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PARTISAN REVIEW
ern world for the active intelligence of poetic insight, and so
in
retreating to the language of prophetic arrogance and hollow judg–
ments instead of attacking the true reality of words and experience
as Rimbaud hoped to create it.
To live a life like Rimbaud's and to reach the vindication he
arrived at means to have his capacities for self-knowledge, truth,
and endurance. To write poetry like his implies an ability to face
the full truth and responsibilities of such poetry, and to combine
that truth with the excitement of a new vision. It was to this
responsibility that Rimbaud's
bateau ivre
returned him: "L'au–
tomne, notre barque elevee dans les brumes immobiles tourne vers
le port de la misere, la cite enorme au ciel tache de feu et de boue."
He refused to accept the humiliation of reconciling his sublime
vision of human destiny with this
vraie vie;
a fiercer humility lay
in wait for him, but outside poetry. The task of completing his
work has fallen on his descendants, and only when they begin to
attack it with the rigor and fearlessness of Rimbaud's character
will they escape the waste and silence that overtook him and so
realize the high claims he made for the future of poetry and of
mankind.
FEBRUARY 1938
The cruel background of the European
peace; and the foreground of Virginia's
dissatisfaction with our day by day;
and I as I am: oh, the dismay of this
experience hex:e now! to almost, almost
lust for rage, separation, and destruction,
the universal war at last, and wreck
of many a surety at one swipe.-
But I'll begin with me and slowly bend
my habits on the pattern of the best:
on no near thought; and with Virginia
tonight resolve to inform the future;
and as I can, with private good my strength,
a little, help preserve the Western World.
-But as I came to this assurety,
here was Virginia home and wildly
drunk, and when I tried to kiss her cried
'Let me go! let me go! let me go!'
PAUL GOODMAN
