“I do not know how this will end. In any case, I am resigned to everything; I have no luck.”

Original: Je ne sais pas comment cela finira. Enfin je suis résigné à tout, je n’ai pas de chance! — Near the end of his life, Rimbaud combines resignation with a blunt sense of personal misfortune. · Letter to Isabelle Rimbaud, 17 June 1891 (French)

• Acceptance
• Fate
• Suffering

“I wrote silences, nights; I noted the inexpressible. I fixed vertigos.”

Original: J’écrivais des silences, des nuits, je notais l’inexprimable. Je fixais des vertiges. — The poet describes an attempt to give lasting form to experiences that ordinarily resist language. · A Season in Hell, Alchemy of the Word, 1873 (French)

• Expression
• Silence
• Writing

“The Romantics? They prove so well that song is so seldom the work, that is, the thought sung and understood by the singer.”

Original: Les romantiques? qui prouvent si bien que la chanson est si peu souvent l’œuvre, c’est-à-dire la pensée chantée et comprise du chanteur? — Rimbaud distinguishes genuine poetic creation from merely conventional versification. · Letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871 (French)

• Creation
• Music
• Poetry