ARTHUR RIMBAUD STUDIES           

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Rimbaud: Arthur Rimbaud and the Magic of Poetry

Arthur Rimbaud: Selected Poems

Arthur Rimbaud: A Season in Hell

Andre Gide: Fiction and Fervour in the Novels

Samuel Beckett Goes Into the Silence

In the Dim Void: Samuel Beckett's Late Trilogy

Julia Kristeva: Art, Love, Melancholy, Philosophy, Semiotics and Psychoanalysis

Luce Irigaray: Lips, Kissing, and the Politics of Sexual Difference

Helénè Cixous I Love You: The Jouissance of Writing

Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism

German Romantic Poetry: Goethe, Novalis, Heine, Hölderlin, Schlegel, Schiller

Rilke: Space, Essence and Angels in the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke: Dance the Orange: Selected Poems

Hölderlin's Songs of Light: Selected Poems

 

 

LIST OF SUBJECTS
ORDER INFO
 

Je vais dévoiler tous les mystères: mystères religieux ou naturels, mort, naissance, avenir, passé, cosmogonie, néant. Je sui maître en fantasmagories.
Ecoutez!Ö
Jíai tous les talents! - Il níy a personne ici et il y a quelquíun: je ne voudrais pas répandre mon trésor. - Veut-on des chants nègres, des danses de houris? Veut-on que je disparaisse, que je plonge à la recherche de líanneau? Veut-on? Je ferai de líor, des remèdes.
 

I will unveil all mysteries: religious mysteries or natural, death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony, nothingness. I am master of phantasmagorias.
Listen!...
I have every talent! - There is nobody here and there is someone: I would not like to give out my treasure -Would you like Black songs, houri dances. Would you like me to disappear, to plunge to discover the ring. Would you? I will make gold, and remedies.

Arthur Rimbaud, from A Season in Hell
 
 
 

A new study of France's extraordinary 16 year-old genius poet, the ever-rebel who ran away from home, had a debauched, Bohemian relationship with Paul Verlaine, gave up writing poetry at 19, and ended up in Aden gun-running and slave-trading. This book looks at Rimbaud's theory of poetics; his famous 'seer letter'; his ecstatic lyrical voice; his early works; the famous 'Le Bateau ivre'; and his two amazing mythopúic statements: Illuminations and A Season in Hell.

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Arthur Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

European Writers Series  With notes and bibliography  115pp  ISBN 1-871846-56-0   £14.99 / $23.50
 

  On Arthur Rimbaud's life and work

These new versions of searing lyricism will delight lovers of poetry. Jary has selected the most representative pieces by the whirlwind poet, including 'The Drunken Boat', 'Memory', and healthy chunks of A Season in Hell and Illuminations. Jary has produced clear, unfussy translations of Rimbaud's fiery verse. With the French text.
 
 

European Writers Series  Bibliography, notes  ISBN 1-898283-14-1 74pp  £6.99 / $11.00
 
 

MATINEE D'IVRESSE

O mon Bien! O mon Beau! Fanfare atroce où je ne trébuche point! Chevalet féerique! Hourra pour líúuvre inouïe et pour le corps merveilleux, pour la première fois! Cela commença sous les rires des enfants, cela finira par eux. Ce poison va rester dans toutes nos veines même quand, la fanfare tournant, nous serons rendu à líancienne inharmonie. O maintenant nous si digne de ces tortures! rassemblons fervemment cette promesse surhumaine faite à notre corps et à notre âme créés: cette promesse, cette démence! Líélégance, la science, la violence! On nous a promis díenterrer dans líombre líarbre du bien et du mal, de déporter les honnêtetés tyranniques, afin que nous amenions notre très pur amour. Cela commença par quelques dégouts et cela finit, - ne pouvant nous saisir sur-le-champ de cette éternité, - cela finit par une débande de parfums.
 Rire des enfants, discrétion des esclaves, austérité des vierges, horreur des figures et des objets díici, sacrés soyez-vous parle souvenir de cette veille. Cela commençait par toute la rustrerie, voici que cela finit par des anges de flamme et de glace.
 Petite veille díivresse, sainte! quand ce ne serait que pour le masque dont tu nous as gratifié. Nous tíaffirmons, méthode! Nous níoublions pas que tu as glorifié hier chacun de nos âges. Nous avons foi au poison. Nous savons donner notre vie tout entière tous les jours.
 Voici le temps des ASSASSINS.
 

