The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud, read by Ben Kelly
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- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2024
- 300 SUBSCRIBERS STRONG! :D
Here's another poetry reading, recommended to me by my English Literature-prodigy brother. This poem was definitely the most fun one to read thus far, and it allowed me to read the stanzas with a bit more zeal than the previous two!
Hope you all enjoy and have a good week!
Ben
STANZAS:
As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.
I was indifferent to all crews,
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons
When with my haulers this uproar stopped
The Rivers let me go where I wanted.
Into the furious lashing of the tides
More heedless than children's brains the other winter
I ran! And loosened Peninsulas
Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub
The storm blessed my sea vigils
Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves
That are called eternal rollers of victims,
Ten nights, without missing the stupid eye of the lighthouses!
Sweeter than the flesh of hard apples is to children
The green water penetrated my hull of fir
And washed me of spots of blue wine
And vomit, scattering rudder and grappling-hook
And from then on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent,
Devouring the azure verses; where, like a pale elated
Piece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks;
Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, delirium
And slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres,
The bitter redness of love ferments!
I know the skies bursting with lightning, and the waterspouts
And the surf and the currents; I know the evening,
And dawn as exalted as a flock of doves
And at times I have seen what man thought he saw!
I have seen the low sun spotted with mystic horrors,
Lighting up, with long violet clots,
Resembling actors of very ancient dramas,
The waves rolling far off their quivering of shutters!
I have dreamed of the green night with dazzled snows
A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea,
The circulation of unknown saps,
And the yellow and blue awakening of singing phosphorous!
I followed during pregnant months the swell,
Like hysterical cows, in its assault on the reefs,
Without dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could constrain the snout of the wheezing Oceans!
I struck against, you know, unbelievable Floridas
Mingling with flowers panthers' eyes and human
Skin! Rainbows stretched like bridal reins
Under the horizon of the seas to greenish herds!
I have seen enormous swamps ferment, fish-traps
Where a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes!
Avalanches of water in the midst of a calm,
And the distances cataracting toward the abyss!
Glaciers, suns of silver, nacreous waves, skies of embers!
Hideous strands at the end of brown gulfs
Where giant serpents devoured by bedbugs
Fall down from gnarled trees with black scent!
I should have liked to show children those sunfish
Of the blue wave, the fish of gold, the singing fish.
-Foam of flowers rocked my drifting
And ineffable winds winged me at times.
At times a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea, whose sob created my gentle roll,
Brought up to me her dark flowers with yellow suckers
And I remained, like a woman on her knees...
Resembling an island tossing on my sides the quarrels
And droppings of noisy birds with yellow eyes
And I sailed on, when through my fragile ropes
Drowned men sank backward to sleep!
Now I, a boat lost in the foliage of caves,
Thrown by the storm into the birdless air
I whose water-drunk carcass would not have been rescued
By the Monitors and the Hanseatic sailboats;
Free, smoking, topped with violet fog,
I who pierced the reddening sky like a wall,
Bearing, delicious jam for good poets
Lichens of sunlight and mucus of azure,
Who ran, spotted with small electric moons,
A wild plank, escorted by black seahorses,
When Julys beat down with blows of cudgels
The ultramarine skies with burning funnels;
I, who trembled, hearing at fifty leagues off
The moaning of the Behemoths in heat and the thick Maelstroms,
Eternal spinner of the blue immobility
I miss Europe with its ancient parapets!
I have seen sidereal archipelagos! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to the sea-wanderer:
-Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep and exile yourself,
Million golden birds, o future Vigor? -
But, in truth, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.
Acrid love has swollen me with intoxicating torpor
O let my keel burst! O let me go into the sea!
If I want a water of Europe, it is the black
Cold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilight
A squatting child full of sadness releases
A boat as fragile as a May butterfly.
No longer can I, bathed in your languor, o waves,
Follow in the wake of the cotton boats,
Nor cross through the pride of flags and flames,
Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships.
As a french reader of Rimbaud I really liked this translation which is pretty faithful. Thank you for posting this sir !
Merci beaucoup
Still naked, angry, radical, living, fearless (in the way blood is angry), time is raised to the ground, and the individual is in natural form cut adrift from people and countries.
