A Season in Hell

Lore & Background

According to Bertrand Mathieu, Rimbaud wrote the work in a dilapidated barn. In the following weeks, Rimbaud traveled with poet Paul Verlaine through Belgium and to London again. Verlaine had bouts of suicidal behavior and drunkenness. After subsequent threats of violence, Verlaine was arrested and incarcerated for two years of hard labour. After their parting, Rimbaud returned home to complete the work and published A Season in Hell. However, when his reputation was marred because of his actions with Verlaine, he received negative reviews and was snubbed by Parisian art and literary circles. In anger, Rimbaud burned his manuscripts and likely never wrote poetry again.

Reader's Guide

A Season in Hell is a prose poem loosely divided into nine parts of varying length, differing markedly in tone and narrative comprehensibility. It is a well and deliberately edited and revised text. Academic critics have arrived at many varied and often entirely incompatible conclusions as to what meaning and philosophy may or may not be contained in the text. Bernard Mathieu describes it as 'a terribly enigmatic poem' and a 'brilliantly near-hysterical quarrel between the poet and his other.' Wallace Fowlie wrote that 'the ultimate lesson' of this text states that 'poetry is one way by which life may be changed and renewed.' Henry Miller was important in introducing Rimbaud to the United States in the 1960s, publishing an English translation and an extended essay titled The Time of the Assassins. Zelda Fitzgerald translated Une Saison en Enfer during one of her lengthy hospitalizations in Switzerland.

Did You Know?

• Rimbaud wrote the poem in a dilapidated barn on his family's farm in Roche.
• The poem includes a section likely allegorizing Rimbaud's relationship with Paul Verlaine.
• After negative reviews, Rimbaud burned his manuscripts and likely never wrote poetry again.
• Zelda Fitzgerald translated the poem during a hospitalization in Switzerland.