Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud

Rating: ★★★

28/10/16

Youth

I. Sunday

When homework is done, the inevitable descent from heaven and the visitation of

memories, and the session of rhythms invade the dwelling, the head and the world of the spirit.

—A horse scampers off along the suburban turf and the gardens and the wood lots, besieged by the carbonic plague. Somewhere in the world, a wretched melodramatic woman is sighing for unlikely desertions.

Desperadoes are languishing for storms, drunkenness, wounds. Little children are stifling curses along the rivers.

I must study some more to the sound of the consuming work which forms in all the people and rises up in them.

II. Sonnet

Man of usual constitution, wasn't the flesh a fruit hanging in the orchard? —O childhood days!—wasn't the body a treasure to spend?—wasn't love the peril or the strength of Psyche? ... 

* Photo credit: Book cover via Goodreads.