His genius is still true and terrifying. His mystique the sail swelling high.
This is a great reading. A tip: Close your eyes when you listen. Then you are the drunken boat.
Ah thanks pal, I'll keep that in mind next time! 😁
Made me remind of the french original, word for word. A great deed, for translation as well as for reading.
Thank you Yukiko!
This is a great reading! Thank you!! Sometimes i think about learning french just to read rimbaud
It's a great idea! 😁 thanks nora
Probably the most mystic of French poets
He, alone is worth of learning French
Great reading! It's also the best translation of this poem I've seen.
Wally Kaspars Thank you sir! :)
There is no wonder that the mere mention of his name takes all of us to that drunken boat of a poem,that drunken boat of a man,that drunken boat of us all freeing ourselves of nations,of commerce ,floating freely in the all of it and yearning for that cosmic connection,that complete absolution and that dreamed of dissolution into the heavenly one....we Americans have our Whitman to dream us into that connection,the French have this teenage Jesus that quit it all and never looked back....his spirit lives on...
That it does, bro 🇫🇷
I'm new to all this. And trying to learn about him. English is my second language
Can you please tell me why you called him teenage Jesus ?
Interesting poem, and very well read! :)
jade shepherd Thank you jade :)
One of the best poems that was ever written.
Agreed ✅️ 👍
Fantastic Thanks
Thanks for checking it out 😊
superb reading, how about A Season In Hell?
thank you, and seeing as you've suggested it, I'll get to work right away! :D
His mystique suffused my 20s. A lot of us think we'll find a type of Paradise in AHell of extremes. Many get consumed and run far away to commerce and material acquisition lives. It's hard for me to really see what I've become. VanGogh and a thousand other creative types never stood on their own feet and a thousand others made fortunes and were cheated or gave it away. I do mostly what I wantwout being a selfish child but I always feel I didn't fight the vanquished fight of making my work shine in the world. I can honestly say ambition nor prizes hold any sway over me.
O I now see where Bob Dylan got his poetic style
@@digitalteachers influence is clear 👌🏼
@@BenKellyMusic92 I am here learning about poetry because of rock music. That is cool
a shame I don’t understand his writing 😕 he’s so cute though
If you don't read, "A Season in Hell" first, it doesn't fully represent, "The Drunken Boat". Read, "A Season in Hell", first, it's better that way.
I'll do a reading of that one and put them in the right order in the "Poetry Corner" playlist, so they flow into each other :)
Good, keep it in context.
Sounds like "Mr. Tambourine Man" by Bob Dylan....HMmmm
Well this one definitely came first! :P
thanky i like Wally's translation..
It's the best one, I think :)
@@BenKellyMusic92 I disagree, it has some extremely awkward phrasing. There's much better translations out there
ruclips.net/video/uaMHSrVoQVo/видео.html is a much better translation
Juvie poe for those who will never earn parole.
Ack! (too much poetry!)... only for 15 year olds... )
This is such a beautiful poem. Unfortunately, translation is a lossy process... You also definitely need to read this one with more passion!
There is a translation by Samuel Beckett
Dedicated to my dad
He's got good taste 😎👌🏽
@@BenKellyMusic92 he just makes his own stuff
Tomorrow is his birthday yayyy!
too normal Reading far from the spirit of Rimbaud. It is called the DRUNKEN BOAT!
+ruzickaw I do apologize. When I get drunk, I sound like a Doncaster coal miner. I think that may be slightly less in the spirit of Rimbaud... :P
I still don’t how is it possible to translate poetry. You can’t translate poetry in an other language because poetry is based on word and some word doesn’t have the same meaning and sensitivites. A complete genius like Rimbaud is meaningless when translated, thats what i think
I'm no expert on any other language other than English so I can't offer a counter-opinion, but I'm sorry you feel this way. My reading of the Drunken Boat was for the experience of my reading voice only.
For what it's worth, I think it makes far more sense than Jabberwocky! :P
Don't worry, i didn't want to be rude. I just wanted to notify that poetry is not only a text, it's something that can transcend our mind and the vision of our existence. And when you translate, a huge part of the orignal poem is deteriorated. It happens especially with Rimbaud, because even in France not a lot people can get the meaning of his work.
