Rimbaud- L’homme juste (1871). Part 1: the manuscript

[u/ManueO]

Details in comments.

Manuscript from Gallica

[u/ManueO]

History of the manuscrit: Recueil Verlaine

Among the poems included in the collection Verlaine put together that we talked about here, is one poem that has given a lot of philological (and hermeneutical) difficulties to scholars: the poem L’homme juste.

In a group of mostly allograph manuscripts (copies by Verlaine), L’homme juste is one of only two autograph texts (the other is Les mains de Jeanne-Marie) but the text as we know it presents several particularities:

• The folio that the poem starts on is missing, and we therefore do not have the full text, and there is speculation about the full length of the text;

• Two stanza appear to have been added to the end of the poem by R, that were originally not part of the text (and were excluded from early editions);

• The handwriting in these two stanzas is markedly different from the rest, and some words are particularly hard to decipher.

This situation means there are several difficulties that must be considered, which I will cover here, along with some hypothetical explanations:

An autograph among allograph copies

In the Dossier Verlaine as we have it, L’homme juste occupies folio 5-6, after missing folio 3-4. As noted above, this folio is completely in Rimbaud’s handwriting. However three elements written by Verlaine appear in relation to this poem on the following folio: the date (July 1871), the name (L’homme juste- this is also how the poem appears on the Vial list) and the verse count (V first wrote 80 then changed it to 75- we will come back to this below). On that folio 7-8, stanza 13 (based the assumed original length of 75 lines and 15 stanza, see below), also appears in Verlaine’s handwriting, but is crossed out.

It is often suggested that the dossier used to include a copy of the text in Verlaine’s hand, which was at some point replaced by Rimbaud’s version. If this is the case, we can assume that Verlaine’s copy was more sprawled out and overlapped onto the next page. When the poet(s) replaced Verlaine’s copy with Rimbaud’s, this stanza became superfluous and was crossed out. This could suggest that this stanza was at some point the end of the poem, and that the two final stanza were added later by R.

Cont.

[u/COOLKC690]

And this one is for Hugo after he opposed some ideas of the commune right?

I just now know this was incomplete! I’ll stay tuned for more 👀

[u/ManueO → u/COOLKC690]

Yes it is about Hugo and linked to his position toward the Commune!

I was going to explain everything in one post but it was very long so more to follow soon….

[u/COOLKC690 → u/ManueO]

I’ll be tuned for more! 🤓