A Season in Hell & Illuminations Quotes

“Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“Elle est retrouvée!
Quoi? -l'Éternité.
C'est la mer allée
Avec le soleil.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“Now I am an outcast. I loathe my country. The best thing for me is a drunken sleep on the beach.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“I saw myself before an infuriated mob, facing the firing squad, weeping out of pity for the evil they could not understand, and forgiving!-Like Jeanne d'Arc!-'Priests, professors, masters, you are making a mistake in turning me over to the law. I have never belonged to this people; I have never been a Christian; I am of the race that sang under torture; laws I have never understood; I have no moral sense, I am a brute: you are making a mistake.'
Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am a beast, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are sham niggers, you, maniacs, fiends, misers. Merchant, you are a nigger; Judge, you are a nigger; General, you are a nigger; Emperor, old itch, you are a nigger: you have drunk of the untaxed liquor of Satan's still.-Fever and cancer inspire this people. Cripples and old men are so respectable they are fit to be boiled.-The smartest thing would be to leave this continent where madness stalks to provide hostages for these wretches. I enter the true kingdom of the children of Ham.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“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.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“Il faut être absolument moderne”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“J'aimais les peintures idiotes, dessus de portes, décors, toiles de saltimbanques, enseignes, enluminures populaires ; la littérature démodée, latin d'église, livres érotiques sans orthographe, romans de nos aïeules, contes de fées, petits livres de l'enfance, opéras vieux, refrains niais, rythmes naïfs.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“Je devrais avoir mon enfer pour la colère, mon enfer pour l'orgueil, - et l'enfer de la caresse; un concert d'enfers.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“Elle est retrouvée!
-Quoi? -l'Éternité.
C'est la mer mêlée
Au soleil.

Je devins un opéra fabuleux : je vis que tous les êtres ont une fatalité de bonheur : l'action n'est pas la vie, mais une façon de gâcher quelque force, un énervement. La morale est la faiblesse du cerveau.
À chaque être, plusieurs autres vies me semblaient dues. Ce monsieur ne sait pas ce qu'il fait : il est un ange.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“La vie est la farce à mener par tous.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer suivi de Illuminations et autres textes

“This instant of awakening has conjured a vision of purity! The spirit leads us to God!
Bitter misfortune!”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell & Illuminations

“Madness—the kind you lock away—breeds sophistries, and I haven’t avoided a single one. I could list them all: I’ve got them down.
My health suffered. Terror struck. I’d sleep for days, and, risen, such sad dreams would stay with me. I was ripe for death, and down a dangerous road my weakness drew me to the edges of the earth and on to Cimmeria, that dark country of winds.
I sought voyages, to disperse enchantments that had colonized my mind.
Above a sea I came to love as if it were rinsing me of stain, I watched a consoling cross rise. Damnation, in the shape of a rainbow. Bliss was my undoing, my remorse, my worm: my life would always be too ungovernable to devote to strength and beauty.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell & Illuminations

“I explained my magical sophisms with hallucinations of words!
I ended up believing my spiritual disorder sacred. I was lazy, proof of my fever: I envied the happiness of animals—caterpillars, symbolic of the innocence of limbo; moles, virginity’s sleep!
I grew bitter. I said farewell to the world in a ballad.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell & Illuminations

“And think of me. It’s worth the loss of the world. I’m lucky to see my suffering ended. Alas: my life was little more than a few mild madnesses.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell & Illuminations

“But orgies and womanly companionship were denied me. Not one friend.
I saw myself in front of an angry mob, facing a firing squad, weeping incomprehensible sorrows and forgiving them, like Joan of Arc: “Priests, professors, masters: you falter bringing me to justice. I was never one of you; I was never Christian; my race sang upon the rack; I don’t understand your laws; I have no moral compass, I’m a beast: you falter …”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell & Illuminations

“On the roads, through winter nights, without a home, without habits, without bread, a voice strangled my frozen heart: “Weakness or strength: Those are your options, so strength it is. You know neither where you’re going, nor why you’re going, entering anywhere, answering anyone. You’re no more likely to be killed than a corpse.” By morning, I had developed such a lost, dead expression that those I met may not have even seen me.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell & Illuminations

“On the roads, through winter nights, without a home, without habits, without bread, a voice strangled my frozen heart: “Weakness or strength:
Those are your options, so strength it is. You know neither where you’re going, nor why you’re going, entering anywhere, answering anyone. You’re no more likely to be killed than a corpse.” By morning, I had developed such a lost, dead expression that those I met may not have even seen me.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Giacomo Leopardi, A Season in Hell & Illuminations

“When I was very young, I admired hardened criminals locked behind prison doors; I visited inns and taverns they frequented; with their eyes, I saw the blue sky and the blossoming work of the fields; I tracked their scent through cities. They were more powerful than saints, more prudent than explorers—and they, they alone, were witnesses to glory and reason!”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell & Illuminations

“One night, I sat Beauty on my knee. —And I found her bitter. —And I hurt her.
I took arms against justice.
I fled, entrusting my treasure to you, o witches, o misery, o hate.
I snuffed any hint of human hope from my consciousness. I made the muffled leap of a wild beast onto any hint of joy, to strangle it.
Dying, I called out to my executioners so I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called plagues to suffocate me with sand, blood. Misfortune was my god. I wallowed in the mud. I withered in criminal air. And I even tricked madness more than once.
And spring gave me an idiot’s unbearable laughter.
Just now, having nearly reached death’s door, I even considered seeking the key to the old feast, through which, perhaps, I might regain my appetite.
[...] “A hyena you’ll remain, etc.… ” cries the demon that crowns me with merry poppies. “Make for death with every appetite intact, with your egotism, and every capital sin.”
Ah. It seems I have too many already: —But, dear Satan, I beg you not to look at me that way, and while you await a few belated cowardices—you who so appreciate a writer’s inability to describe or inform—I’ll tear a few terrible leaves from my book of the damned.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell & Illuminations