"the difficulties involved"

About this book

"While a student at Vassar College in the early 1930s, New York poet Muriel Rukeyser translated Rimbaud's seminal poems Une saison en enfer (A Season in Hell) and 'Voyelles' (Vowels), and reworked them again once she had left college and returned to New York. After deep research into various incomplete drafts, a complete draft of A Season in Hell was uncovered among Rukeyser's papers at the Library of Congress, including her translator's note, and correspondence with film scholar Jay Leyda, who included Rukeyser's translation of 'Voyelles' in his own translation of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's The Film Sense (1942). This edition establishes the place of this early translation project in Muriel Rukeyser's career as a poet and translator, and reproduces excerpts from Rukeyser's unpublished translation of A Season in Hell, as well as multiple versions of her translations of shorter Rimbaud pieces such as 'Voyelles.'"--Supplied by publisher.

Themes & subjects

About the authors

Muriel Rukeyser

1913 – 1980

Arthur Rimbaud

20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891

Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet, born in Charleville, Ardennes. As part of the decadent movement, his influence on modern literature, music and art has been enduring and pervasive. He produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and gave up creative writing altogether before he reached 21. He remained a prolific letter-writer all his life. Rimbaud was known to have been a French Libertine and a restless soul, traveling extensively on three continents before his death from cancer less than a month after his 37th birthday. ([Source][1].) [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud