Published in Left Curve no.

33 (2009)
www.leftcurve.org

Rimbaud Vivant
Martin Heidegger

What Ren Char has said in his Introduction to

the Selected Works of Arthur Rimbaud (1957) is path-breaking
(Wegweisendes). Out of his insight into the entirety of this
poetry, he has deliberately included within the Oeuvre the
poets two letters from May 13 and 15, 1871. In the letter of
May15, Rimbaud himself tells us the way a poet stays vital
(lebendig, vivant): namely, that poets yet to come survey the
horizon he reached: he arrives at the unknown
(Unbekannten)!
Are we today already well-acquainted enough with this
horizon that Rimbaud has seen?
I shall hold off with the answer and focus on the question. To ask this more clearly the poet helps us with two
sentences in the above-mentioned letter:
En Grce vers et lyres rhythment lAction.
[In Greece poems and lyres turned Action into
Rhythm.]
La Posie ne rhythmera plus laction; elle sera en
avant!
[Poetry will no longer beat within action; it will be
before it.]*

But I must confess: many are the grounds for confining

the interpretation of words Rimbaud has evoked to speculations in the form of questions.
Does the capitalized lAction only refer to the commerce and industry of men or does it name the real in general? Is this real (Wirkliche) to be equated with the present?
What does it mean: the language of poetry bears the real in
its rhythm in the sense of harmony [proportion, Gleichma]?
No longer assigned this task, absolute modern poetry,
in contrast, will be before it. [sie wird im Voraus sein,
elle sera en avant.]
Is the en avant only to be understood temporally? Is
the language of poetry to be something that presages, hence
prophetic, foreseeing what is coming, but nonetheless also
speaking in rhythm as poetry? Or does en avant have no
reference to time? Do Rimbauds words, it will be before
it, give poetry precedence over all the doings of man?
How is this precedence of poetry viewed in the modern
world of the industrial society? In view of this doesnt
Rimbauds word prove itself to be in error? Or do the questions evoked here testify that poetry has arrived at the
unknown? And is this precisely the case, then, when it
struggles for precedence today against nearly hopeless odds?
Reflecting upon Rimbauds word, may we perhaps say:
the nearness of the unapproachable remains the region to
which the poets grown unwonted retreat, to which only they

first point? This, however, in a saying (Sagen), that names

that region. Shouldnt this naming be a calling that calls and
is able to call in the nearness of the unapproachable because
it belongs in this nearness already beforehand (zum voraus)
and out of this belonging bears the whole world in the
rhythm of poetic language? Yet, what
is it that the Greek word rhythmos wants to say here? To
understand it appropriately shouldnt we return to the
Greeks and bear in mind the words of a poet from antiquity?
Archilochos (circa 650 B.C.) says:
Gignoske doios rhythmos
anthropous exei
But realize, a cradle-like rhythm
keeps man in line.
[lerne kennen aber, ein wiegeartetes Vers-Hltnis (die)
Menschen hlt.]

Is the rhythmos that was originally experienced as Greek

the nearness of the unapproachable and, as this region, the
proportion (Ver-Hltnis) that keeps men in line?
Will the Saying of the poet to come build upon this
edifice and in so doing prepare for men a new dwelling
upon the earth? Or will the impending destruction of the
language through Linguistik and Informatik undermine not
only a precedence of poetry, but also the very possibility of
it?
Rimbaud remains vital if we ask ourselves this question,
if those who compose poetry and contemplate remain
concerned about the necessity of making themselves into
seers for the unknown. This unknown, however, can only
be named (in the sense of naming mentioned above) by
becoming still (geschwiegen) (Trakl). Meanwhile only he
who has said something pathbreaking (Wegweisendes), and
also said this with the power of the word hes been endowed
with, is truly capable of becoming still. This stillness is
something other than a mere loss of speech (bloe Ver-stummen). Its no-longer-speaking (Nicht-mehr-sprechen) is a having-spoken (Gesagt-haben).
In what has been said in the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud,
do we hear his stillness with sufficient clarity? Do we see in
it the horizon where he arrived?
Translated by Scott J. Thompson

* Rimbaud Complete: Poetry and Prose, trans. & ed., Wyatt Mason,
New York: Modern Library, 2003, pp. 367, 369.

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