Rimbaud Ramblings

I liked absurd paintings,
pictures over doorways, stage sets,
carnival backdrops, billboards,
colored prints, old-fashioned literature,
Church Latin, erotic books badly spelled,
the kind of novels our grandmothers read,
fairy tales, little children’s books,
old operas, silly refrains, naïve rhythms. . . .

Arthur Rimbaud, “Alchemy of the Word”

But, truly, I have wept too much!
The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious
and every sun bitter.

Arthur Rimbaud

Genius is the recovery of childhood
at will.
Arthur Rimbaud

I am the slave of my baptism.
Parents, you have caused my misfortune,
and you have caused your own.
Arthur Rimbaud

I believe that I am in hell,
therefore I am there.
Arthur Rimbaud

I have stretched ropes from steeple
to steeple; garlands from window to window;
golden chains from star to star,
and I dance.
Arthur Rimbaud

I is another.
Arthur Rimbaud

I saw that all beings are fated
to happiness: action is not life,
but a way of wasting some force,
an enervation.
Morality is the weakness of the brain.
Arthur Rimbaud

I'm intact, and I don't give a damn.
Arthur Rimbaud

Idle youth, enslaved to everything;
by being too sensitive
I have wasted my life.
Arthur Rimbaud

Life is the farce which everyone
has to perform.
Arthur Rimbaud

Misfortune was my god.
Arthur Rimbaud

Morality is the weakness of the brain.
Arthur Rimbaud

Only divine love bestows
the keys of knowledge.
Arthur Rimbaud

Romanticism has never been properly judged.
Who was there to judge it? The critics!
Arthur Rimbaud