(O my Good! O my Beautiful! Atrocious fanfare where I do not stumble! Enchanted rack! Hurrah for the extraordinary work and for the wondrous body, for the first time! This began with the laughter of children, and it will end there. This poison will stay in all our veins even when, fanfare revolving, we return to the old discord, O now we are worthy of these tortures! let us fervently bring together again this superhuman promise made to our created bodies, our souls: this promise, this madness! Elegance, science, violence! they promised us they would bury in a shadow the tree of good and evil, and send away tyrannical honesty, so that we could bring forth our very pure love. It all began with some disgust and ended, - as we could not seize eternity on the spot - it ended with a rout of perfumes.
Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins, horror of figures and objects from here, make sacred the memory of that night. It began in total loutishness, and here it ends with angels of fire and ice.
Little night of ecstasy, holy! if only for the mask you bequeathed to us. We affirm you, method! We will not forget that you glorified all our epochs yesterday . We have faith in poison. We will give our lives entirely every day.
This is the time of the ASSASSINS.)

(Arthur Rimbaud, 'Matinee d'ivresse' ['Morning of Ecstasy'])
 

Click here for more Rimbaud poems

 

A new translation of Rimbaud's extraordinary poetic statement, written in 1873. The sensual, violent and anguished emotion in Rimbaud's visionary 'alchemy of the word' remains startling, and continues to inspire poets. Printed with the French text facing the translation.
 
 

European Writers Series  Bibliography, notes   85pp  ISBN 1-86171-042-9    £6.99 / $11.00
 
 
 

O saisons, ô châteaux!
Quelle âme est sans défauts?

J'ai fait la magique étude
Du bonheur, qu'aucun n'élude.

Salut à lui, chaque fois
Que chante le coq gaulois.

Ah! je n'aurai plus d'envie:
Il s'est chargé de ma vie.

Ce charme a pris âme et corps
Et dispersé les efforts.

O saisons, ô châteaux!

L'heure de sa fuite, hélas!
Sera l'heure du trépas.

O saisons, ô châteaux!

Cela s'est passé. Je sais aujord'hui saluer la beauté.

[O seasons, o castles! What soul is flawless? I have made the magic study of happiness, which no one eludes. Salute to it, each time the Gallic cock sings. Ah! I will have no more desires: it has taken over my life. This charm has taken soul and body and broken up my efforts. O seasons, o castles! The hour of its flight, alas! It will be the hour of death. O seasons, o castles! That is gone. Today I know how to salute beauty.]

(Arthur Rimbaud, from A Season in Hell)

 

BOOKS OF RELATED INTEREST

André Gide is the acclaimed literary giant of modern French literature. Throughout his career Gide exalted the role of the writer: as he wrote his letters and Journals he was always conscious of being a writer, of being read. This self-reflexivity and mise-en-abyme is found in the early works, Paludes, the mid-period novels, Strait is the Gate and The Vatican Cellars, and the modernist The Counterfeiters, in which the writing of the novel becomes more interesting (to the writer) than the story itself. There are detailed chapters on the early, ecstatic work Fruits of the Earth, and the proto-Existentialist novel The Immoralist.

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Arthur Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

Bibliography, notes  110pp  ISBN 1-86171-030-5   £14.99 / $23.50

 
 

Life must be utterly new, and nothing in the surroundings must remind me that, outside, there are other things. The illusion of working in the absolute.

(André Gide, Journals, 1890)
 
 

Samuel Beckett's art is much debated in critical circles: this book sets out to discover why. Beckett's sense of poetry and language and its relation to creativity and culture is central to his art. All the major fiction and plays are studied, including the Unnamable trilogy, Waiting For Godot, Endgame, How It Is, the short prose pieces of the 1960s and 70s, and the late plays and texts. Other chapters discuss the collaboration with Billie Whitelaw; Beckett's æsthetics of theatre; his relation to philosophers such as Sartre and Heidegger; and his use of silence.

Jeremy Robinson's books include Glorification: Religious Abstraction in Renaissance and 20th Century Art (1990), Arthur Rimbaud (1992), Lawrence Durrell (1995) and Detonation Britain: Nuclear War in the UK (1997). He edits two magazines, Passion and Pagan America (a journal of American poetry).
 
