The Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud; Translated by Donald Revell

Reviewed by Eric Weinstein

ISBN 978-1-890650-36-0
Omnidawn Publishing, 2009

It’s not strictly rare to find a translation of poetry that is both faithful to the original work and a small masterpiece in its own right, but it’s certainly uncommon. Donald Revell’s translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s The Illuminations is such a collection, a display of the author’s strength and considerable skill as both poet and translator, one on par with David Young’s translations of Rilke and Neruda or Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.

Rimbaud’s collection consists almost exclusively of prose poems, with the exception of “Marine” (“Seascape”), “Mouvement” (“Movement”), and parts of “Enfance” (“Childhood”) and “Veillées” (“Vigils”), which are free verse. Although Revell rarely has to contend with line breaks or rhyme in his translation, he still manages to evoke a lyric quality reminiscent of the original French. From the first poem, “Après le déluge” (“After the Flood”):

Aussit ôt après que l’idée du Déluge                     As soon as the mind of the Flood
se fut rassise, un lièvre s’arrêta dans                     grew calm, a hare paused in the
les sainfoins et les clochettes mouvantes,              shivering bellflowers in holy clover,
et dit sa prière à l’arc-en-ciel à travers                 and he said his prayer to the rainbow
la toile de l’araignée.                                           through a spider’s web.

The final poem in the collection, “Solde”—which can be literally translated as “Balance”—Revell masterfully titles “Going Out of Business.” Here Rimbaud derides and satirizes the arbitrariness of the market, almost painfully apposing the notions of monetary and artistic value: “À vendre les corps sans prix, hors de toute race, de tout monde, de tout sexe, de toute descendance!” The line literally reads, “To sell the bodies without price, outside of all races, of all the world, of all sex, of all descent”; Revell translates it as “On sale: priceless bodies, transcending race and world and sex and descent!”

Revell is no newcomer to translation, particularly of late nineteenth century French, and he has honed his abilities through translations of Guillaume Apollinaire (The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems and Alcools) and other works by Rimbaud (A Season in Hell). To be concise: I have yet to come across a better living translator working in French today, and I wholeheartedly recommend Revell’s translations to francophone and English-speaking readers alike.

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Prick of the Spindle Poetry Editor Eric Weinstein's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of online and print publications, including Best New Poets 2009. His poems have been nominated for inclusion in the annual Pushcart Prize anthology and have won several awards, including the Anne Flexner Award in poetry. A native of Nashua, New Hampshire, he currently lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

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