلى البحر

Baptism enslaved me.

I saw myself before an infuriated mob, facing the firing squad, weeping out of pity for the evil they could not understand, and forgiving!-Like Jeanne d'Arc!-'Priests, professors, masters, you are making a mistake in turning me over to the law. I have never belonged to this people; I have never been a Christian; I am of the race that sang under torture; laws I have never understood; I have no moral sense, I am a brute: you are making a mistake.'
Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am a beast, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are sham niggers, you, maniacs, fiends, misers. Merchant, you are a nigger; Judge, you are a nigger; General, you are a nigger; Emperor, old itch, you are a nigger: you have drunk of the untaxed liquor of Satan's still.-Fever and cancer inspire this people. Cripples and old men are so respectable they are fit to be boiled.-The smartest thing would be to leave this continent where madness stalks to provide hostages for these wretches. I enter the true kingdom of the children of Ham.

The poet makes himself a voyant through a long, immense reasoned deranging of all his senses. All the forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he tries to find himself, he exhausts in himself all the poisons, to keep only their quintessences.

نعرف كيف نهبُ حياتنا كاملة كل يوم

ONCE, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed. One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her.

Sweeter than apples to children
The green water spurted through my pine-wood hull.

!كم أتحول إلى عانس بافتقاري إلى شجاعة محبة الموت

I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star ... And I dance.

In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities.

أدركتُ أنها كانت منهمكة في حياتها اليومية؛ وأن التفاتةَ الطيبةِ ستكون أبطأ في المعاوَدة من نجمة. لم تعدْ، ولن تعودَ أبداً