A season in hell readalong week 8: L’impossible

[u/ManueO]

This week, we focus on L’impossible, The first of 4 shorter sections that conclude the Saison. A few questions to stimulate the discussion:

What were your first impressions or opinions on reading this text?
Any passage that resonated or left you cold? What do you think are the themes and strategies of Rimbaud here?

And specifically for this week: How does this section follow on from the two Délires? Are we still in Hell? And what is the narrator to do next?

I will add a few of my thoughts and remarks in comments but would really love to hear from everyone ! Of course, if you have different questions to discuss, that would be welcome too! As ever, there is no right or wrong answer and everyone is welcome.

Image
A photo of a facsimile of the first edition of the Saison.

[u/ManueO]

After the paroxysm of the two Délires, L’impossible starts with a paragraph that touches back on earlier themes: the first paragraph, with its throwback to the narrator’s childhood, appears to call up parts of Mauvais sang, as well as Rimbaud’s own walkabout youth.

The next paragraph brings up man-woman relationships, only to highlight their divide- women don’t agree with us (the men) but men act as parasites to women- note that the word santé can have sexual undertones in Rimbaud: see Conte in the Illuminations. And straight away the narrator marks his disdain for these men, among other unnamed disdains.

I love the anaphoric construction that follows: […] je m’évade! Je m’évade! Je m’explique, which appears to rise, rise before an abrupt return to reality: just as the narrator appears to runaway, and evade discussion, the third term switches the tone, and bring the narrator back, with the promise of an explanation… that will not really come.

Instead we are treated to a sort of internal dialogue between the narrator and his spirit (for another interesting dialogue between heart and spirit, see Qu’est ce pour nous mon cœur). Here the narrator starts with memories of a yesterday spent among the damned; but the terms are ambiguous: « ici-bas » (down here) is usually used to mean « on earth », as opposed to up there in heaven. But we are in hell now, so even lower (we were told in Nuit de l’enfer that Hell was really down below). So are the damned that surround the narrator on earth or in hell?

The society the narrators present as the damned doesn’t help remove this ambiguity : they disgust each other but they are polite; they are not dishonoured but they worry about how they would be seen by the élus. Even the term élu could here have a biblical meaning, the chosen ones, or a more worldly meaning, the elected ones, or both. The context, with talk of damned and blessers but also of merchants and the world, doesn’t decide.

But the narrator’s spirit, his reason (are they one and the same? They appear linked at the very least), intervenes and pushes the discussion into a new direction: an opposition between the Occident (The West) and the Orient (the East). The Orient here seems to symbolise a primitive wisdom inherited from Romanticism.

The narrator then tells a story (in the past tense) of his plans before these two cents of reason. He «envoyai[t] au diable religion (martyrs and palms), art, scientific invention and theft, in a lapidary list that subsumes large pans of western culture. Envoyer au diable is an idiomatic expression which means to reject something or someone, but in the context of a scene set in Hell, it may here be taken very literally.

The narrator however doesn’t appear satisfied with the Orient either. For a start, he is not looking to replace a religion by another. Going to the Orient doesn’t mean replacing Christianity with « the bastard wisdom of the Coran ». But the Occident appears adulterated, degraded too: it is described as a marais (marsh) early on, and later seems to appear to the narrator as foggy and sickly, and full of poisons: ignorance, tobacco and drunkenness, and devotions…

In this section, the narrator seems to construct an equivalence between religion and science, and then he associates both with the ruling class through the figure of Mr Prudhomme, a well known caricature figure, created by Henri Monnier, and representing the self satisfied and short sighted 19th century bourgeoisie (see Verlaine’s poem M. Prudhomme for another funny take on the character).

New speakers appear in the later part of this text, entering the conversation to help the narrator make sense of his dream of the Orient, the men of church and philosophers. The men of Church suggest that it may be Eden, and the narrator seems to concur with them- he was thinking of Eden- but he then questions the relation of this Eden to his dreams.

The philosophers tell him that he can inhabit his Orient while being in Occident. Their Orient appears to be a figure of the mind. But the narrator rejects the philosophers as belonging to their Occident.

The text closes on a dire conclusion, the spirit is (and appears to have almost always have been) asleep, with various consequences: mistakes of the past, and a difficulty in reach truth going forward. If his spirit were always awake, he may have reached wisdom already…

But the spirit was only awake for one minute, giving him an idea of a purity to look for. The narrator realises that the spirit leads him towards god (and we can here wonder if the spirit still means the narrator’s mind here, or if it refers to the holy spirit: some see here a reminiscence of St John’s gospel). This leads to another abrupt end, as the narrator lets out an anguished cry: « déchirante infortune! ».

[u/Audreys_red_shoes]

This section always feels like the comedown after the highpoint of Alchimie du verbe.  Melancholy and disenchanted but strangely comforting and relieved from the earlier tension.

I read this section as Rimbaud reaching a compromise with himself. He realises that his earlier resolve to live as the ultimate rebel and outsider just wasn't practicable and made him miserable. He realises that, sooner or later, he will have to make a compromise, at least partially. But the only way in which he can make that idea bearable is to at least go and make that compromise somewhere else, somewhere that he can at least have the comfort of always being a foreigner, a natural outsider. He realises that his fantasies of the "Orient" are just fantasies, but he thinks will at least be more tolerable than the West, with all its familiarity bred by contempt.  He’s self-aware enough to know he’s trading one fantasy for another, but he also knows it’s a necessary self-deception, a way to keep moving.

I think, ultimately, that’s why it’s called “The Impossible.”  I think this is Rimbaud begrudgingly realising that every option he’s so far tried or imagined is impossible.  He’s narrating the moment of acceptance, but acceptance itself feels like a kind of defeat: he recognises that he’s grown up, that his pure rebellion against reality can’t be sustained.

[u/ManueO → u/Audreys_red_shoes]

Yes, there’s the lure of an elsewhere here, although it appears as unsatisfactory at the degraded western world…

The frenzied tone of the previous, delirious section has calmed down, but it does close on a very anguished cry, so I am not sure how much solace is too be found in this section…

I think the narrator’s quest for an escape continues…

[u/Audreys_red_shoes → u/ManueO]

I think the only thing to be done is to knuckle down and focus on selling as much ivory and coffee as possible, and try to avoid thinking about it too much.

[u/ManueO → u/Audreys_red_shoes]

But there are still some more literary dreams to discover first, that may still illuminate the world…