A Season in Hell

Arthur Rimbaud’s *A Season in Hell* (original French title: *Une saison en enfer*) is a long prose poem he wrote and put out in 1873. It stands as the sole work Rimbaud ever published himself. Later artists and poets, particularly the Surrealists, were heavily influenced by it.

Rimbaud started writing the poem in April 1873 while visiting his family’s farm in Roche, a village near Charleville on the border between France and Belgium. According to Bertrand Mathieu, he wrote it in a run-down barn. Over the following weeks, Rimbaud traveled with the poet Paul Verlaine through Belgium and back to London. Their relationship, which had begun in the spring of 1872, was complicated and marked by frequent quarrels. Verlaine struggled with drunkenness and suicidal behavior. In July 1873, while they were in Brussels, Rimbaud said he planned to leave. Verlaine responded by firing a revolver twice, wounding Rimbaud once. After more threats of violence, Verlaine was arrested and sentenced to two years of hard labor. Following their split, Rimbaud went home, finished the work, and published *A Season in Hell*. But his reputation suffered because of his involvement with Verlaine; the book got negative reviews, and Parisian art and literary circles snubbed him. Angered, Rimbaud burned his manuscripts and likely never wrote poetry again.

During his first stay in London in September 1872, Rimbaud switched from drinking absinthe to smoking opium and consuming gin and beer. Biographer Graham Robb notes this shift began “as an attempt to explain why some of his [Rimbaud’s] poems are so hard to understand, especially when sober.” Rimbaud himself dated the poem from April to August 1873, but these are the dates of completion. He finished it in a farmhouse in Roche, in the Ardennes region.

The prose poem is loosely split into nine parts of varying lengths. Their tone and how easy they are to follow differ sharply. Still, the text is carefully and deliberately edited and revised, which is obvious when comparing the final version to earlier drafts.

The introduction (sometimes titled with its first line, “Once, if my memory serves me well…”) outlines the narrator’s damnation and presents the story as “pages from the diary of a Damned soul.” “Bad Blood” describes the narrator’s Gaulish ancestry and its supposed effect on his morality and happiness. “Night of Hell” highlights the moment of the narrator’s death and entry into hell. “Delirium I: The Foolish Virgin – The Infernal Spouse” is the most linear section; it tells the story of a woman (representing Verlaine) enslaved to her “infernal bridegroom” (Rimbaud), who deceived her and lured her love with false promises. This is likely a transparent allegory for his relationship with Verlaine. In “Delirium II: Alchemy of Words,” the narrator steps in and explains his own false hopes and broken dreams. This section is more clearly divided and contains many verse passages (most are individual poems from the later collection “Derniers vers” or “Vers nouveaux et chansons,” though with significant variations). Here Rimbaud continues developing his theory of poetry from his “Lettres du Voyant,” but ultimately considers the whole effort a failure. “The Impossible” is vague; one critical reading sees it as the speaker’s attempt to escape hell. “Lightning” is a short, unclear section with a resigned and fatalistic tone, indicating the narrator’s surrender. “Morning” serves as a conclusion where the narrator claims to have “finished my account of my hell” and “can no longer even talk.” “Farewell” alludes to a change of seasons from autumn to spring. The narrator seems more confident and stronger after his journey through hell, claiming he is “now able to possess the truth within one body and one soul.”

Bernard Mathieu calls *A Season in Hell* “a terribly enigmatic poem” and a “brilliantly near-hysterical quarrel between the poet and his ‘other.’” He identifies two voices at work: “the two separate parts of Rimbaud’s schizoid personality—the ‘I’ who is a seer/poet and the ‘I’ who is the incredibly hard-nosed widow Rimbaud’s peasant son. One voice is wildly in love with the miracle of light and childhood, the other finds all these literary shenanigans rather damnable and ‘idiotic.’” For Wallace Fowlie, writing in the introduction to his 1966 translation, “the ultimate lesson” of this “complex” and “troublesome” text is that “poetry is one way by which life may be changed and renewed. Poetry is one possible stage in a life process. Within the limits of man’s fate, the poet’s language is able to express his existence although it is not able to create it.” According to Mathieu: “The trouble with *A Season in Hell* is that it points only one way: where it’s going is where it’s coming from. Its greatest source of frustration, like that of every important poem, is the realization that it’s impossible for any of us to escape the set limits imposed on us by ‘reality.’” Fowlie also noted in 1966 that the work “testif[ies] to a modern revolt, and the kind of liberation which follows revolt.” Academic critics have reached many varied and often entirely incompatible conclusions about what meaning and philosophy may or may not be in the text. Among them, Henry Miller was important in introducing Rimbaud to the United States in the 1960s. He published an English translation of the poem.