Born in northeastern France, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) is widely
considered the quintessential French poet. His escape at age
sixteen to join the Paris Commune and his tumultuous affair with
Paul Verlaine (culminating in a gunshot wound in a Brussels hotel)
are the stuff of literary legend. His writings and actions over a
mere five yearsrevolutionized attitudes toward art, life, and
sexuality. Rimbaud abandoned poetry at the age of twenty, and in
his final decade he struggled to find success as a trader and
gun-runner in Africa. He died of cancer at thirty-seven, having
seen almost none of his work in print.
Mark Polizzotti has translated more than fifty books from the
French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano,
Marguerite Duras, Andre Breton, and Raymond Roussel. He is the
recipient of numerous prizes and the author of eleven books,
including Revolution of the Mind- The Life of Andre Breton, Highway
61 Revisited, and Sympathy for the Traitor- A Translation
Manifesto. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York
Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, The
Nation, Parnassus, Bookforum, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.
"Polizzotti’s aim, he says, is ‘to provide an approachable, and I
hope enjoyable, introduction to Rimbaud’s work’, and this project
is a distinct success." —Michael Wood, London Review of Books
"Polizzotti rises to the challenge of this dense prose: his
versions are efficient and rhythmically satisfying." —Stephen
Romer, TLS
“Mark Polizzotti is, without any doubt, right there with the very
best translators of symbolist or any other French poetry, and here
he surpasses even himself.” —Mary Ann Caws
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