A Season in Hell Erasure

I enjoyed how looking at Jen Bervin's "nets" not only as self-standing poems but also as testaments to her feelings about Shakespeare and his sonnets. For that reason I decided to use Rimbaud's first part of A Season in Hell in the same way, as a representation of what my relationship with Rimbaud has been.

A Season In Hell

            Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

            One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter, and I cursed her.

            I armed myself against justice.

            I fled. O Witches, O Misery, O Hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted!

            I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope. On all joy, to strangle it, I pounced with the stealth of a wild beast.

            I called to the executioners that I might gnaw their rifle-butts while dying. I called to the plagues to smother me in blood, in sand. Misfortune was my God. I laid myself down in the mud. I dried myself in the air of crime. I played sly tricks on madness.

            And spring brought me the idiot’s frightful laughter.

            Now, only recently, being on the point of giving my last squawk, I thought of looking for the key to the ancient feast where I might find my appetite again.

            Charity is that key.—This inspiration proves that I have dreamed!

            “You will always be a hyena…”etc., protests the devil who crowned me with such pleasant poppies. “Attain death with all your appetites, your selfishness and all the capital sins!”

            Ah!  fed up:—But, dear Satan, a less fiery eye I beg you! And while awaiting a few small infamies in arrears, you who love the absence of the instructive or descriptive faculty in a writer, for you let me tear out these few, hideous pages from my notebook of one of the damned.

Works Cited

Rimbaud, Arthur. A Season in Hell. trans. Louise Varése. New Directions, 1961. Print.