Disaster Was My God (54 page)

There has been no monkeying with the poems and writings quoted.

All the poems and letters quoted are taken verbatim from noted English translations, most from Wallace Fowlie’s
Rimbaud
. Cuts are noted with ellipses.

To be sure, Rimbaud has many fine English translators, but Professor Fowlie’s 1966 classic remains my hands-down favorite.

Jim Morrison of the Doors, Rimbaud’s bastard seed—the same man now buried in Père-Lachaise—was another Fowlie fan, so much so that he wrote Professor Fowlie a number of searching letters before his death at the age of twenty-seven. No doubt Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and now younger artists have pored through the same translation, still undiminished in its power to thrill and incite, perplex and disturb.

Please, read the poems. In any language they are ageless.

Many people helped and urged me along with this project. Louis Ross and John Shill, both Washington-area psychiatrists, were my first readers four years ago, and their criticisms, then fundamental, forced me to wholly reimagine my fractured main characters—this time with the abandon they deserve.

Thanks, too, to my oldest friend, Slaton White, for his enthusiasm and keen observations. Bill Schultz brought similar energy, and my close friend Judy Watson was especially helpful in offering a woman’s perspective. Others who were kind enough to read and comment were my oldest readers, Jay and Gay Lovinger, my daughters, Lily and Kate, novelist Barbara Esstman, and my close friend Peter Kilman. Thanks, too, to my wonderful colleagues at work and the leader I write for. And thanks above all to my Maxwell Perkins Prize–winning agent, Amanda (“Binky”) Urban, and to her make-it-happen assistant, Alison Schwartz. It was Binky who brought me to Doubleday, pairing me with my wonderful new editor, Gerry Howard, and his very talented assistant, Hannah Wood. After thirteen years without a publisher, it is good—as Gerry puts it—to be “back around the campfire.”

Special thanks also go to Mme. Joan Le Gall, retired from the University
of Toronto, and her son Michel Le Gall, formerly of St. Olaf College. Fluent French speakers, they helped me address a host of cultural, linguistic, and historical issues as I completed the manuscript. The medal, though, goes to my wife, Susan Segal, a psychotherapist with a keen sense of character and the bestiary of human nature. Lucky is the author with twenty-four-hour psychiatric care!

Another lucky break as I tried to imagine the Rimbauds’ dairy farm: Much of the book was written in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on a farm long owned by my wife’s family. Thanks to Garry Wilkins, a local dairy farmer who answered my many cow questions and, at one point, even let me help “pull” (birth) a calf. I also greatly appreciate the company of my pal Rodney Ferguson, Fred Bisbing, and the other good folks up the hill at the Buffalo Rod & Gun Club.

Finally, I must acknowledge my mentor and former professor, the distinguished poetry critic Marjorie Perloff. Almost forty years ago, it was Marjorie who placed Wallace Fowlie’s
Rimbaud
into my hands and even checked off her favorites. What a gift. And what a lifelong influence Marjorie has been—incalculable.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Anvil Press Poetry: Excerpts from “Openers” from
Paul Verlaine: Women/Men, Femmes/Hombres
translated by Alistair Elliot. Published by Anvil Press Poetry in 2004. Reprinted by permission of Anvil Press Poetry.

David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.: Excerpts from “Lethe” and “Consecration” from
Les Fleurs du mal
by Charles Baudelaire, translated from the French by Richard Howard, translation copyright © 1982 by Richard Howard. Reprinted by permission of David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.

Oxford University Press: Excerpts from
Paul Verlaine: Selected Poems
translated by Martin Sorrell (1999). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

Penguin Group (UK): Excerpts from
French Poetry, 1820–1950: With Prose Translations
selected, translated, and introduced by William Rees, copyright © 1990 by William Rees. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Group (UK).

Random House, Inc.: Excerpts from
I Promise to Be Good: Letters from Arthur Rimbaud
translated and edited by Wyatt Mason, copyright © 2003 by Wyatt Mason. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

University of California Press: Excerpts from “III. After Three Years” and “VII. To a Woman” from
Selected Poems, Bilingual Edition
by Paul Verlaine, translated by C. F. MacIntyre, copyright © 1976 by C. F. MacIntyre. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press.

University of Chicago Press: Excerpts from
Rimbaud: Complete Work, Selected Letters
translated by Wallace Fowlie, copyright © 1966, copyright renewed 1994 by Wallace Fowlie. Reprinted by permission of University of Chicago Press.

Bruce Duffy is the author of the critically acclaimed
The World As I Found It
, a fictional life of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and
Last Comes the Egg
. His first novel,
World
, was rereleased this year in the New York Review of Books Classics series. He has reported on such places as Haiti, Bosnia, and Taliban Afghanistan. In researching this book, he also traveled to Rimbaud’s town Harar, and to the still lawless desert tribal lands near Somalia. He has three children, Lily, Kate, and Sam, and he lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Susan Segal, a psychotherapist.