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Title: -->Don't Buy This For The English Translation!<--
Review: Wallace Fowlie first published this book in 1966 and his English translation is quite biased even for 1966. His sanitized editorial of the original French poetry is sad. You can pick up a French dictionary and perform a similar translation without knowing any French. He has lost all the imagery and beauty of the original work. It looks like the work of a student in a first-year French class.Fowlies' biographical sketch of Rimbaud in the Introduction is incomplete. He skims over Rimbaud's homosexuality and his relationship with Verlaine as "troubled, and at times tragic...". Hardly a thorough and accurate reflection of Rimbaud during his most prolific period. Maybe Fowlie's overly cautious attempt to not offend his readers led him to filter out the imagery in his attempted English translation.
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