the poet and seer, and Nelson Algren
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Fri, 05 Jun 1998 18:05:14 -0400
Strange coincidences today, with the talk of poets and visionaries. I'm in
the middle of reading Nelson Algren's "Nonconformity: Writing On Writing"
(New York, Seven Stories Press, 1998).
In one passage, Algren quotes Rimbaud: "By a long, immense and reasoned
derangement of the senses, the poet makes himself a seer. By seeking in
himself all forms of love, pain and madness, by turning himself into the
great sick man, the great criminal, the great accursed, the poet reaches
the unknown; and if, maddened, he should end by losing understanding of his
visions, at least he has seen them."
I read this on the subway today, on my way to work, and of course thought
of Seymour, and Buddy's various descriptions of him, and then came upon a
series of messages about poets; something about this synchronicity tickled
me.
Oddly, in a footnote, Daniel Simon & C.S. O'Brien comment that they cannot
find such a translation of Rimbaud from which Algren may have drawn, and
they supply a passage from a 1946 translation of THE ILLUMINATIONS that
sounds rather different: "The poet makes himself a visionary through a
long, a prodigious and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form
of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the
poisons in him, keeping only their quintessences. Ineffable torture in
which he will need all his faith and superhuman strength, the great
criminal, the great sick-man, the accursed, -- and the supreme Savant! For
he arrives at the unknown! Since he has cultivated his soul -- richer to
begin with than any other! He arrives at the unknown: and even if, half
crazed, in the end, he loses the understanding of his visions, he has seen
them!"
In either passage, however, there is certainly enough suggestion of a whiff
of Seymourism to make the head spin. It certainly caught me by surprise.
--tim o'connor