Arthur Rimbaud, Bal des pendus, The Aghast, Le Mal, social injustice, violence, revolt, poetry analysis, Franco-Prussian War
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Abstract
Analysis of Rimbaud's poems Bal des pendus, The Aghast, and Le Mal, exploring themes of social injustice, violence, and revolt.
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[...] A double register is in place: the pathetic of these grieving mothers and the controversy related to the ignominy of the powerful evoke compassion and indignation in the spectator. Identify the poetic form of each text and extract its movement: what comments can you make? The Bal des pendus presents itself in a most classical form, namely a sequence of eleven quatrains with crossed rhymes. The first and last are composed in octosyllables, but the intermediate quatrains are in alexandrines. [...]
[...] This search by young Rimbaud is the sign of a constant poetic quest marked by the refusal to be locked in the straitjacket of classical tradition. What elements give realism and picturesque quality to these poems? The realism and picturesque quality of the three poems in our corpus rely primarily on strong images, whose intention is to shock the reader by confronting him with the full violence of the world. In the Bal des pendus, is offered the image of the hanging skeletons, "small black puppets grimacing on the sky », presented like marionettes manipulated by ""Lord Belzébuth ». [...]
[...] The Effarés is composed of twelve tercets. The first two lines of each tercet are in octosyllables and the third in four syllables. The two octosyllables present a flat rhyme and each four-syllable line responds to the rhyme of the preceding tercet. This poem is structured in three stages that constitute its movement: stanzas 1 and 2 introduce the antithesis between the poverty of the children and the opulence of the baker, they function as a table presenting two hermetic worlds one to the other; stanzas 3 to 8 describe with many details these two irreconcilable universes and finally, stanzas 9 to 11 evoke in half-tone the announced death of the children, presented as martyrs of poverty. [...]
[...] The Evil, under the classical and noble form of the sonnet, opposes the "terrible madness » of a war waged by a ""King who?screams» those who die for him and idolized by a God, who laughs » to mothers, gathered/In anguish, and crying », true incarnations of 'piety' lamenting the death of a son sacrificed on the battlefield. What forms does violence take in these poems? What poetic procedures highlight it? If violence is the dominant theme that unites our three poems, it is expressed through varied poetic forms specific to each text. The various poetic devices deployed by Rimbaud give their individuality to the Bal des pendus, The Effarés and Le Mal. [...]
[...] The noble and classical form of the sonnet for The Evil, translated with all the seriousness that Rimbaud wants to weigh on his proposal. The antithesis that opposes in the most cruel way King who mocks » those who die for him, supported by God, who laughs », in the pathetic image of the """mothers, gathered » who """They give him a big wad of cash tied up in their handkerchief », reveals according to Rimbaud all the indignity of the powerful. According to these poems, what is the role of the poet? [...]
