Here, for the first time, the work of three of Frances greatest poets has been published in a single volume: the sensual and passionate glow of Charles Baudelaire, the desperate intensity and challenge of Arthur Rimbaud, and the absinthe-tinted symbolist songs of Paul Verlaine. To bring the essence of these three giants of modern poetry to the American public, Joseph M. Bernstein, a noted interpreter and translator of French literature, has selected the most representative of their writings and presented them along with a biographical and critical introduction. "Not to know these three poets," he points out, "is to deprive oneself of a pleasure as rare as it is indispensable to any real understanding of the aims and direction of modern literature. The volume includes Arthur Symons' unabridged translation of Flowers of Evil and the Prose Poems of Baudelaire; Louise Varese's translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell and Prose Poems from "Illuminations"; J. Norman Cameron's translation of the verse from the Illuminations; and a representative selection from Verlaine's verse translated by Gertrude Hall and Arthur Symons

This uncompleted suite of poems by French poet Arthur Rimbaud was first published serially in the Paris literary review magazine "La Vogue." The magazine published part of "Illuminations" from May to June 1886. Paul Verlaine, Rimbaud's lover, suggested the publication of these poems, written between 1873 and 1875, in book form. All forty-two of the poems generally considered as part of "Illuminations" are collected together here in this edition. Of these forty-two poems almost all are in a prose poem format, the two exceptions are "Seapiece" and "Motion," which are vers libre. There is no universally defined order to the poems in "Illuminations," while many scholars believe the order of the poems to be irrelevant, this edition begins traditionally with "Après Le Deluge" or "After the Flood." Albert Camus hailed Rimbaud as "the poet of revolt, and the greatest." The worth of this praise for Rimbaud can be seen in "Illuminations," one of the most exemplary works of his poetic talent.

Acclaimed English translation of poems by one of the most gifted and colourful of Japan's early modern poets: Nakahara Chuya. Now ranked among the finest Japanese verse of the 20th century, influenced by both Symbolism and Dada, he created lyrics renowned for their songlike eloquence, their personal imagery and their poignant charm.

The enfant terrible of French letters, Jean-Nicholas-Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91) was a defiant and precocious youth who wrote some of the most remarkable prose and poetry of the nineteenth century, all before leaving the world of verse by the age of twenty-one. More than a century after his death, the young rebel-poet continues to appeal to modern readers as much for his turbulent life as for his poetry; his stormy affair with fellow poet Paul Verlaine and his nomadic adventures in eastern Africa are as iconic as his hallucinatory poems and symbolist prose. The first translation of the poet's complete works when it was published in 1966, Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters introduced a new generation of Americans to the alienated genius—among them the Doors's lead singer Jim Morrison, who wrote to translator Wallace Fowlie to thank him for rendering the poems accessible to those who "don't read French that easily." Forty years later, the book remains the only side-by-side bilingual edition of Rimbaud's complete poetic works. Thoroughly revising Fowlie's edition, Seth Whidden has made changes on virtually every page, correcting errors, reordering poems, adding previously omitted versions of poems and some letters, and updating the text to reflect current scholarship; left in place are Fowlie's literal and respectful translations of Rimbaud's complex and nontraditional verse. Whidden also provides a foreword that considers the heritage of Fowlie's edition and adds a bibliography that acknowledges relevant books that have appeared since the original publication. On its fortieth anniversary, Rimbaud remains the most authoritative—and now, completely up-to-date—edition of the young master's entire poetic ouvre.

Classical 19th century French poetry from Baudelaire, Rimbaud, De Musset, Verlaine and Signoret. The gritty core of realism in this work reveals with a lurid intensity their world of the strange and sordid, the mystical and the vulgar, the fantastic and pain, the underlying brutality of the social reality, the intoxifications...And the beauty. These translations closely-retain the rhythmical pattern and literal content of their original French forms, taking advantage of sophisticated poetic techniques and the 21st century modern English language. They are constructed with precision and accuracy, unencumbered by the French originals in order to ascertain a truer and more-complete meaning behind these timeless masterpieces. This volume pairs with the translations a selection of the translator's original poems, written in English and French.copyright C.L. Wriggs Publishing House (2020).