“Suivre ses vues” (Or, What Sixteen-year-old poets Dream About)

Several of Rimbaud’s 1870 poems evoke or suggest a physical or imaginary voyage along or through a feminine body—a path or trajectory leading specifically, albeit often obscurely, to corporeal sites invested with erotic and/or sexual intenstity. Seen in the light of this hypothesis, our claim is that the original version of the last verse of “A la Musique”, first revealed by Georges Izambard, who claimed to have “cleaned up” the initial version of poem’s excipit, may reveal more than meets the eye...