 

Bibliography, notes  121pp  ISBN 1-871846-41-2   £14.99 / $23.50
 

This book discusses the luminous beauty and dense, rigorous poetry of Beckett's late works, Company, Ill Seen, Ill Said and Worstward Ho. Johns looks back over Beckett's long writing career, charting the development from the Molloy-Malone Dies-Unnamable trilogy through the 'fizzles' of the 1960s to the elegiac lyricism of the Company series. Johns compares the trilogy with late plays such as Ghosts, Footfalls and Rockaby.

Gregory Johns taught English at the University of Iowa until his return to England in 1987. His articles have appeared in many leading journals. His books include critical studies of Thomas Pynchon, Raymond Carver and Paul Verlaine. He lives in Cornwall.
 
 

Bibliography, notes. 85pp  ISBN 1-871846-02-1     £7.99 / $12.50
 

 

From where she lies she sees Venus rise. On. From where she lies when the skies are clear she sees Venus rise followed by the sun. Then she rails at the source of all life. On. At evening when the skies are clear she savours its star's revenge. At the other window. Rigid upright on her old chair she watches for the radiant one. Her old deal spindlebacked kitchen chair. It emerges from out the last rays and sinking ever brighter is engulfed in its turn. On. She sits on erect and rigid in the deepening gloom.

(Samuel Beckett, from Ill Seen Ill Said)
 
 
 

Hélène Cixous is a challenging and lyrical French feminist and writer, author of the influential esay "The Laugh of the Medusa" and (with Catherine Clément) The Newly-Born Woman. Cixous is immensely productive, writing novels, plays, essays and poetic prose. Her ideas have provoked much debate in feminism: on the body, orgasmic writing, 'feminine' texts ('écriture féminine'), essentialism and the Nietzschean 'gift'. There is also a chapter on Cixous and Rimbaud.

Kelly Ives teaches women's studies and feminist theory at the University of California. Her books include Reading the Silences (1988), on writers such as Jane Austen, Emily Brontë and Virginia Woolf, Lesbian Tracks (1991), on lesbianism in pop music, Wild Zones: Pornography, Art and Feminism (Crescent Moon, 1994) and Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism (Crescent Moon 1996).
 
 

European Writers Series  Bibliography and notes  125pp  ISBN 1-86171-001-1   £14.99 / $23.50  NEW
 
 
 

Walking, dancing, pleasure: these accompany the poetic act. I wonder what kind of poet doesnít wear out their shoes, writes with their head. The true poet is a reveller. Poetry is about travelling on foot and all its substitutes, all forms of transportation.

(Hélène Cixous, from Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing)
 

One cannot bear to spend a Season in Paradise without crying out in instant nostalgia: never will we have the strength to endure such intoxicating agony a second time. If we had what we will never have - time to live this day over again - there are so many others desirable and each is the most beautiful one. It is superhuman torture. We do not know how, simply, to bear it. We weep for joy.

(Hélène Cixous, from The Book of Promethea)

As writers, philosophers, speakers and feminists, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray are among the most provocative, subtle and illuminating voices in contemporary culture. Their concepts and methodologies continue to excite debate and contention among feminists and cultural critics. Ives discusses their major ideas, which include: jouissance and 'explosive' sexuality; women and marginality; the 'gift'; the pre-oedipal chora and semiotic realm; labial lips that embrace; social oppression; the relations between writing, language and identity; and the politics of gender, patriarchy and motherhood. Ives studies the relation of Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva to other feminists, and to figures such as Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, Hegel, Marx, Joyce, Derrida, Barthes, Rimbaud, Lacan and Freud.

Kelly Ives teaches women's studies and feminist theory at the University of California. Her books include Reading the Silences (1988), on writers such as Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and Virginia Woolf, Lesbian Tracks (1991), on lesbianism in pop music, Wild Zones: Pornography, Art and Feminism (Crescent Moon, 1994) and Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism (Crescent Moon 1996).
 
 

Full bibliography and notes   195pp  ISBN 1-871846-88-9   £14.99 / $23.50
 
 

Since at least Hölderlin, poetic language has deserted beauty and meaning to become a laboratory where, facing philosophy, knowledge, and the transcendental ego of all signification, the impossibility of a signified or signifying identity is being sustained. If we took this venture seriously - if we could hear the burst of black laughter it hurls at all attempts to master the human situation, to master language by language - we would be forced to re-examine "literary history', to rediscover beneath rhetoric and poetics its unchanging but always different polemic with the symbolic function.

