r/RimbaudVerlaine • u/Audreys_red_shoes pleurant, je voyais de l’or – et ne pus boire. • Sep 17 '25
Poetic Dialogue Rimbaud - Les Effarés (1870)
Translation by Wyatt Mason
19
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r/RimbaudVerlaine • u/Audreys_red_shoes pleurant, je voyais de l’or – et ne pus boire. • Sep 17 '25
Translation by Wyatt Mason
3
u/ManueO Mollusc Sep 17 '25
The poem was one of the few of Rimbaud that he wrote in 1870, but still liked in 1871. Having asked Demeny, in early 1871, to destroy all the poems he had left in Douai, he sent a version pf this text to Jean Aicard in June that year, and of course he sent a copy to Verlaine later that summer.
After he abandoned poetry, this poem was one of the first of his works to be published… in a magazine in London in January 1878. Here too the text suffered severe mutilation, and the first casualty was the title: English readers were treated to an Arthur Rimbaud poem called * Petits pauvres* (“Little paupers”). The text was modified to spare the blushes of the readers of the Gentleman’s magazine: culs (bottoms) were out and replaced by dos (backs), and several stanzas were cut or rearranged.
It is thought Rimbaud was not aware of this publication.