Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters

Five Poems by Rimbaud

from Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition

Translated by Wallace Fowlie and revised by Seth Whidden


Venus Anadyomène

Comme d’un cercueil vert en fer blanc, une tête
De femme à cheveux bruns fortement pommadés
D’une vieille baignoire émerge, lente et bête,
Avec des déficits assez mal ravaudés;

Puis le col gras et gris, les larges omoplates
Qui saillent; le dos court qui rentre et qui ressort;
Puis les rondeurs des reins semblent prendre l’essor;
La graisse sous la peau paraît en feuilles plates:

L’échine est un peu rouge, et le tout sent un goût
Horrible étrangement; on remarque surtout
Des singularités qu’il faut voir à la loupe…

Les reins portent deux mots gravés: CLARA VENUS;
—Et tout ce corps remue et tend sa large croupe
Belle hideusement d’un ulcère à l’anus.

Venus Anadyomene

As from a green zinc coffin, a woman’s
Head with brown hair heavily pomaded
Emerges slowly and stupidly from an old bathtub,
With bald patches rather badly hidden;

Then the fat gray neck, broad shoulder-blades
Sticking out; a short back which curves in and bulges;
Then the roundness of the buttocks seems to take off;
The fat under the skin appears in slabs:

The spine is a bit red; and the whole thing has a smell
Strangely horrible; you notice especially
Odd details you’d have to see with a magnifying glass…

The buttocks bear two engraved words: CLARA VENUS;
—And that whole body moves and extends its broad rump
Hideously beautiful with an ulcer on the anus.

[1870]

Book details:

Jean Nicholas Arthur Rimbaud
Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition
Translated and with an Introduction and Notes by Wallace Fowlie. Revised and with a Foreword by Seth Whidden.
©1967, 2005, 496 pages, 6 halftones, 7 line drawings
Cloth $50.00 ISBN: 0-226-71976-6
Paper $19.00 ISBN: 0-226-71977-4

For information on purchasing the book—from bookstores or here online—please go to the webpage for Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters.

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