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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Copyright: Excerpted from Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1967, 2005 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author and the University of Chicago Press.