Description

FIRST EDITION.
ONE OF THE FIRST 10 COPIES ON JAPON (all hors-commerce) , followed by 100 copies on vellum pur-fil.

Introduction and notes by Jules Mouquet: "Rimbaud was a brilliant pupil at Charleville secondary school, winning almost all the first prizes in his class every year. First prize in Latin Verse in 3e, in 2°, in rhetoric, he also won, in rhetoric and in seconde, the first prize in Latin Verse in the Concours Académique, which was contested between the collèges and lycées of the Académie de Douai. Living in the century of Jean Dorat and Jean Second, he would have rivalled them, and would undoubtedly have become the leading Latin poet of his time. "

Six Latin pieces (developments, imitations, free translations or free compositions) have come down to us - five in verse and one in prose - written between 6 November 1868 and
January-March 1870, and reviewed from 15 January 1869 to 15 April 1870 in the Moniteur de l'Enseignement secondaire, special and classic and the Official bulletin of the Académie de Douai.

According to Georg Hugo Tucker: "Rimbaud's "Latinist" high school plays have convinced us of the importance of the poet-orator's earliest works, and this opinion has been shared by other Rimbaldian critics and editors, notably Marc Ascione, Emilio Pianezzola and Giampietro Marconi. […] Rimbaud shows great technical virtuosity as a translator and, in so doing, moves from "free" translation to a poetics of subversion - a half-hidden subversive art that anticipates the subversive character of several of his French compositions. "

A beautiful, rare, uncut paperback copy.  

Reference: Georg Hugo TUCKER, Rimbaud and free translation into Latin verse: from virtuosity (and duplicity) to subversion in Camenae n° 16 - January 2014.