“It began as research. I wrote of silences, of nights, I scribbled the indescribable. I tied down the vertigo.”

Arthur Rimbaud

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“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.”


“My turn now. The story of one of my insanities.For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes-- and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints, old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, silly old songs, the naive rhythms of country rimes.I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents; I used to believe in every kind of magic.I invented colors for the vowels! A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. I made rules for the form and movement of every consonant, and I boasted of inventing, with rhythms from within me, a kind of poetry that all the senses, sooner or later, would recognize. And I alone would be its translator.I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.”


“And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.”


“I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am.”


“One evening I sat Beauty on my knees – And I found her bitter – And I reviled her.”


“On the blue summer evenings, I will go along the paths,And walk over the short grass, as I am pricked by the wheat:Daydreaming I will feel the coolness on my feet.I will let the wind bathe my bare head. I will not speak,I will have no thoughts: But infinite love will mount in my soul;And I will go far, far off, like a gypsy,through the countryside - as happy as if I were with a woman. "Sensation”