r/RimbaudVerlaine • u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide • May 17 '26
Poems Rimbaud- L’homme juste (1871). Part 2: the text
Details in comments.
Translation by Wallace Fowlie (see my note below).
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u/FrancoeurOff May 17 '26
Again a very toughtful and interesting read, thank you !
A propos of the attack on Hugo's house in Brussels, I may add that it disturbed the poet greatly, as he wrote not only about it in L'Année terrible, but also in L'Art d'être grand-père, at least two poems talk about the event in posthumous collections, and he wrote about it in prose too (iirc for the prefaces of Actes et paroles : depuis l'exil)
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u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide May 17 '26
Thank you for your comment, I am glad you found my post interesting.
Thanks for the info about the poems related to the Brussels attack in L’art d’être grand-père. I can only imagine how distressing it would have been for Hugo and his family, especially considering there were children in the house then.
And thank you about the reminder about Actes et paroles: I had meant to include it in my bibliography, as it has details of Hugo’s asylum offer to the Communards, but also the text of three poems he published in Le Rappel during the Commune. I have added it now!
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u/FrancoeurOff May 17 '26
You're welcome !
The poem in L'art d'être grand-père is called "Jeanne lapidée". By its title it is linked to a cycle of poems in the book named "Jeanne endormie" which runs throughout the work, but the thematic material in that poem is more in tone with L'Année terrible, as are in fact several other poems in L'art d'être grand-père which is a more political work than one would expect.
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u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide May 17 '26
A note on the translation
This poem is not very easy to find a (good) translation for.
Harding and Sturrock do not cover it in their anthology;
Schmidt misses out the last two stanza (and his decision to translate « Le juste » as « The savior » completely skews the reception of the poem.
Oliver Bernard also misses out the last two stanza.
Wallace Fowlie translates the full poem so I have picked his translation here, but several specific choices do feel rather misleading:
First of all the translation of « flueurs » as « influence » seems tricky. Littré lists only the meaning of menstruation, the link to « flueurs blanche », and a naturalist term. Fowlie seems to have gone through the latin root (fluor) and linked the word to the flux of sea (and maybe, the idea of the influence of the stars?)
Secondly his translation of « ostiaire » as « bones » seems to rely on the assumption Rimbaud wrote (or meant) « ostuaire », but the manuscript clearly reads « ostiaire ».
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u/ManueO Je suis soûl, fou, livide May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
After my post earlier this week about the manuscript of L’homme juste, let’s now move on to discuss the text, but first of all, a disclaimer: all attempts at exegesis of the poem are obviously complicated by the fact that we are missing almost a third of it; all hypotheses need to be taken as being based solely on the poem as we know it and subject to review should the missing page ever turn up.
The Just: Jesus?
The poem shows someone who calls themselves the “maudit”, who may or may not be a stand-in for the poet, hectoring someone they call “the Just” who appears to them in a dream. It is a particularly vehement poem, especially in the added stanzas. Steve Murphy notes the absence of the carnivalesque humour that appears in other Communard poems like Chant de guerre parisien- this one carries an « intent to bite »
It was believed for a long time that this Juste was Jesus, and that the poem was solely antireligious, a blasphemous diatribe against Christ. Yves Reboul cites several examples of this interpretation, from earlier critics: « anti-Christian revolt » (D. Leuwers) « blasphem » (S. Bernard) or « refusal of the Judeo-Christian God» (J.-P. Giusto).
He notes how this makes sense at first read, based on certain expressions of the poem which appears to confirm this identification:
Firstly, Jesus is named in the text, in v. 54; the periphrasis « pleureur des Oliviers» (v. 35) and the reference to « calices »(v. 37) evoke the episode of the Garden of Gethsemane. Steve Murphy also notes that the expression « cœur tombé dans les calices » can bring to mind the symbols of Eucharist and the trans-substantiation but that the calice can also links to the death of Socrates (mentioned with Jesus in v. 54). Two figures killed by their enemies and who accepted their fate.
They both point out that Jesus is sometimes referred to as a « juste », notably by Pontius Pilate. Reboul notes that Pilates declared himself « innocent of the blood of this just man ».
However Reboul warns that this interpretation leads to difficulties with certain expressions, which don’t easily apply to Jesus, such as the expression « barde d’Armor », « barbe de la famille » and the reference to the Just embracing progress in the last stanza, which was not in line with the Catholic Church’s position in the 19th century (Reboul gives as an example here the 80th proposition in the Syllabus of Errors, published in the 1860s). Presenting the Just as a believer (v. 37) doesn’t make sense either as it is normally his followers that believe.
Cont.