A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Illuminations

Arthur Rimbaud’s “A Season in Hell” is a prose poem loosely divided into nine parts. In one part of the poem the poet portrays quite transparently his own relationship with French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. The two had a brief alcohol and drug fueled affair which finally came to end when Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist in a drunken rage. “A Season in Hell,” which has been referred to as a pioneering example of modern symbolism, is included in this collection along with “The Drunken Boat,” a fragmented first-person narrative which vividly describes the drifting and sinking of a boat lost at sea. It is probably one of the best known works from Rimbaud’s early period. Also included in this edition is what is arguably Rimbaud’s masterpiece, “Illuminations.” A collection of forty-two poems almost all of which are in a prose format. Albert Camus hailed Rimbaud as “the poet of revolt, and the greatest.” This greatness can be readily seen in this exemplary collection of “A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Illuminations”. This follows the translations of James Sibley Watson, Lionel Abel, and Wallace Fowlie.