[From A SEASON IN HELL by Arthur Rimbaud (Second Delirium: The Alchemy of the Word), translated by Paul Schmidt:]
For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes—and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.
What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints, old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children’s books, old operas, silly old songs, the naïve rhythms of country rimes.