The alba of 1872 A new reading of “L’Éternité” and its 1873 falsification

As we show, in its 1872 iteration, the poem “L’Éternité” stages an encounter between two, antagonistic voices calling into question the ethical and poetic postures that Rimbaud staked out a year prior. We seek to demonstrate the ways in which the version of the poem included in the “Alchimie du verbe” section of “Délires” (1873) constitutes a methodical falsification of the original text, the critical questioning of which finds itself displaced into the space of prose surrounding it.