Quotes from Arthur Rimbaud

Satan, you clown, you want to dissolve me with your charms. Well, I want it. I want it! Stab me with a pitchfork, sprinkle me with fire!

It was the voice of mad seas, roaring immense,/ That shattered your infant breast, too soft, too human.

Stronger than alcohol, vaster than poetry, Ferment the freckled red bitterness of love!

Is it possible to become ecstatic amid destruction, rejuvenate oneself through cruelty?

La vraie vie est absente. Nous ne sommes pas au monde.

And, in the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities.

Quand le monde sera réduit en un seul bois noir pour nos quatre yeux étonnés, - en une plage pour deux enfants fidèles, - en une maison musicale pour notre claire sympathie, - je vous trouverai.

All day long he was docile, intelligent, good, Though sometimes changing to a darker mood. He seemed hypocritical, could tell better lies, in the dark he saw dots of colors behind closed eyes, clenched fists, put his tongue out at his elder brother.

ONCE, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed. One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her.

The Poet makes himself a seer through a long, vast and painstaking derangement of all the senses

True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.

What an old maid I'm getting to be. lacking the courage to be in love with death!

L'aube exalteé ainsi qu'un peuple de colombes, et j'ai vu quelquefois ce que l'homme a cru voir! (And dawn, exalted like a host of doves - and then I've seen what men believe they've seen!)

Here I am on the shore of Brittany. Let the cities light up in the evening. My day is done. I am leaving Europe. The sea air will burn my lungs. Lost climates will tan me. I will swim, trample the grass, hung, and smoke especially. I will drink alcohol as strong as boiling metal--just as my dear ancestors did around their fires.

Blood was flowing – in Bluebeard's house, in the abattoirs, in the circuses where God had set his seal to whiten the windows. Blood and Milk flowed together.

Je vu quelques fois, ce que l'homme à cru voir

When we are strongest- who draws back? Most merry- who falls down laughing? When we are very bad,- what can they do to us?

It has been found again. What? – Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.

Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am an animal, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are fake niggers; maniacs, savages, misers, all of you. - Bad Blood

Il faut être absolument moderne

And this is what we call life! ? If damnation truly is eternal! Isn't the man who tries to mutilate himselfdamned then? I think I am in hell, therefore I am. It's the fault of the catechism. I'm a slave to my baptism.

No one's serious at seventeen, When lindens line the promenades

These verses believe; they love; they hope; that is all.

Come back, come back, dear friend, only friend, come back. I promise to be good.