And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.
Arthur RimbaudRead
I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Rimbaud expresses the transformative and painful nature of becoming a poet by pushing the limits of perception and experience.
In this quote, Arthur Rimbaud reflects on the intense and often chaotic process he undergoes to attain the profound understanding required to be a poet. He acknowledges that this journey involves significant suffering, as it requires a complete disruption of normal sensory experiences to access deeper truths. Rimbaud emphasizes that this path is not for everyone and that true poets are born with an innate ability to navigate such extremes.
Themes
PoetrySufferingPerceptionCreationArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a poetry workshop, to emphasize the struggles of artistic creation.
More from Arthur Rimbaud
All quotes →My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?
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In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.
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I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
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Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
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What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.
Arthur RimbaudRead
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