V---2nd, still Chapter 13 'two bums"/: Rimbaud

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 26.12.2010 19:26, Mark Kohut wrote:
> Another of P's little-mentioned doubles?...
>
> Who know Rimbaud!!! (only in NY and Madison, Wisc. as someone once told me)
> Are these bums some kind of oblique critique of or homage to Rimbaud and
> Verlaine?
>

Don't know. Yet - spending some of my reading time with modern poetry - 
I do know some of
Rimbaud's poetry and letters. [--- that famous "me, myself & eye are an 
OTHER one" line you
can find in Arthur's letter to Paul Demeny from 5/15/1871.] Do use 
bilingual editions, since my
French is not good enough to get the nuances without at least an offer 
of a translation. But
enough of myself. Let me just point out two one/couple lyric lines of 
Arthur Rimbaud which, imo,
are directly connected to Pynchon's work, one case perhaps peripheral, 
the other of a more
basic nature:

In the second line of his poem "L'Etoile A Pleure Rose ...", Rimbaud 
identifies the colour white
("blanc") with a kind of numbness that gets brutally pushed by infinity 
("L'Infini") from upper
("nuque") to lower ("reins") parts of the woman's body , and although 
one may say that Love
somehow still wins in this poem, at least in some 'perverted' way, it's 
clear that we're dealing
with a malevolent quasi-metaphysical force/entity.

One of Pynchon's all-time-favourites, correct?

And then there's another link I can offer when we recall the 
Situationist intro quote from Inherent
Vice: "Under the paving-stones, the beach!" Pynchon adds: "Graffito, 
Paris, May 1968". Rimbaud,
who fought with the anarchists for the Paris Commune in 1871, wrote in 
his poem "Chant De
Guerre Parisien" - & this might be considered as the seed of the 
Situationist slogan Pynchon is
quoting! - "The big city's paving-stones are glowing/Despite THEIR rain 
of petrol" (my Very free
and slightly pynchonized translation ... Hey you native French speakers, 
if you have corrections or
comments to make, please jump in and join the game!) In original it 
reads: "La grand'ville a le pavé
chaud,/Malgres vos douches de pétrole". I could imagine Pynchon likes 
Rimbaud and respects him
as an artist. So - to come back to Mark's question - it's rather 
"homage" than "critique", imo.

"'Rimbaud,' suggested one of the bums.
'Did she know Rimbaud as a child? Drift up-country at age three or four 
through that district and
its trees festooned gray and scarlet with crucified English corpses? Act 
as lucky mascot to the
Mahdists? Live in Cairo and take Sir Alastair Wren for a lover when she 
came of age?'"
(V, picador edition, p. 388)

The rock lyrics of Jim Morrison and Patti Smith are heavily influenced 
by Rimbaud.

Cheers!

Kai


"L'étoile A Pleuré Rose

L'étoile a pleuré rose au coer de tes oreilles,
L'infine roulé blanc de ta nuque à tes reins
La mer a perlé rousse à tes mammes vermeilles,
Et l'Homme saigné noir à ton flanc souverain."

(Arthur Rimbaud)



> Anyone else think of the two most famous (I think) bums in literary
> history, Vladimir and Estragon, from Waiting for Godot? Beckett's
> everymen...........
>
> Wherefore, as Tony Tanner (and others) are they here as Tony Tanner and others
> ask about the drunken criminal sentenced to die in Measure for Measure.
> A little preterite connection for Benny and Stencil?
>
>
>
>
>