{"id":3770,"date":"2015-05-26T04:47:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T20:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/?p=3770"},"modified":"2015-05-26T04:48:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-25T20:48:49","slug":"le-bateau-ivre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/?p=3770","title":{"rendered":"Le Bateau ivre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"11107729_10152931307158877_7569730838188881732_n\"<\/a>
\nAs I was floating down impassive Rivers,<\/em><\/span>
\n I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:<\/em><\/span>
\n gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets,<\/em><\/span>
\n nailing them naked to coloured stakes.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I cared nothing for all my crews,<\/em><\/span>
\n carrying Flemish wheat or English cotton.<\/em><\/span>
\n When, along with my haulers, those uproars stopped,<\/em><\/span>
\n the Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Into the ferocious tide-rips, last winter,<\/em><\/span>
\n more absorbed than the minds of children, I ran!<\/em><\/span>
\n And the unmoored Peninsulas never<\/em><\/span>
\n endured more triumphant clamourings.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.<\/em><\/span>
\n Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves<\/em><\/span>
\n which men call the eternal rollers of victims,<\/em><\/span>
\n for ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,<\/em><\/span>
\n the green water penetrated my pinewood hull<\/em><\/span>
\n and washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains<\/em><\/span>
\n and the splashes of vomit, carrying away both rudder and anchor.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem<\/em><\/span>
\n of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,<\/em><\/span>
\n devouring the green azures where, entranced<\/em><\/span>
\n in pallid flotsam, a dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

where, suddenly dyeing the blueness,<\/em><\/span>
\n deliriums and slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,<\/em><\/span>
\n stronger than alcohol, vaster than music,<\/em><\/span>
\n ferment the bitter rednesses of love!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I have come to know the skies splitting with lightning,<\/em><\/span>
\n and the waterspouts, and the breakers and currents;<\/em><\/span>
\n I know the evening, and dawn rising up like a flock of doves,<\/em><\/span>
\n and sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors<\/em><\/span>
\n lighting up long violet coagulations<\/em><\/span>
\n like the performers in antique dramas;<\/em><\/span>
\n waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows,<\/em><\/span>
\n the kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,<\/em><\/span>
\n the circulation of undreamed-of saps,<\/em><\/span>
\n and the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I have followed, for whole months on end,<\/em><\/span>
\n the swells battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,<\/em><\/span>
\n never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys<\/em><\/span>
\n could muzzle by force the snorting Oceans!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas,<\/em><\/span>
\n where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers in human skins!<\/em><\/span>
\n Rainbows stretched like bridles<\/em><\/span>
\n under the sea’s horizon to glaucous herds!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I have seen the enormous swamps seething,<\/em><\/span>
\n traps where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!<\/em><\/span>
\n Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm,<\/em><\/span>
\n and distances cataracting down into abysses!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!<\/em><\/span>
\n Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs<\/em><\/span>
\n where the giant snakes, devoured by vermin,<\/em><\/span>
\n fall from the twisted trees with black odours!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I should have liked to show to children those dolphins<\/em><\/span>
\n of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fish. —<\/em><\/span>
\n Foam of flowers rocked my driftings,<\/em><\/span>
\n and at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,<\/em><\/span>
\n the sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings<\/em><\/span>
\n lifted my shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me,<\/em><\/span>
\n and I hung there like a kneeling woman…<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Resembling an island, tossing on my sides the brawls<\/em><\/span>
\n and droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds.<\/em><\/span>
\n And I was scudding along when across my frayed ropes<\/em><\/span>
\n drowned men sank backwards into sleep!…<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,<\/em><\/span>
\n hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether;<\/em><\/span>
\n I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,<\/em><\/span>
\n neither Monitor nor Hanseatic ships would have fished up;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,<\/em><\/span>
\n I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky which bears<\/em><\/span>
\n a sweetmeat good poets find delicious:<\/em><\/span>
\n lichens of sunlight mixed with azure snot;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

who ran, speckled with tiny electric moons,<\/em><\/span>
\n a crazy plank with black sea-horses for escort,<\/em><\/span>
\n when Julys were crushing with cudgel blows<\/em><\/span>
\n skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I who trembled to feel at fifty leagues off<\/em><\/span>
\n the groans of Behemoths rutting, and the dense Maelstroms;<\/em><\/span>
\n eternal spinner of blue immobilities,<\/em><\/span>
\n I long for Europe with it’s age-old parapets!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands<\/em><\/span>
\n whose delirious skies are open to sea wanderers: —<\/em><\/span>
\n Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,<\/em><\/span>
\n O million golden birds, Life Force of the future?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

But, truly, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.<\/em><\/span>
\n Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:<\/em><\/span>
\n sharp love has swollen me up with intoxicating torpor.<\/em><\/span>
\n O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the black<\/em><\/span>
\n cold pool where into the scented twilight<\/em><\/span>
\n a child squatting full of sadness launches<\/em><\/span>
\n a boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,<\/em><\/span>
\n sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons;<\/em><\/span>
\n nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants;<\/em><\/span>
\n nor pull past the horrible eyes of prison hulks.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Arthur Rimbaud<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I was floating down impassive Rivers, I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers: gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets, nailing them naked to coloured stakes. I cared nothing for all my crews, carrying Flemish wheat or English cotton. When, along with my haulers, those uproars stopped, the Rivers let me sail […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3770"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3773,"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3770\/revisions\/3773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.viciac.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}