Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #457690 in Books
• Published on: 1987-04-07
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

Has the French, at least.
I bought this volume for only two reasons, that it had the french with unobstrusive footnoted translations; and that it was cheaper than the fowlie.

This has turned out to be quite a mistake. I had thought that "Collected Poems" meant that every known poem would be included. Well, this volume doesn't. I couldn't find avertissment (ces ecritures ci sont des un toute jeune homme...) anywhere in it, and wondered if it was by some other French author. I later found it in the Fowlie edition.

If you have a good deal of French, this may not be too bad an introductory edition, but if you had any French, you'd want a complete edition. Don't buy this book.

Avoid
It's a scandal that Penguin are keeping Oliver Bernard's lame translations in print. His are the worst translations of Rimbaud that I've ever read - lazy, limp and boring, and Rimbaud in French is _never_ boring.

If you want a more-or-less complete and faithful translation of Rimbaud, try the Wallace Fowlie edition. But don't waste your money on Bernard.

Perfectly Viable (an erudite translation)
I neither care to fret with regard to missing lines of certain poems within, but due to the uncalled for hue and cry concerning this transcribed text I must take great offense. This translation is six-fold more erudite than Wyatt Mason's "Rimbaud: Complete." This happens to be one of Peguins best translations as opposed to its hideous Goethe's works.
The exquisite locution more than compensates for the parts from which the translator exempted inclusion. I would rather see an excellent translation (amended to convey sophistry in English)than a more accurate but slovenly done rendition of detriment by inordinate dedication to accuracy.