Rimbaud

Vowels

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
I'll tell, one day, your secret origins:
A, black hairy corset of dazzling flies
That buzz around cruel stinks,

Shadow gulfs; E, ingenuousness of steams and tents,
Proud glacier spears, white kings, shivers of umbels;
I, purples, spat blood, laugh of beautiful lips
In anger or penitent exhilarations;

U, cycles, divine vibrations of viridian seas,
Peace of pastures seeded with animals, peace of wrinkles
That alchemy prints on great studious brows;

O, supreme Bugle full of strange shrillnesses,
Silences crossed by Worlds and Angels:
— O the Omega, violet ray of These Eyes!

This strange poem — figured in the poems collection entitled Poésies 1870-1871 — aroused many comments from numerous exegetes. Among them, those of Verlaine in his Poètes maudits (Accursed Poets):

“the Muse, would we say, of Arthur Rimbaud, adopts all tones, plucks all harp strings, strums all guitar ones, and strokes rebec of an agile bow, if it exists.

Arthur Rimbaud is mocking, and with a deadpan sense of humour, when it suits him, essentially, while remaining the great poet that God made of him.”

Rimbaud will criticize himself during autumn 1873, in Alchemy of the Word.

Nevertheless, there is a whole mystery about this poem interpretation. The next one in the same collection, which continues with intangible coloration of elements, doesn't solve the enigma:

The Star has wept rose...
The star has wept rose in the depths of your ears,
The infinity rolled white from your nape to your loins
The sea beaded russet at your vermilion breasts
And the Man bled black at your sovereign side.

Locate Arthur Rimbaud in history.