To Georges Izambard
Charleville, 13th May 1871.

Dear Sir!

So you are teacher again. We owe a duty to Society, you told me; you belong to the teaching profession: you are running along the right track. - I too, follow the principle: I am cynically getting myself kept; I dig up old imbeciles from school: All the stupid, dirty, nasty things that I can invent, in deed and words, I give it to them: I am paid in beer and women. Stat mater dolorosa, dum pendet filius. - I must devoted myself to Society, that's true, - and I'm right. - You too, are right, for the present. Basically, you only see subjective poetry in your principle: your obstinacy to go back to the university rack, - forgive me! - proves it! But you will always end up like a self-satisfied who did nothing, having never wanted to do anything.
Not to mention that your subjective poetry will always be terribly insipid. One day, I hope, - many other people hope the same thing, - that I shall see the objective poetry in your principle, I shall see it more sincerely than you would! - I shall be a worker: that is the idea that holds me back, when mad rage drives me towards the battle of Paris - where so many workers are still dying as I write to you! Work now, never, never; I'm on strike.

Now, I louse up myself as much as possible. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working to make myself a Seer: you will not understand at all, and I hardly know how to explain it to you. The point is to arrive at the unknown by the dissoluteness of all the senses. The suffering are enormous, but one has to be strong, to be born poet, and I have recognized myself to be a poet. It is not my fault at all. It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. - Pardon the pun. -

I is someone else. No matter for the wood that finds itself a violin, and scoff at the thoughtless, who argue about something they completely ignore!

You are not a Teacher for me. I give you this: is it satire, as you would say? Is it poetry? It is fantasy, always. - But, I beg of you not to underscore with your pencil, nor - too much - with your thought:

The Tortured Heart

My poor heart dribbles at the stern....
My heart full of caporal!
They squirt upon it jets of soup...
My poor heart dribbles at the stern
Under the gibes of the whole crew
Which burst out in a single laugh,
My poor heart dribbles at the stern
My heart full of caporal!

Ithypallic, erkish, lewd,
Their gibes have corrupted it;
At the vespers they are making frescos
Ithypallic, erkish, lewd;
O abracadantic waves
Take my heart that it may be saved!
Ithypallic, erkish, lewd,
Their insults have corrupted it!

When they have finished chewing their quids
What shall we do, o cheated heart?
It will be bacchic chorus then
When they have finished chewing their quids
I shall have stomach heavings then
If my poor heart is swallowed down:
When they have finished chewing their quids
What shall we do, o cheated heart?

__________________________

That does not mean nothing. - Answer me:
M. Deverrière, for A. R.

Hearty regards,

Ar. Rimbaud.