{"id":4412,"date":"2019-05-13T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T18:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?p=4412"},"modified":"2025-02-05T14:22:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T22:22:32","slug":"my-poor-heart-drips-at-its-poop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?p=4412","title":{"rendered":"My Poor Heart Drips at its Poop"},"content":{"rendered":"

The scholarship is mixed on whether or not Rimbaud, age 16, was actually gang-raped in the barracks of the Paris Commune, as depicted in James Ramsey Ulmann’s potboiler bio <\/em>The Day on Fire and claimed in Roberto Bola\u00f1o’s <\/em>Los detectives salvajes. That spring of 1871, he was five foot three, slight even for a twink<\/a>.\u00a0Over the next year he bean-poled to almost five foot eight. <\/em>He had run off to Paris to take part in the grand insurrection.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once back home in Charleville, having avoided the fate shown above, he attached the following poem in<\/em>\u00a0a letter to his erstwhile mentor, Georges Izambard.\u00a0<\/em>The same epistle contains the famous line, <\/em>Je est un autre\u00a0(I is [sic] somebody else).<\/em><\/p>\n

Two days later in a second more programmatic letter<\/a> to an aspiring poet friend, Paul Demeny, he called for poets to make themselves into seers through <\/em>‘an immense and deliberate derangement of all the senses’ <\/em>. <\/em>These two letters may thus be considered Rimbaud\u2019s <\/em>ars poetica, the agenda which lay behind his coming burst of creativity. With a few months, still sixteen, he had composed <\/em>Le bateau ivre,\u00a0my translation of which is here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Whether the assault took place or no<\/a>t, Rimbaud exploited images of a homosexual gang-rape in <\/em>Mon coeur supplici\u00e9, aka <\/em>Mon coeur viol\u00e9, his over-the-top piss-take on the conventions of the late medieval triolet<\/a> form, which had briefly returned to vogue in the late nineteenth century. Important to add: he was targeting the traditional gushy, romantic content of the triolet, not its formal patterns, to which he adhered unfailingly. Such was his ploy. He was sooner rather than later to eschew rhyme and fixed forms in poetry. First, he would show he mastered them. Then, with the impeccable, absolutist logic of a prodigy, he turned to the poetic prose of <\/em>A Season in Hell and <\/em>Illuminations. Shortly thereafter, he was to leave poetry itself behind.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

There was already a perfectly adequate rhymed translation by A.S. Kline<\/a>, and a good German one by Thomas Eichhorn<\/a>, doubtless many, many others. So why this one more ?\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Poetry is like an earworm<\/a>. \u00a0A phrase sticks in your mind and unceasingly harkens you back. If a poem is in a second language, one way to purge it is through translation. The opening line of ‘Mon coeur viol\u00e9’ <\/em>was one of the first phrases I ever read in French, roughly at Rimbaud\u2019s age when he composed it. I didn\u2019t grasp it then and I still find it enigmatically haunting today. Yet I feel I have finally expunged the slimy, wiggly little thing itself. For me, it shall henceforth be, not <\/em>Mon triste coeur bave \u00e0 la \u00a0poupe but\u00a0My poor heart drips at its poop. And I prefer <\/em>drips to <\/em>drools.<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

My poor heart drips at its poop,
\nstinking of snuff and shag.
\nSplattered with globs of goop,
\nmy poor heart drips at its poop.
\nTaunted by the whole troop
\nwhose goading led to gag,
\nmy poor heart drips at its poop,
\nstinking of snuff and shag.<\/p>\n

Gangs of stiff-cocked grunts so lewd
\ndebauched me with their jeers.
\nAt the rudder, rude and crude:
\ngangs of stiff-cocked grunts so lewd.
\nLet the gibes they spewed
\nbe purged by magic from my ears.
\nGangs of stiff-cocked grunts so lewd,
\ndebauched me with their jeers.<\/p>\n

Once they’d shot their slimy wads,
\nwhat to do, o violated heart?
\nBacchic burps rang out at odds
\nonce they’d shot their slimy wads.
\nAs I engulfed their prods
\nI blew out belches of that sort.
\nOnce they’d shot their slimy wads,
\nwhat to do, o violated heart?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Two other Rimbaud poems in translation:
\nAu Cabaret vert<\/a>
\nSonnet du trou du cul<\/a><\/p>\n

Other references to Rimbaud in my blogs:
\nNot All that Beat Either<\/a>
\nMy Black Orpheus<\/a>
\nFrame<\/a><\/p>\n

Follows the French:<\/p>\n

Mon triste c\u0153ur bave \u00e0 la poupe,<\/em>
\nMon c\u0153ur couvert de caporal :<\/em>
\nIls y lancent des jets de soupe<\/em>
\nMon triste coeur bave \u00e0 la poupe :<\/em>
\nSous les quolibets de la troupe<\/em>
\nQui pousse un rire g\u00e9n\u00e9ral,<\/em>
\nMon triste coeur bave \u00e0 la poupe,<\/em>
\nMon coeur couvert de caporal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques<\/em>
\nLeurs quolibets l\u2019ont d\u00e9prav\u00e9.<\/em>
\nAu gouvernail, on voit des fresques<\/em>
\nIthyphalliques et pioupiesques.<\/em>
\nO flots abracadabrantesques<\/em>
\nPrenez mon c\u0153ur, qu\u2019il soit lav\u00e9.<\/em>
\nIthyphalliques et pioupiesques<\/em>
\nLeurs quolibets l\u2019ont d\u00e9prav\u00e9 !<\/em><\/p>\n

Quand ils auront tari leurs chiques<\/em>
\nComment agir, \u00f4 c\u0153ur vol\u00e9 ?<\/em>
\nCe seront des hoquets bachiques<\/em>
\nQuand ils auront tari leurs chiques<\/em>
\nJ\u2019aurai des sursauts stomachiques<\/em>
\nMoi, si mon coeur est raval\u00e9:<\/em>
\nQuand ils auront tari leurs chiques,<\/em>
\nComment agir, \u00f4 c\u0153ur vol\u00e9 ?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The scholarship is mixed on whether or not Rimbaud, age 16, was actually gang-raped in the barracks of the Paris Commune, as depicted in James Ramsey Ulmann’s potboiler bio The Day on Fire and claimed in Roberto Bola\u00f1o’s Los detectives salvajes. That spring of 1871, he was five foot three, slight even for a twink.\u00a0Over … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “My Poor Heart Drips at its Poop”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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