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
The wolf howled under the leaves And spit out the prettiest feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the self-destructive nature of consumption and the beauty that can arise from it.
In this quote, Rimbaud uses the imagery of a wolf howling and consuming its meal to illustrate the intense and sometimes destructive process of self-examination and creativity. The wolf represents an internal struggle, where the act of consumption symbolizes a deeper engagement with one's own experiences and emotions, suggesting that in this struggle, beauty can emerge even from darker aspects of life.
Themes
SelfConsumptionNatureBeautyDestruction
In practice
Example use cases
In a poetry reading, to illustrate the complexities of creation and self-reflection.
More from Arthur Rimbaud
All quotes βMy 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.
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I hear it in the deep heart's core.
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The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it.
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So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.
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Under your skin the moon is alive.
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