Saturday Poetry Corner 3: Le dormeur du val

There might be his better, more profound and ground-breaking poems. I mean, I know there are, because I've read every and each one of them and few of his works I even translated. But somehow this little sonnet stayed with me ever since the first read. The broken rhythm, the line shifting, and finally - the twist. He turned the sonnet composition inside out. All while he was just 16 years old. Ladies and gents, let's spend une saison en enfer* with Arthur Rimbaud and his brilliant brilliant troubled mind.

The absynth and the doubt

Poetry is something strange. Some words put together that make totally different sense from the one they make separately. I have always liked poetry. But not contemporary. Please, everyone can be a poet in the modern sense. I don't like Baroque poetry either, with its ornaments and concepts. It was a word-play, nothing more.

I've read many poems that moved my heart back then (yes, I have that organ, despite what people say), but after some time, I came to notice how childish they were. And as almost every kid, I tried to write my own, firmly believing I'm following the path of Elders. But, eventually, the reason found its way to me and I stopped, seeing all nonsense of it. Perhaps they were good poems, but I don't think so. Now I almost regret I'm not a poetess, so I could put my words with finesse and grace just to sing an antiphone for someone.

The only words I'm left with are cursing ones... ekhem...

But I would like to present some good poetry:

Jean-Arthur Rimbaud, E.A. Poe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Lee Su Ik...

Writing

I was wondering lately why so many people try to publish something they wrote. In my country there is a bitter joke about it. It says: "We have 300 thousands of poets and twice as much writers". I think it comes from the certainty that everyone who can write a short message by phone or a memo is able to write a novel. And here we are, poor readers of such created monstrosity. Maybe I'm biased, OK, I AM biased, but for me, true literature ended with:

poetry: in 1891 - death of Rimbaud,

short story: in 1927 - death of Akutagawa,

novel: well, Ursula Le Guin is still alive, but she's one of maybe 5 people I admire.

These people were, or still are, the masters of the word. OK, maybe I am too much into the first two, but I love those troubled geniuses with all my heart and mind. I love every, even weak work of theirs. Whenever I read L'Eternite, Ophelie, or any short story by Akutagawa, I got goosebumps. The rhytm, melody, and composition are just perfect.

 If I experience this, over a hundred years after Rimbaud's death, over

 80 years after Akutagawa took his own life, that means it is eternal.

In contrary to most of modern writers.