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On French President Macron's desk, a special petition is placed, signed by 10 former culture ministers, as well as many well-known artists from all over the world, and their appeal is only one – to put the remains of the "psychic poet" Rimbaud and his gay lover Verlaine into the Pantheon!
Rosslyn Bassello, france's current Minister of Culture and one of the signatories of the petition, when talking about why she signed such a document, solemnly said: "Bringing these two poets and these two lovers into the Pantheon is not only of historical and literary significance, but also of far-reaching significance in today's French society!" ”
The Panthéon in Paris, also known as the Pantheon, is a shrine dedicated to burying and commemorating french historical figures. Its position in France is roughly equivalent to that of Babaoshan in China.
Up to now, a total of 72 French sages have rested here, including Voltaire, Rousseau, Lagrange, Hugo, Zola, Dumas, Curie and a series of other names. As a result, the Pantheon was regarded by the French as "a holy place for the spirit and ideas of France". It is an absolute honor for the remains to enter the Pantheon!
So, who is this gay poet Rimbaud? How could he sit on an equal footing with such great literary giants as Voltaire, Hugo, and Dumas?
Jean-Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was both the most talented poet in French history and the originator of surrealist poetry. He has the elegant temperament characteristic of the nobility, but it also reveals a bit of decadence and uninhibitedness. This tangled feeling, like one of his poems: I pee tenderly, toward the brown sky, high and far, and get the approval of the huge sunflower.
Born on October 20, 1854, Rimbaud belonged to Libra, one of the signs of the wind sign, and his same-sex lover praised Rimbaud as a "wind-bound man", but he himself considered himself a fire thief, a psychic, and a cursed person who was punished by the rainbow to hell.
However, the "psychic" in Rimbaud's words does not mean that he can communicate with the soul, but refers to a superhuman ability: to see, hear, and feel what mortals cannot see, hear, or feel.
Rimbaud believed that outstanding poets should all be psychics, and only psychic poets could reach the "unknown" realm and write real psalms. To be psychic, one must disrupt one's own sensory system, "disalecting all the senses for a long time, massively, and step by step." To do this, it is necessary to numb the senses with spirits and cannabis, to approach the reality of the underworld in the confusion caused by hallucinations and dreams.
For Rimbaud, poetry is the soul itself, and the essence of the soul is poetry. And his own poems are the best commentary on the word "psychic". For example, the following song "Sleeper in the Valley":
It's a green cave,
The singing river hangs the silver ragged on the tip of the grass,
The sun shines on the top of the proud shore,
It's an empty valley covered in moss.
A young soldier, with his mouth open and his head bare,
The neck is bathed in the new green of the blue grass,
He lay in the grass draped in a long, naked sky,
In the big green bed where the sun is weeping,
Pale and go to sleep.
He dipped his feet into the calamus and went to sleep.
Smiling like a sick child,
He felt the cold,
So nature shook him with warm embrace.
The fragrance can no longer make his nostrils shake,
He slept peacefully in the sun,
Cover your heart with your hands,
There are two red bullet holes on the right rib.
In the history of French literature, Rimbaud and Baudelaire can be called "geminis of poetry", but their poetic styles are very different. If Baudelaire created a Gothic dark mecca for the world in "The Flower of Evil", then Rimbaud used the rebellion of his youth to spawn a punk garden.
More like a Skywalker than the ascetic Baudelaire, Rimbaud was more like a Skywalker, the "first punk poet", "the pioneer of the Beats", "the wizards and geniuses of French poetry", opening up a novel world of poetry for the world in another way. But Rimbaud's most outstanding poem of his life is inseparable from a homosexual love that is not tolerated by the world.
When Rimbaud was 17 years old, he met the Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine in Paris. Verlaine, 10 years older than Rimbaud, was a melancholy and delicate man with a family, and his wife Mathilde was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and she was also amazingly beautiful, and was the crush of all the Gentlemen of Paris at that time.
But beauty is not enough to be talented, and when two equally outstanding poets meet, they feel sorry for each other. It just so happens that these two poets are both temperamental people, and under the influence of affection, they simply follow the example of their predecessors Wilde, break through the shackles of traditional etiquette, go out in the same car, sleep together, and live a cohabitation life in Paris.
However, this is ultimately a same-sex love that is difficult for the world to tolerate. After the two lived together, life was profligate and debauched, alcoholism and marijuana smoking were commonplace, and Rimbaud's arrogance also aroused the disgust of many literary tycoons.
