- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Notes on the Text
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Introduction
- 3 Somnambulism, Natural and Magnetic
- 4. Philosophers and Doctors
- 5 <i>Le Globe</i> and the Intervention of History
- 6 ‘The Phenomena of Sleep’: Balzac and Nodier
- 7 Introduction
- 8 The Word ‘Hallucination’ In Fiction After 1830
- 9 The Beginnings of Retrospective Medicine
- 10 Green Jam, Writing, and Madness: Moreau de Tours, Gautier, and Baudelaire
- 11 Gérard de Nerval: The Status of Dream in <i>Aurélia</i>
- 12 Pathological or ‘Physiological’? Hallucination in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France
- 13 Introduction
- 14 ‘Artistic Hallucination’ from Brierre de Boismont to Taine
- 15 ‘Observers of Sleep’
- 16 Dream and the ‘Doubling of Personality’
- 17 Victor Hugo and the ‘Headland of Dream’
- 18 Introduction
- 19 Memory and Identity: L'Homme qui rit
- 20 Avatars of the Self
- 21 Rimbaud: ‘Simple Hallucination’ and the Otherness of Self
- 22 1900: Creation and Somnambulism
- 23 Conclusion
- Biographical Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Rimbaud: ‘Simple Hallucination’ and the Otherness of Self
Rimbaud: ‘Simple Hallucination’ and the Otherness of Self
- Chapter:
- (p.250) 21 Rimbaud: ‘Simple Hallucination’ and the Otherness of Self
- Source:
- Dream, Creativity, and Madness in Nineteenth-Century France
- Author(s):
Tony James
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Rimbaud claimed that his poetry originated from a realm of psychic experience which was not that of everyday, concrete perception. He wrote in a condensed and elliptical style with striking images and equally striking juxtapositions. Whether in poetry or in prose, the phraseology often has a terseness which contrasts with the more ample periods of earlier poets, like Hugo, or novelists like Flaubert. The poetry, in consequence, is not easy to analyse. Although paraphrasing is a misleading device to use with any poetry, it can at least give the appearance of helping to understand what a poem by Hugo or Theophile Gautier is about. With Rimbaud, paraphrasing is well-nigh impossible. This chapter first shows how Rimbaud consciously disturbed sense-perception in order to become a seer. It then focuses on the different voices to be heard in Une saison en enfer.
Keywords: Rimbaud, poetry, sense-perception, Une saison en enfer
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Notes on the Text
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Introduction
- 3 Somnambulism, Natural and Magnetic
- 4. Philosophers and Doctors
- 5 <i>Le Globe</i> and the Intervention of History
- 6 ‘The Phenomena of Sleep’: Balzac and Nodier
- 7 Introduction
- 8 The Word ‘Hallucination’ In Fiction After 1830
- 9 The Beginnings of Retrospective Medicine
- 10 Green Jam, Writing, and Madness: Moreau de Tours, Gautier, and Baudelaire
- 11 Gérard de Nerval: The Status of Dream in <i>Aurélia</i>
- 12 Pathological or ‘Physiological’? Hallucination in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France
- 13 Introduction
- 14 ‘Artistic Hallucination’ from Brierre de Boismont to Taine
- 15 ‘Observers of Sleep’
- 16 Dream and the ‘Doubling of Personality’
- 17 Victor Hugo and the ‘Headland of Dream’
- 18 Introduction
- 19 Memory and Identity: L'Homme qui rit
- 20 Avatars of the Self
- 21 Rimbaud: ‘Simple Hallucination’ and the Otherness of Self
- 22 1900: Creation and Somnambulism
- 23 Conclusion
- Biographical Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