Even so you have a great tone of voice so i was not complaining about that! :)
Amin1710 I think you presume that there is a static meaning that he wanted to convey. One of the basic aspects of semantics is the multiplicity of meaning, the primary meaning being that which the author intended, bearing in mind that the author may conceptualise new meanings for words which have been used in the poem and or phrases could adopt new meanings in the mind of the poet, in this sense the meaning of the poem is consistently fluctuating even while the poet is writing such a a piece. Now, we begin to consider the secondary meaning and the alternative meaning, the secondary being that of the readers and the alternative meaning being that meaning which is entirely opposed to the meaning implied by the poet. From this simple demonstration you can begin to see that the meaning of a poem is multifaceted, it is dependent upon the individual and the experiences, values and previous works that they have read, the sheer difference in works read may alter the way an individual interprets the words "azure", "vermillion" and or "mossed-green", thus I find that your comments about the solidity of the poets meaning are fairly redundant. I doubt you can say with absolute certainty that you have grasped the entirety of the poem. Can you not appreciate the nuances of the English language while considering the peculiarities proposed by this translation, to constrict the development of meaning within a poem is to constrict the poetry itself, for poetry grows and breeds within us as thoughts flourishing upon the rushing beauty of a midnight wind - to speak in absolutes is to deny the ever changing profundity that a work of art can show the individual. In regards to your comment of a work taking the individual outside of themselves, I shall not quarrel with you on this point for we all interpret the work in differing ways, yet I would like to say that have you ever considered the work of art as taking the individual further into themselves?
As a counterpoint to what I've previously written and this sits in favour with what you've written, the poem may have a static meaning and yet this I presume is temporary, for there would seem to be a metamorphosis which occurs between static and fluid meaning within art. Never the less, another thought which may develop the conceptions that you profess is the relationship between the artist and the observer, in certain cases the observer can become active within the 'growth of art' as I shall call it, the observer is consistently interpreting the work of art in new ways and thus the artist imbues the work with all of the fine glory of delicately worked out meaning (fluid and or not) and then the observer detects such a meaning as the meaning is impressed upon him/her and the growth of the meaning continues inside the individual as the experience of observing the art continues. In turn the art is a chrysalis at first, waiting to burst forth, lying dormant in the sweet honeyed rivers of life and then suddenly when the observer looks upon the work it bursts into life as a fleeting ephemeral butterfly which is never quite stagnant, the butterfly rests for s while in a languid haze and then returns to the efflorescent flitting which provokes the observers attention ad infinitum (forgive my exaggeration).
One more comment before I love and leave you, listen to this piece again in a few years time and tell me with absolute certainty that you still bear the same impressions as you have done recently - adieu.
@@BenKellyMusic92 I like Lewis Carrol:
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
I am American, of course, and we have a Swiftian passion for tall tails. Think of Johnny Appleseed, Hugh Glass, John Brown, Buffalo Bill, and similar figures of history that blossom into folklore and foundation myths.
What American poets do you like?
I think you might be right because I have no clue what he's talking about after watching the video
Oh those stupid light houses.
@@SweetKale-e3m can't live with them, can't live without them! 🤷♂️
bar stools and bus stops
Thomas Bowe come again?
He’s my forefather
Wow, really? How interesting! Good to hear from one of his descendants. How did I do? :)
Benjamin Kelly oui, it was a very good video dark and nice just like his poems are.
He didn't have any children...
Is this AI? Strange pronounciation of several words. Plus the pauses at commas leads me to believe this isn’t human
@@Andrew-dg7qm I'm human, for sure.
OK, sorry about that. The pronunciation of lichen, flotsam, behemoth, and archipelago sounded a little confusing to me. There are so many AI voiced videos nowadays that it’s hard to tell
Still, it’s a little strange that when you read the poem, you clearly have an English accent, yet you seem to have an American accent in your other videos. Your reading voice almost sounds like you went to Oxford. The title says that you read it, so perhaps that’s not true?
It’s such a beautiful poem,
but the poet is stuck in such a simpler dimension,
both translations he is soft and weak…
he needs to bring in a multi medium so “new age” can understand.
We are doomed.
Play a different RUclips video.
Listen out your window for like 3 min.