Rimbaud

Song from the Highest Tower (i)

The antiquated poetry had a good part in my alchemy of the word.

I got used to simple hallucination: I could clearly see a mosque instead of a factory, a drums school made by angels, some horse-drawn carriages on roads to heaven, a salon at the bottom of a lake; monsters, mysteries; a vaudeville title laid dreads in front of me.

Then I explained my magical sophistries with words hallucination!

I ended up considering sacred my mind disorder. I was lazy, racked with a heavy fever: I envied animals bliss, — caterpillars, who represent limbo innocence, moles, virginity slumber!

My character turned embittered. I said farewell to the world in kind of romantic ways:

Song from the Highest Tower (ii)

Let it come, let it come,
The time whose we are enamoured of.

I waited so long
That I forever forget.
Fears and sufferings
Are gone to heaven.
And the unhealthy thirst
Darkens my veins.

Let it come, let it come,
The time whose we are enamoured of.

As the meadow
Fallen into oblivion,
Grown, and flowery
With incense and weeds,
At fierce drone
Of dirty flies.

Let it come, let it come,
The time whose we are enamoured of.

Song from the Highest Tower (iii)

I like desert, burnt orchards, faded shops, lukewarm drinks. I dawdled through stinking alleys, and with eyes closed, I offered myself to the sun, god of fire.

“General, if there's one cannon left on your ruined ramparts, bombard us with blocks of dried earth. At mirrors of magnificent shops! In living rooms! Make the city eat its dust. Oxidize gargoyles. Fill boudoirs with burning powder of rubies...”

Oh! The gnat drunk at the inn's urinal, in love with borage, and dissolved by a ray!

The first version of Song from the Highest Tower (chanson de la plus haute tour) dates back to May 1872. It was inserted in the poems collection entitled vers nouveaux. It celebrated, in a way, the return of Rimbaud to Paris with his friends, the poets — after two months with his family.

Rimbaud universe felt over when, after a violent argument, his friend Verlaine threatened and injured him with a gunshot. Although his wound was superficial, the incident caused him a profound questioning: “Formerly, if my memory serves me right, my life was a feast where all hearths were opened, where all wines flowed.” was he writing in the poems collection entitled une saison en enfer (A Season in Hell) preface — in which he published the version of Song from the Highest Tower, presented in this page.

Rimbaud transcribed into words, a return onto his authenticity and, inevitably, onto existence.

The actual song preface, as well as texts following it, were written in 1873.

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The title: Song from the Highest Tower applies only to current page. It has been repeated for display purposes only.

The prior version, of 1872, started this way:

Youth of leisure
Slave to the whole,
I lost my life,
Ah! Let the time come
When hearts will be enamoured of.

I told myself: let it be,
And don't let anybody see you:
And without the promise
Of higher joys.
Let nothing refrain you
August retreat.

I waited so long
That I forever forget;
Fears and sufferings
Are gone to heaven.
And the unhealthy thirst
Darkens my veins.
...

Differences between both versions reveal a profound transformation of Rimbaud inner self.

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This text comes after Song from the Highest Tower (Chanson de la plus haute tour), written in 1873. The three texts figure in the A Season in Hell (Une saison en enfer) poems collection.

Locate Arthur Rimbaud in history.