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The Theme of the Hunt in Rimbaud: La Chasse Spirituelle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Madeleine M. Smith
Madeleine M. Smith*
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois
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Extract

Much of the richness, as well as the fascination, of Rimbaud's art is due to the incongruities with which it is studded. These incongruities indicate a boyish sense of humor noticeable even in his treatment of serious subjects, imparting to them a certain cocasserie—a tough and sardonic humor indeed for a boy, but still a distinctive quality, savored by many. Like Hamlet, Arthur Rimbaud was given to madness, half feigned, half tragically-true, and his peevish jokes are of the same kind as those of that other embittered youth. These surprises also serve to color his descriptive poems, in verse and in prose, and in fact they may be thought to arise necessarily in the poetic process consciously cultivated by Rimbaud the voyant, who was not afraid to force his senses out of focus as a means of gaining access to the paradise of pure truth.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , June 1949 , pp. 325 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 At least it seems to most readers that the MS entitled La Chasse spirituelle which Verlaine requests several times in his letters is the one of which he claims to have forgotten the title in this passage of Les Poètes maudits (chapter on Rimbaud): “Un prosateur étonnant s'ensuivit. Un manuscrit dont le titre nous échappe et qui contenait d‘étranges mysticités et les plus aigus aperçus psychologiques tomba dans des mains qui l‘égarèrent sans bien savoir ce qu'ils faisaient”—Les Poètes maudits (Paris: Léon Vanier, 1884), p. 39.

In the same essay Verlaine mentions two poems which have never come to light: Les Veilleurs and Les Réveilleurs de la nuit. But those are in verse and the unnamed piece is, by implication, in prose. Therefore it is assumed that Verlaine must have been thinking of La Citasse spirituelle, the lost MS of 1872, which he never specifically described in any way. A similar allusion, similarly identified by M. Jules Mouquet in his compilation called Rimbaud raconté par Paul Verlaine, appears in this passage from “Arthur Rimbaud ‘1884’” in Vanier's series Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui, published in 1888 (also by Verlaine): ”… plusieurs autres poèmes, dont trop, hélas! furent confisqués (c'est le mot poli) par une main qui n'avait que faire là, non plus que dans un manuscrit en prose à jamais regrettable et jeté avec eux dans quel? et quel! panier rancunier pourquoi?“

2 Œuvres complètes, texte établi et annoté par Rolland de Renéville et J. Mouquet, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Nouvelle Revue Française, 1946), p. 693.

3 Isabelle Rimbaud, the poet's sister (see note 4), places some of the Illuminations collection as early as the spring of 1872.

MM. Rolland de Renéville and Mouquet, though they do not try to date the Illuminations, still specifically imply, in their note referred to above, that some of them were written not earlier than September 1872.

Miss Enid Starkie, in her Rimbaud, indicates the winter of 1872–73 and spring of 1873 as the time of composition for all or most of them.

It has not been commonly supposed that any were posterior to Une Saison en Enfer, which was sent to the printer not long after the fateful July 1873; and Verlaine has been thought to have had his private reasons for dating them 1873–75 in his preface to the 1886 edition of the Illuminations.

M. H. de Bouillane de Lacoste, in the Mercure de France, Jan. 1, 1948, p. 20, states that “almost all” of them were composed in 1874.

4 Isabelle Rimbaud expressed the belief that certain few of the prose Illuminations, which she considers to belong to a very brief period of heretical aberration on the part of her brother in the spring of 1872, formed part of the Chasse spirituelle (her article “Rimbaud mystique” in the Mercure de France for 1914, also incorporated in her book Reliques as the chapter on “Rimbaud catholique”). It might indeed be that some of the prose Illuminations were written as early as the spring of 1872, and collected with the others written a year or more later. They might have been first included in La Chasse spirituelle (in the manner of the interpolated verse of Alchimie du Verbe), and still have been saved to form a part of Les Illuminations.

5 In the prose-poem Fairy, the moment “… de la sonnerie des bestiaux à l'écho des vais, et des cris des steppes” is not necessarily the moment of the kill in a chase through mountain country and desert country, but it certainly could be that, and it may be added to this collection of sounds of the far-away hunting-party, with its suggestions of cosmic grandeur in the setting.

6 It is worthy of note that Verlaine, immediately after citing these three lines from Paris se repeuple in his Poètes maudits essay, speaks of Rimbaud's lost poem Les Veilleurs, which he praises in the highest terms. Not inconceivably he has confused this poem with the prose “manuscript” which is presumed to be La Chasse spirituelle. Does it not seem that this hunting-scene in Paris se repeuple has reminded Rimbaud's intimate friend of the lost hunting-piece? A study of the characteristic echoes in Rimbaud of these other titles, Les Veilleurs and Les Réveilleurs de la nuit, and of their possible meanings, might also be rewarding.

7 Capitalized in the text.

8 See the second section of II in Le Forgeron. It is true that, in the same poem, only a few lines beyond that of the “cruel sun”, Man is characterized in his turn as “Huntsman.” His true rôle should not be that of victim, but that of master. His destiny is to be the strong avenger, a Hercules, ridding the earth of the fatalism of “great causes and great effects.”

9 Etiemble and Mlle Gauclère call attention to this point in their book Rimbaud (Paris: Gallimard, 1936), pp. 49–51.

10 (Mézières: Editions de la Société des Ecrivains Ardermais, 1933), pp. 34–35. Those of the first paragraph (containing the “oripeaux”) are. They are followed, it must be observed, in the “second scene” (second paragraph) by a very different breed.

11 In a part of Mauvais Sang the weariness is from the burden included among the five circumstantial “interjections” quoted in French above. The poet has said just previously that he is laden with the colossal “vice” rooted in his body (the Tree of Good and Evil). This is why he also says, in Délires II, that morality is the weakness of the brain. The latter assertion follows immediately a speculation that it is “action” (the fierce effort to resist) that saps our nervous system. As far back as Soleil et Chair (III) we should observe that Man is described as tired of casting down idols. According to that poem, Man would have done better to keep his idols. He might have kept his “strength” along with them.

12 Christ the Bridegroom usually abandons his tender Bride to an early widowhood. The Vierge Folle, for instance, in Une Saison en Enfer, is already the “widow” of her heartless Spouse.

13 The phrase “Mort mystérieuse” appears at the end of Les Sœurs de Charité.