A beautiful day
Sensation by Arthur Rimbaud
Article voiceover
Here are two photographs I took recently in Charleville, his birth place. It is just as he would have seen it in early Spring. Also Arthur at sixteen and a translation of the poem.In the future I will scan them in the original French for those that wish it.
I don’t even have words for what it means to me that you read this poem in this moment. This poem has sustained and fortified me through so many trials, especially of the body.
When I first read this, I had the Elizabeth Bishop sensation (from her poem, “Poem,”) of “Heavens, I recognize the place, I know it!”
It exactly expresses what got me through as a child, and continues to get me through. So much so that my book, “Into Blue,” was inspired by the poem you’ve read, and the lines, “Through blue summer nights I will pass along paths . . . “ is the source of the title.
I will return and read everyone’s comments but need to rest. For a week I told the dentist, the oral surgeon, the endodontist, something is wrong in my mouth. No one could find anything and it was killing me. I don’t wish dental pain on my worst enemy. Finally this morning I begged my endodontist to see me again and sure enough it needed a root canal and was a mess when he looked at it.
Why am I telling you this? Because what got me through that pain - what gets me through any pain, physical, psychic, the sorrow of life, is such a transport as this poem.
Patti, thank you so much for these photographs. They mean the world to me. I grew up with a little babbling creek in south Jersey but still I recognize the place. And as Neil Young sings (and you cover so beautifully) “in my mind I still need a place to go.” It is the rescuing sensation of being a vagabond in nature.
To blue summer nights,
Robin
Poésie : Sensation
Par les soirs bleus d'été, j'irai dans les sentiers,
Picoté par les blés, fouler l'herbe menue :
Rêveur, j'en sentirai la fraîcheur à mes pieds.
Je laisserai le vent baigner ma tête nue.
Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai rien :
Mais l'amour infini me montera dans l'âme,
Et j'irai loin, bien loin, comme un bohémien,
Par la Nature, - heureux comme avec une femme.
Arthur Rimbaud.