You did very well to walk away, Arthur Rimbaud! Your eighteen years, resistant to friendship, to malice, to the foolishness of Parisian poets, as well as to the sterile, bee-like hum of your slightly scatty Ardennes family, you did well to scatter them to the winds of the open sea, to toss them under the blade of their premature guillotine. You were right to abandon the boulevard of the idle, the taverns of the piss-poor rhymesters, for the hell of beasts, for the commerce of the cunning and the greetings of simple people.

This absurd surge of the body and soul, this cannonball that strikes its target and makes it explode, yes, this truly is a man’s life! You cannot, once you’ve left your childhood behind, forever strangle your neighbours. Though volcanoes rarely change location, their lava travels the vast emptiness of the world, bringing virtues that sing in its wounds.

You did very well to walk away, Arthur Rimbaud! A few of us believe, despite the lack of evidence, that with you happiness is possible. 

René Char, from La fontaine narrative (1947)

translation by John Lyons

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Tu as bien fait de partir, Arthur Rimbaud !

Tu as bien fait de partir, Arthur Rimbaud ! Tes dix-huit ans réfractaires à l’amitié, à la malveillance, à la sottise des poètes de Paris ainsi qu’au ronronnement d’abeille stérile de ta famille ardennaise un peu folle, tu as bien fait de les éparpiller aux vents du large, de les jeter sous le couteau de leur précoce guillotine. Tu as eu raison d’abandonner le boulevard des paresseux, les estaminets des pisse-lyres, pour l’enfer des bêtes, pour le commerce des rusés et le bonjour des simples.

Cet élan absurde du corps et de l’âme, ce boulet de canon qui atteint sa cible en la faisant éclater, oui, c’est bien là la vie d’un homme ! On ne peut pas, au sortir de l’enfance, indéfiniment étrangler son prochain. Si les volcans changent peu de place, leur lave parcourt le grand vide du monde et lui apporte des vertus qui chantent dans ses plaies.

Tu as bien fait de partir, Arthur Rimbaud ! Nous sommes quelques-uns à croire sans preuve le bonheur possible avec toi.

René Char (poet and hero off the French Resistance)

A visit to the town of L’Isle de la Sorgue last week, has inspired me to translate a number of poems by René Char, whose Feuillets d’Hypnos is a classic of French literature.