Rimbaud

Delirium II. Alchemy of the Word

My Go. One of my insanities: an audit.
I had long boasted how the key to every conceivable scene was in my hands. I found the big names in modern painting and poetry quite laughable.
I liked idiotic paintings, motifs over doorways, stage sets, mummers' backdrops, inn-signs, popular colour prints...
I dreamed of crusades, voyages of discovery that were never recorded, republics with no history, suppressed wars of religion, revolutions in manners, a ferment of races and continents: I believed in each and every form of magic.
I invented colours for the vowels! - A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. - I presided over the form and movement of every consonant and, making use of instinctive rhythms, I imagined that I might invent a poetic language that would one day be accessible to all the senses. I would be the sole translator.
To begin with, I carried out a study. I committed silences and darknesses to paper, I recorded the inexpressible. I took the measure of vertigo.

*

Far from the birds and cattle, the village girls,
What was I drinking, as I knelt in that heather
Ringed by copses of budding hazel,
In the warm, green mist of afternoon?

What could I be drinking from that young Oise,
- Voiceless elms, flowerless grass, grey sky! -
From those yellow gourds, far from the lair
I loved? A golden brew that bathes you in sweat.

I had the air of a dubious inn-sign.
- A storm came on and swept out the sky. By evening
The woodland water had spent itself in virgin sand,
The wind of God flung ice into the ponds;

Through my tears I saw gold - and could not drink.

*

Four in the morning, summertime
And love still dozing.
In the groves the smell
Of last night's revels fades away.

Down in the vast construction yards
Under the Hersperidean sun,
The Carpenters are already working,
In their shirtsleeves.

At ease in their Deserts of moss,
They trim the priceless panels
Which the city
Will paint with artificial skies.

O Venus, leave the Lovers
And their souls in garlands, spare
A moment for these workers,
Charming subjects of a Babylonian king.

O Queen of the Shepherds,
Fetch these labourers eau-de-vie
To pacify their strength
Until they bathe at midday in the sea.

-- Rimbaud, A Season in Hell.