[b]Arthur Rimbaud
Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.[/b]
And then eventually you go nowhere fast.
If you’re lucky.
[b]My turn now. The story of one of my insanities.
For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes-- and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.
What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints, old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children’s books, old operas, silly old songs, the naive rhythms of country rimes.
I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents; I used to believe in every kind of magic.
I invented colors for the vowels! A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. I made rules for the form and movement of every consonant, and I boasted of inventing, with rhythms from within me, a kind of poetry that all the senses, sooner or later, would recognize. And I alone would be its translator.
I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.[/b]
Let’s decide what was most insane about it.
I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.
I can do that now before breakfast.
One evening I sat Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I reviled her.
Of course we’ll need to hear her side.
As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen.
I wonder how that turned out, he thought.
Eternity is the sun
mixed
with the sea
Including death of course.