(Julia Kristeva, from Desire in Language)
 
 
 

This critical literary study looks at the chief poets and philosophers of the Romantic era who, between them, forged a new cult of mystical, lyrical poetry. After a discussion of the key ideas of German Romanticism (infinity, eternity, nostalgia, mythology, Hellenism, extremity, sensuality), Appleby concentrates on the poets: from Goethe, 'the last Renaissance man', as he is sometimes called, to the shamanic, Neoplatonic poet Novalis and his Hymen an die Nacht.
 
 

With bibliography, notes 90pp  ISBN 1-898283-03-6    £10.99 / $17.00
 
 
 

Geh unter, schöne Sonne, sie achteten
 Nur wenig dein, sie kannten dich, Heilg, nicht,
  Denn mühelos und stille bist du
   Über den mühsamen aufgegangen.

Mir gehst du freundlich unter und auf, o Licht!
 Und wohl erkennt mein Auge dich, herrliches!
  Denn göttlich stille ehren lerntí ich
   Da Diotima den Sinn mir heilte.

O du desHimmels Botin! wie lauscht ich dir!
 Dir, Diotima! Liebe! wie sah von dir
  Zum goldnen Tage dieses Auge
   Glänzend und dankend empor. Da rauschten

Lebendiger die Quellen, es athmeten
 Der dunkeln Erde Blüthen mich liebend an,
  Und lächelnd über Silberwolken
   Neigte sich seegnend herab der Aether.
 

(Go down, then, lovely sun, for but little they
 Regarded you, nor, holy one, knew your worth,
  Since without toil you rose, and quiet,
   Over a people for ever toiling.

To me, however, kindly you rise and set,
 O glorious light, and brightly my eyes respond,
  For godly, silent reverence I
   Learned when Diotima soothed my frenzy.

O how I listened, Heavenís own messenger,
 To you, my teacher! Love! How to the golden day
  These eyes transfused with thanks looked up from
   Gazing at you. And at once more living

The brooks began to murmur, more lovingly
 The blossoms of dark Earth breathed their scent at me
  And through the silver clouds a smiling
   Aether bowed down to bestow his blessing.)

(Friedrich Hölderlin, "Geh unter, schöne Sonne, sie achteten")

Rilke is probably the great 20th century poet, certainly one of the richest, most potent and lyrically beautiful of all poets. This book looks at many of Rilke's curious notions: of the 'Open', which is identified with death; of innerness or 'Kunst-Ding' in the New Poems (derived from Rilke's time with Rodin); of the Nietzschean Angel in the Duino Elegies; and of love and death in the late Sonnets to Orpheus.

B.D. Barnacle taught English in Paris until 1980. He now teaches in Oxford. His books include John Donne (1978), The Victorian Novel: Bronte, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy (1984), Shakespeare (Crescent Moon, 1992) and Rilke (Crescent Moon, 1993).
 
 

European Writers Series   Bibliography, notes  76pp  ISBN 1-871846-76-5     £7.99 / $12.50
 

 

It is not enough for two people to recognize each other, it is enormously important for them to find each other at the right time and celebrate together deep and quiet festivals in which they can grow together in their desires.

(Rilke, letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé [Briefe 1892-1904])
 
 
 

This new collection includes poems taken from the time of the great German poet's New Poems through the Duino Elegies to the last pieces. These are some of Rilke's best works; though fragmentary, they are intense, compact, lyrical and lucid, by turns erotic, heartfelt and mystical. Hamburger's excellent translations have the German original facing each poem.
 
 

European Writers Series  Notes & bibliography. 88pp  ISBN 1-86171-031-3     £7.99 / $12.50   forthcoming
 

 

Inside a rose your bed stands, beloved. Your very self
(oh, I the swimmer against the current of fragrance)
I have lost. As to my life before now
these (from outside uncountable) three times three months are,
so, beaten inward, not till then shall I be. All at once,
two millennia before that new creature
whom we enjoy when the touching begins,
suddenly: faced with you, I am born, in the eye.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Arrival')
 

translated by Michael Hamburger and edited  by Jeremy Robinson

The German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is one of the very greatest poets of any era. Hölderlin's poetry is airy, radiant and incredibly lyrical. This selection features many of his best odes, poems and hymns, from the whole span of his career. Michael Hamburger is a respected poet and critic. He has translated Rilke, Celan and Goethe, among others, as well the whole of Hölderlin's poetry. Hamburger's awards include The Schlegel-Tieck Prize, the Goethe Medal and the European Translation Prize.

