A Season in Hell

[New York]: The Limited Editions Club, 1986 Translated by Paul Schmidt. With eight Photogravures by Robert Mapplethorpe. Limited edition. One of 1,000 numbered copies signed by Schmidt and Mapplethorpe, this being number 885. Publisher's full red morocco binding, with titles in blind to front board and spine, and mould-made letterpress sheets for text; housed in publisher's black cloth slipcase. Fine book; near fine slipcase, with light soiling to cloth. With original Limited Editions Club prospectus laid in. Overall, a magnificent copy. A Season in Hell is French poet Arthur Rimbaud's (1854 - 1891) final major work, written in 1873 when he was only 18 years old. The poem - an experimental piece that draws on Rimbaud's childhood and invokes biblical imagery - was heavily influenced by his tumultuous relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, which culminated in Verlaine shooting and wounding Rimbaud in July of 1873. Verlaine served a two-year sentence for the crime. Rimbaud originally conceived the work as a "pagan book" with "half a dozen horror stories." In translator Paul Schmidt's introduction, he writes that A Season in Hell "is a work of adolescent passion - not the passion of exuberance, but passion as suffering. It is the record of a failed attempt to create a new identity by creating a new world." A few years after Rimbaud completed A Season in Hell, he abandoned writing poetry completely and spent the final 18 or so years of his life traveling throughout Europe and Africa and working as a merchant. This edition is evocatively illustrated with photos by American photographer and counterculture icon Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989). From the Limited Editions Club prospectus: "The eight images in this livre d'artiste do not so much illustrate Rimbaud's poem as they evoke the mystical, nocturnal melancholy that characterizes the work. Mapplethorpe's images provoke an emotionally layered response in harmony with the text.". Signed. Limited Edition. Hard Cover. Fine.