Alchemy of the verb - Alchimie du verbe
Written by Arthur Rimbaud
1873
To me. The story of one of my follies.
For a long time I had boasted of possessing every possible landscape, and found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous.
I loved silly paintings, door covers, decorations, acrobats' canvases, signs, popular illuminations; old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books without spelling, novels of our ancestors, fairy tales, little books from childhood, old operas, silly refrains, naive rhythms.
I dreamed of crusades, voyages of discovery of which we have no account, republics without history, suppressed wars of religion, revolutions of morals, movements of races and continents: I believed in all enchantments.
I invented the color of vowels! — A black , E white , I red , O blue , U green . — I regulated the form and movement of each consonant, and, with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself of inventing a poetic verb accessible, one day or another, to all the senses. I reserved the translation.
It was first a study. I wrote silences, nights, I noted the inexpressible. I was staring dizzy.
Far from the birds, the herds, the village women,
What was I drinking, on my knees in this heather
Surrounded by tender hazel woods,
In a warm and green afternoon fog?
What could I drink in this young Oise,
— Voiceless elms, flowerless grass, overcast sky! —
Drink from these yellow gourds, far from my hut,
Darling? Some golden liquor that makes you sweat.
I made a shady inn sign.
A storm came and chased away the sky. In the evening
The water of the woods was lost on the virgin sands,
The wind of God threw icicles into the ponds;
Crying, I saw gold — and could not drink. —
At four o'clock in the morning, in summer, The sleep of love still lasts. Under the groves the smell of the celebrated evening
evaporates .
Over there, in their vast construction site
In the sun of the Hesperides,
Already the Carpenters are moving — in their shirt sleeves
.
In their peaceful deserts of moss,
They prepare the precious paneling
Where the city
Will paint false skies.
O, for these charming Workers
Subjects of a king of Babylon,
Venus! leave for a moment the Lovers
Whose soul is in a crown.
O Queen of Shepherds,
Bring the workers the brandy,
May their strength be at peace
While waiting for bathing in the sea at noon.
The old poetic style played a large part in my alchemy of words.
I got used to the simple hallucination: I quite frankly saw a mosque in place of a factory, a drumming school made by angels, carriages on the roads of heaven, a living room at the bottom of a lake ; monsters, mysteries; a vaudeville title threw terror before me.
Then I explained my magical sophisms with the hallucination of words!
I end up finding the disorder of my mind sacred. I was idle, in the grip of a heavy fever: I envied the happiness of the animals - the caterpillars, which represent the innocence of limbo, the moles, the sleep of virginity!
My character was getting sour. I said goodbye to the world in a kind of romance:
SONG FROM THE HIGHEST TOWER.
Let it come, let it come,
The time we fall in love with.
I was so patient
that I will forever forget.
Fears and sufferings
are gone to heaven.
And unhealthy thirst
Darkens my veins.
Let it come, let it come,
The time we fall in love with.
Like the meadow
delivered to oblivion,
grown and flowered
with incense and tares,
to the fierce drone
of dirty flies.
Let it come, let it come,
The time we fall in love with.
I loved the desert, the burnt orchards, the faded shops, the lukewarm drinks. I dragged myself through the stinking alleys and, with closed eyes, I offered myself to the sun, god of fire.
“General, if there is an old cannon left on your ruined ramparts, bombard us with blocks of dry earth. To the ice creams of the splendid stores! in the living rooms! Make the city eat its dust. Oxidize the gargoyles. Fill the boudoirs with burning ruby powder…”
Oh ! the intoxicated midge in the inn's urinal, in love with borage, and dissolved by a ray!
HUNGER.
If I have taste, it's only for earth and stones. I always breakfast on air, On rock, on coals, on iron.
My hungers, turn. Graze, hungry, The meadow of sounds. Attract the cheerful venom of bindweed.
Eat the pebbles that are broken, The old stones of churches; The pebbles of the old floods, Bread sown in the gray valleys.
The wolf cried out under the leaves, spitting out the beautiful feathers of his poultry meal: Like him, I am consumed.
Salads, fruits Just waiting to be picked; But the hedge spider only eats violets.
Let me sleep! let me boil At the altars of Solomon. The broth runs over the rust, And mixes with the Kidron.
Finally, oh happiness, oh reason, I removed from the sky the azure, which is black, and I lived, a golden spark of natural light .
Out of joy, I took on a farcical and as lost expression as possible:
She has been found!
What ? eternity.
It's the sea mixed
with the sun.
My eternal soul,
Keep your vow
Despite the night alone
And the day on fire.
So you free yourself
From human suffrages,
From common impulses!
You fly according to...
— Never hope.
No orientation .
Science and patience,
The torture is sure.
No more tomorrow,
Embers of satin,
Your ardor
Is duty.
She has been found!
- What ? — Eternity.
It's the sea mixed
with the sun.
I became a fabulous opera: I saw that all beings have an inevitability of happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some strength, some irritation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.
To each being, several other lives seemed due to me. This gentleman doesn't know what he's doing: he's an angel. This family is a brood of dogs. In front of several men, I spoke out loud with a moment from one of their other lives. — So, I loved a pig.
None of the sophisms of madness - the madness that we confine - has been forgotten by me: I could repeat them all, I have the system.
My health was threatened. Terror was coming. I fell into sleeps lasting several days, and, getting up, I continued the saddest dreams. I was ripe for death, and by a path of dangers my weakness led me to the ends of the world and to Cimmeria, home of shadow and whirlwinds.
I had to travel, distract the enchantments assembled on my brain. On the sea, which I loved as if it should have cleansed me of a stain, I saw the consoling cross rise. I had been damned by the rainbow. Happiness was my fatality, my remorse, my worm: my life would always be too immense to be devoted to strength and beauty.
Happiness ! His tooth, sweet to death, warned me to the crowing of the cock, — ad matutinum , to Christus venit , — in the darkest cities:
O seasons, o castles!
Whose soul is without faults?
I made the magical study
Of happiness, which no one evades.
Salute to him, every time
What the Gallic rooster crows.
Ah! I will no longer have desires:
He has taken charge of my life.
This charm took soul and body
And dispersed the efforts.
O seasons, o castles!
The time of his escape, alas!
Will be the hour of death.
O seasons, o castles!
That happened. Today I know how to salute beauty.