But in any case, from the age of 17 to 21, Rimbaud gave Verlaine the best years of his life, and they spent four good years together. However, both poets have a crazy artist temperament, so they both love and kill each other, and they are inseparable. As rock star Bob Dylan sings in the song: "The world is so broken, like Verlaine and Rimbaud." ”
The good things in the world are not firm, and the clouds are easy to scatter and the glass is brittle. All good things are short-lived, let alone this unrequited love?
In 1873, in Brussels, Belgium, Rimbaud had a heated quarrel with Verlaine.
Leonardo recreated that scene in the movie "The Eclipse of the Heart":
Rimbaud asked Verlaine, "Do you love me?" ”
Verlaine replied, "Love." ”
Rimbaud asked again, "Love my body or soul." ”
Verlaine replied, "Body." ”
Rimbaud then plunged the blade into Verlaine's palm.
However, the truth of the matter is that the injured man is Rimbaud, whose right palm was pierced by Verlaine's shot. Verlaine was arrested by the Belgian police and sentenced to two years in prison for "sodomy."
Rimbaud was so distraught that during Verlaine's imprisonment, Rimbaud wrote many powerful poems, such as Rimbaud's most famous collection of poems, "A Season of Hell," which was written during this period. In this collection of poems, Rimbaud misses his time with Verlaine so much that he calls Verlaine a "mad virgin" and himself his "husband to hell."
This immortal prose poem is both Rimbaud's declaration of determination with the past and his farewell to the poetry world. For the next 18 years, Rimbaud worked as a mercenary, overseer, bodyguard, arms dealer, photojournalist and explorer in Europe, Asia and Africa. But he never wrote a single poem again, and the once astonishing psychic talent was buried by Rimbaud himself in the old days. Perhaps, Rimbaud's inner thoughts can probably only be expressed in his most famous poem: "I am willing to be anyone, either everything or nothing!" ”
In February 1891, Rimbaud died of cancer at the age of 37. Before dying, he said to his sister, "It's already autumn." It's the season to leave. Let's go. I need the sun. The sun will heal me. ”
Rimbaud's ethereal poems, and his legendary life, made him one of the most striking poets in the history of French literature. As the Symbolist poet Maramé said: Rimbaud is a unique miracle in the history of art, a meteor that has emerged from the sky, aimlessly illuminating its own existence, fleeting!
After Rimbaud's death, foreign books to study and interpret his poetry have emerged in an endless stream, but for many years, there have only been three translations of Rimbaud's works in China, and there has been no special annotated version, and in the entire Chinese academic circles, there has been no new edition of Rimbaud's translation for nearly twenty years. Therefore, Rimbaud's poetry is still a minority in China, and few people know about it.
Milan Kundera wrote in the preface to the novel Living Elsewhere: "Living elsewhere is a famous quote from Rimbaud. Andrei Breton quotes this phrase in the conclusions of his Surrealist Manifesto. In May 1968, Parisian students used this sentence as their slogan and brushed it on the walls of the University of Paris. ”
It is through Milan Kundera and the novel "Living Elsewhere" that many Chinese readers first learned about Rimbaud and his psychic poems.
In order to let more people know about Rimbaud, know and fall in love with his psychic poems, translated by Professor He Jiawei, who has been focusing on Rimbaud's research and French translation for many years, the "Spiritual Light Collection: Annotations to Rimbaud's Poetry Collection" published by the Commercial Press came into being. When talking about why she made this book, the editor sister of the Commercial Press said: "I just want to make a collection of poems with small volume, fine content, simple and beautiful, so that every reader who gets this book can feel love and tenderness outside of Rimbaud's spicy swing, and pass it on through books and verses." ”
This "Collection of Spiritual Lights" not only includes all of Rimbaud's prose poems, later poems and important letters, but also includes Rimbaud's spiritual autobiographical work "A Season of Hell", the mysterious but shining prose poetry masterpiece "The Collection of Spiritual Light", the "Last Line of Poetry" of Rimbaud's later poetry collection that distinguishes it from the earlier poems such as "Drunken Boat", and the important document "Psychic Letters" that explain Rimbaud's core "psychic" thought. It comprehensively covers all the important works of Rimbaud's creative form exploration period and the most turbulent life period in the spiritual world.
Whether it is the solid texture created by the cover gilding process, or the harmony of the manuscript pattern and the pictures in the book, or the perfect fit of the title with the color of the illustrations in the text, or the exquisite collection ticket with great collectible significance that comes with the book, it is irresistible, and this is precisely the irreplaceable happiness that the physical book can bring to the reader. As the editor sister said:
For many people, reading is more in the text content than in the form, but the moment you hold the book in your hand through the observation of the naked eye and the hand, the reality and surprise you touch, is a unique experience, which is one of the reasons why we love books and love reading!