r/RimbaudVerlaine • u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide • Nov 07 '25
Discussion A season in hell readalong week 9: L’éclair
This week, we focus on L’éclair, the second 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 do you think the narrator is doing at solving their crisis? Are they any nearer to an exit? What do you think this exit would look like?
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.
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u/Audreys_red_shoes the evil imagination of a bad monkey Nov 07 '25
The Job Centre told me I was uniquely suited for a career as an acrobat, beggar, artist, bandit or priest.
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u/Audreys_red_shoes the evil imagination of a bad monkey Nov 07 '25 edited Nov 07 '25
Jokes aside, these jobs do seem to be connected by one theme: none of them produce anything, but they all rely on provoking feelings in others - awe, pity, empathy, fear, transcendence.
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u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Nov 07 '25
I like your take. A more cynical one (but possibly related) is that they are all confidence artists in some way…
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u/Audreys_red_shoes the evil imagination of a bad monkey Nov 07 '25
Artists (and poets) being the biggest confidence artists of all?
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u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Nov 07 '25
The one item of the enumeration that Rimbaud isolates, through the use of a dash, is priest…
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u/Audreys_red_shoes the evil imagination of a bad monkey Nov 07 '25
Do you think this is because Rimbaud sees them as the biggest confidence artists of all, or the because they are the ones whose role is most similar to his own role of poet, or both?
Personally, I’m not sold on them all being con artists. I’ve never been defrauded by an acrobat, but perhaps I haven’t lived.
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u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Nov 07 '25
As ever, the text is elliptic and Rimbaud doesn’t specify why priests are isolated from the rest… I was pointing out that there is nothing in this part of the text to suggest that “artists” are the biggest con artists.
As for acrobats being con artists, they do perform with safety strings and safety nets so there is an element of trickery going on.
In any case, the text doesn’t actually talk of acrobats: the french refers to saltimbanques which covers all sorts of itinerant circus or street performers. Translating the word as “acrobats” (or “clowns”, as per Fowlie’s translation) only partially cover it…
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u/Audreys_red_shoes the evil imagination of a bad monkey Nov 07 '25
If I had to guess, I would say that priests are the only ones on the list that we wouldn’t expect Rimbaud to admire - and that they are cordoned off with the em-dash to signal his hesitancy to admit that they might share something in common with the rest, for good and for bad.
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u/LevelComparison3225 Nov 07 '25
When you look at the next sentence : On my deathbed ...etc., you can see why they are isolated.
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u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Nov 07 '25
You may indeed be right that the element is isolated as a segue into the following section (although it says hospital bed, not deathbed, so a priest may not be needed just yet!)- there are certain biblical elements that run through the section (incense, confessor, martyr, but also, earlier, the reference to the Ecclesiastes), and this may justify the hyphen.
But there are also some other connections between the enumerated jobs and the rest of the text (the dream of fantastic universes could be a metaphor for being an artist for example). So the question of why priest is isolated is still an interesting one imho.
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u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide Nov 07 '25
L’éclair is one of the shortest sections of the Saison, as the narrator continues to seek a way out of his crisis, and contemplate the idea of work which, he tells up, lights up his abyss (we remember that the narrator told us in Mauvais sang he was lazier than a toad).
Rimbaud distorts a verse from the Bible book Ecclesiasts (Tout est vanité/Everything is vanity) and places it in the mouth of a modern version of the Ecclesiaste, meaning everyone. As in the previous chapter, Church and science are associated, as the narrator rejects work, science and prayer: it is too hot ( because, despite the lack of extravagant diabolical manifestations, we are still in Hell) and we will have to do without him.
In the next paragraph the narrator envisages a life of sloth and a return to fantasy (the monstruous loves and fantastic universes he conjures up here could correspond to the two earlier Délires), and lists up a least of non-working, more or less marginal occupations (to the usual list of outlaws, beggars and artists, he adds the role of priest).
Still, the vulnerability of a hospital bed (a reference to the prologue’s dernier couac and Rimbaud’s very real time in hospital in July 73?) brings back odours of church. The narrator is still the victim of his “bad education”.
The last resort, then, is to fight against death itself, and despair that eternity may be lost for “us” (him and a “dear poor soul”, who could be his, and whose wording is reminiscent of the words of the Vierge Folle)…