“You are a teacher again. You told me that one owes a duty to Society; you are part of the teaching profession: you are keeping to the beaten track.”

Original: Vous revoilà professeur. On se doit à la Société, m’avez-vous dit; vous faites partie des corps enseignants: vous roulez dans la bonne ornière. — Rimbaud attacks conformity and the respectable social roles he believed constrained creative freedom. · Letter to Georges Izambard, 13 May 1871 (French)

• Convention
• Freedom
• Rebellion

“The poet would make himself a seer by a long, immense and reasoned disordering of all the senses.”

Original: Le Poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens. — Poetic vision requires a sustained challenge to ordinary habits of perception. · Letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871 (French)

• Poetry
• Senses
• Vision

“The years pass; I lead a stupid existence, I accumulate no income, and I shall never achieve what I want in these countries.”

Original: Les années se passent, je mène une existence stupide, je n’amasse pas de rentes, je n’arriverai jamais à ce que je voudrais, dans ces pays. — The remark conveys Rimbaud’s frustration with the gap between his ambitions and the life he was actually leading. · Letter from Aden, 15 January 1885 (French)

• Achievement
• Discontentment
• Exile