"Illuminated Collection: The Complete Works of Rimbaud's Prose Poems" Author: [France] Rimbaud Translator: Wang Daoqian Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House

The spiritual struggle is as fierce and cruel as the battle between people.

——Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

He (Rimbaud) is the father of many schools, not the relative of any school.

—Henry Miller

I didn't see the difficulty in writing (for example) A Season in Hell, everything is direct, gushing, intense.

The intensity of words is meaningless to me and offers me nothing.

In the Illuminations, on the contrary, things of high value are not limited to one aspect.

--Paul Valery

From the age of sixteen until his last breath, Rimbaud seemed to be in a state of restlessness and anxious pursuit. Why did he give up writing traditional poems and turn to prose poems? This is obviously related to the change in Parisian poetry style after Baudelaire published his famous prose poems.

Rimbaud believed that poets must become "psychics", "incomparably noble and learned scientists", "through a long, extensive and reasoned process, disrupt all sensory consciousness", and seek a language that "combines fragrance, sound, color, summarizes everything, can connect thoughts with thoughts, and draw out thoughts", "makes the mind resonate with the mind", in order to achieve "unknowable". This "unknowable" is not a metaphysical object, sometimes it is related to the future "social love" mentioned in his poems, or it is a certain ideal. All of the above can be said to be Rimbaud's symbolism.

This book contains all the prose poems of the French genius poet and symbolist master Rimbaud, including "A Season in Hell" and "The Illuminated Book", and is accompanied by two famous "Letters from the Psychic" and comments by French structuralist theorist Tzvetan Todorov and others. Although "A Season in Hell" and "The Illuminated Book" are unique in form and have strange and difficult meanings, they show the new poetics and exploration of creation created by the poet after the change of Parisian poetry style. The works reveal the French life style at the end of the 19th century, echoing the cultural traditions of that time, and the poet's challenge to himself and the world echoes between the lines.

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) is a French genius poet, a master of symbolism, and the originator of surrealist poetry. He attracted many readers with his mysterious poems and legendary life, becoming one of the most eye-catching poets in the history of French literature.