'Few can have done more to enhance (and in many cases create) the appreciation of German poetry among an Anglophone audience' (Times Literary Supplement)
 
 

European Writers Series  Notes & bibliography. 88pp  ISBN 1-86171-027-5     £7.99 / $12.50  forthcoming
 
 
 

TO DIOTIMA

Beautiful being, you live as do delicate blossoms in winter,
 In a world that's grown old hidden you blossom, alone.
Lovingly outward you press to bask in the light of the springtime,
 To be warmed by it still, look for the youth of the world.
But your sun, the lovelier world, has gone down now,
 And the quarrelling gales rage in an icy bleak night.

Rimbaud: Arthur Rimbaud and the Magic of Poetry

Arthur Rimbaud: Selected Poems

Arthur Rimbaud: A Season in Hell

Andre Gide: Fiction and Fervour in the Novels

Samuel Beckett Goes Into the Silence

In the Dim Void: Samuel Beckett's Late Trilogy

Julia Kristeva: Art, Love, Melancholy, Philosophy, Semiotics and Psychoanalysis

Luce Irigaray: Lips, Kissing, and the Politics of Sexual Difference

Helénè Cixous I Love You: The Jouissance of Writing

Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism

German Romantic Poetry: Goethe, Novalis, Heine, Hölderlin, Schlegel, Schiller

Rilke: Space, Essence and Angels in the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke: Dance the Orange: Selected Poems

Hölderlin's Songs of Light: Selected Poems

LIST OF SUBJECTS

• Harry Potter
• J.R.R. Tolkien
• Andy Goldsworthy
• Art
• Sculpture
• Painters
• American Painters
• Renaissance Painters
• Renaissance Writers
• Media, Cinema, Culture, Feminism
• Feminism and Gender Studies
• Literature
• Poetry
• Contemporary Poetry
• Novelists
• 19th Century and Romantic Culture
• European Writers
• British Poets
• Shakespeare Studies
• Arthur Rimbaud Studies
• D.H. Lawrence Studies
• John Cowper Powys Studies
• Thomas Hardy Studies
• Journals
• Alchemy Records
• Index of Titles, ISBNs, Dates and Prices

SELECTIONS FROM WRITERS AND POETS

To read selections from other writers, poets and texts published by Crescent Moon, click on the names below:

• Alexendria Revisited: Durrell, Cavafy, Keeley and Others
• Elisabeth Bletsoe, poems
• Emily Dickinson, poems
• Lawrence Durrell
• D.J. Enright, poems
• H.W. Fawkner on John Cowper Powys
• Eric Gill and D.H. Lawrence
• Thomas Hardy, poems
• Thomas Hardy, from Sexing Hardy: Thomas Hardy and Feminism
• Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• Spirit of Place in Hardy, Lawrence and Powys
• Robert Herrick, poems
• Friedrich Hölderlin, poems
• Wolfgang Iser, interview
• Julia Kristeva, life and work
• D.H. Lawrence and Lawrence Durrell
• D.H. Lawrence's The Escaped Cock
• D.H. Lawrence, poems
• Love poetry, a selection
• Nature poetry, a selection
• Pagan America: Anthology of New American Poetry
• John Cowper Powys by Joe Boulter
• John Cowper Powys, from Rethinking Powys
• Peter Redgrove, poems
• Jeremy Reed, poems
• Rainer Maria Rilke, life and work
• Rainer Maria Rilke, poems
• Arthur Rimbaud, poems
• Arthur Rimbaud, life and work
• Romantic poetry, a selection
• William Shakespeare: The Sonnets
• Arseny Tarkovsky, poems
• Sir Thomas Wyatt, poems

• Harry Potter
• J.R.R. Tolkien
• Andy Goldsworthy
• Art
• Art in Close-Up Series
• Sculpture
• Painters
• American Painters
• TV arts documentaries on DVD and video
• Renaissance Painters
• Renaissance Writers
• Media, Cinema, Culture, Feminism
• Cinema
• Feminism and Gender Studies
• Literature
• Poetry
• Contemporary Poetry
• Novelists
• 19th Century and Romantic Culture
• European Writers
• British Poets
• Shakespeare Studies
• Arthur Rimbaud Studies
• D.H. Lawrence Studies
• John Cowper Powys Studies
• Thomas Hardy Studies
• Journals
• Alchemy Records
• Index of Titles, ISBNs, Dates and Prices
• New Titles and Forthcoming Books

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• All titles can be ordered through your local bookseller.

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