Henry Miller: a good companion when one is having a Season in Hell

I have to stop using the computer for some days because of back problems so I will share with you what I'm rereading by Henry Miller. No, not one of the "Tropics". It is a 163 pages book he wrote about Rimbaud: "Henry Miller's The Time of the Assassins : A Study of Rimbaud (1949 New Directions Publishing, 163 pp). It is not a critical essay and it has more to due with an autobiography and his moral and intellectual legacy. He makes some approximations between artists and dedicates a long part comparing Rimbaud and Van Gogh's lives taking into consideration not the craziness but a circumstance that few biographies remember, especially about Van Gogh ,: the poverty both lived and the impact it had on their way of being in the world.

I'm having a good time rereading it and finding some thoughts that although written sixty-one years ago reflect the same problems of today.

I hope I can update the blog. If not I will try to publish some excerpts I like:

"Rimbaud restored literature to life, I have endeavored to restore life to literature. In both of us the confessional quality is strong, the moral and spiritual preoccupation uppermost." "I think there are many Rimbauds in this world and that their number will increase with time. I think the Rimbaud type will displace, in the world to come, the Hamlet type and the Faustian type. The trend is toward a deeper split. Until the Until the old world dies out utterly, the "abnormal" individual will tend more and more to become the norm. The new man will find himself only when thewarfare between the collectivity and the individual ceases. Then we shall see the human type in its fullness and splendor." To get the full import of Rimbaud's Season in Hell, which lasted eighteen years, one has to read..." Henry Miller

And this is Rimbaud:

"I invented the colors of the vowels!- A black, I red, O blue, U green- I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses." -Une Saison en Enfer, "Délires II: Alchimie du Verbe"

A black, I red, O blue, U green Image: Preface of the book picture taken By Joe Camel published at Flickr