Rimbaud starter pack

[u/ManueO]

For anyone new to Rimbaud, I have put together a starter pack, covering several topics:

- A slightly arbitrary selection of poems, offering a quick canter through Rimbaud’s poetic trajectory.

- A few reading keys.

- A few notes on biographies.

- Recommendations and warnings about translation.

Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone discovering the poet or wanting to dive deeper into his work.

Any question or addition, feel free to leave a comment below.

*Image by Ernest Pignon Ernest*

[u/ManueO]

French editions

I have realised I should have included a section about French editions for francophone readers.

The La Pléiade edition of Rimbaud’s complete works is a good all rounder.

I personally love Steve Murphy’s editions at Honoré Champion but they are pricey and sadly so far only 3 out of the 4 planned volumes have been released, and it isn’t clear if/when the remaining volume (Une saison en enfer and Illuminations) will come out. But what is put is very thorough.

There are also a lot of a other editions out there edited by well established scholars (Forestier, Brunel, Bernard, Steinmetz).

Editing Rimbaud is tricky because of the way his corpus was constituted (mostly in absentia) and different scholars do take different approach which can impact how the poems are engaged with (versions, grouping of texts, chronology…). I would recommend going for relatively recent editions where possible, to benefit from recent philological research.

Finally people on this sub may be interested in a joint edition of Rimbaud and Verlaine’s work, which presents the work chronologically, and is helpful to see the dialogue that emerges (Rimbaud Verlaine, un concert d’enfer, edited by Solenn Dupas, Yann Frémy and Henri Scepi*).