"One Season in Hell" is Rimbaud's only one out of existence, the publication of which is the effort of the junior. It is composed of nine poems written in prose. Rimbaud offers poetic a method much more sophisticated than that of Baudelaire in "Correspondences". Rimbaud wants to invent a poetic language accessible to ... any sense capable of expressing the inexpressible. This experience he defiantly calls "Alchemy of the Word," which serves as a way of saying "changing life" and building a completely new world.

image source

Rimbaud recommends an unlimited expansion of the internal volume of poetry that she has not known before. The poet, in his view, must discover "absolute" through a long and patient journey and "disrupting the rules of all senses." He recommends a complete reform of the attitude of the poet to the world and presents him as a new Prometheus, called to free mankind from the prejudices of tradition. The poet's mission to him is very important: he must be "a great curse," a "great sick," a "great criminal," a "supreme scholar," because he travels into the unknown. In 1874 Rimbaud left for London (where he was already in 1873), with his friend, the the artist Germen Nuvo. Probably at that time he finished his collection "Les Illuminations," in whose creative history there are many unexplained circumstances. It is composed of 42 texts in prose, whose interpretation, even today, is overwhelming. If their titles are, for example, relatively clear the relationship between these titles and the lyrics themselves is hard to understand. Instead of looking for unlikely keys to reading Les Illuminations, it is undoubtedly better to accept their original difficulty. It stems from the seemingly incoherent nature of the images, from the syntax in which superimposition is preferred, from the poet's refusal to awaken trust, and suggest that some "truth" is contained in the text.

The cycle gives the impression of some fantastic "super-reality," in which the hints, the illusion and the complete destruction of what creates the impression of a rational "construction" dominate.
Man understands what has been said, but he does not know what he is talking about." In the collection "Les Illuminations" an advantage is given to the initiative of the words. This is the first modern text without a reference or no sense in which the author states: "The author must be absolutely modern." After witnessing the pillage of the Paris Commune in May 1871, Rimbaud returned to his native town of Charleville. There he wrote two important letters - one to George Izabbar, the other to Paul Demmeni. In a letter written on May 13 and addressed to Georges Izambar, the young poet denounces those who eat from the "university crèche" and are content with the "terribly bloody" subjective poetry. In it, Rimbaud announces his program: "I am now immersed in the most abominable debauchery. Why? I want to be poet and make an effort to build myself up as a clairvoyant ... The question is to reach the unknown through the disruption of all the senses ... It is wrong to say: I think. It should be said: Others think of me.

part 1

part 2