Abstract: Most of the descriptive poems in Rimbaud’s Illuminations have a formal structure that gives them a representative coherence, even though they are essentially visionary in character. This “realistic” mimetic basis testifies to the existence of the subject glimpsed in the poem, even though this may be far removed from the realm of the real. Rather than producing a simple “effect of reality,” these poems affirm the truth of the poetic over that of objectivity.
