Rimbaud

Rimbaud‘s birthday. See previous Rimbaud birthday postings on the Allen Ginsberg Project – here and here
Allen Ginsberg lecturing on Rimbaud at Naropa in 1975 here and here (and again from 1981 – here)

Earlier this month (October 5th) a  September 28, 1885 letter from Arthur Rimbaud to his family describing the situation of Aden in Yemen and estimated at €30,000–40,000 went for €53,760

Famously, the gun that Verlaine purchased to shoot Rimbaud with went up for auction at Christies a few years back, with an estimate of €50,000–70,000 and fetched €434,500

There was also this (from back in 2017), an autograph manuscript of the poem ‘La rivière de cassis’, copied out for Verlaine in the summer of 1872, shortly before their departure for London,  which sold at Sotheby’s for €284,000.

Thomas Venning traces the curious power of Rimbaud in the auction house, Rimbaud’s abiding mystique – here

The Musée de l’Ardenne in Rimbaud’s home-town of Charleville-Mézières announced earlier this summer it’s acquisition of a rare portrait of the poet painted by his sister (see above)

Rimbaud in Charleville-Mézières- see here:

and here

Rimbaud-in-translation.  We’ve featured in the past John Ashbery’s translation of Les Illuminations. We are pleased to recommend another first-rate translation (for New York Review Books), Mark Polizzotti’s The Drunken Boat- Selected Writings)