The Fractured Self in “Le Bateau Ivre” by Arthur Rimbaud and

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Nout Van Den Neste
Maestrado Estudos Comparatistas
Comparar Pessoa
Prof. H. Buescu
THE FRACTURED SELF
IN LE BATEAU IVRE BY ARTHUR RIMBAUD
AND ODE MARÍTIMA BY ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS
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INTRODUCTION
In this essay, I will discuss and compare two important poems, Ode Marítima by Fernando
Pessoa, under the moniker of de Campos and Le Bateau Ivre by Arthur Rimbaud. In the short
space of a 15 page essay it is of course impossible to discuss both long and winding poems in
their entirety so therefore I have decided to just focus on the theme of the unknown and more
specifically, Liberty and how both narrators end up disappointed. Before I can discuss Liberty,
I need to establish a hefty theoretical base of both the theoretical thinking behind Je est un
Autre of Rimbaud and the Sensationism of de Campos. In the first chapter I will just focus on
the theoretical thinking and how it in both cases defines their metaphysical search for the
unknown. In the next chapter, I will discuss the poems themselves more deeply, close-reading
both texts in the context of their respective ecstatic experience of Liberty whilst already
hinting at a possibility of failure and disappointment. The third and final chapter is mostly
preoccupied with how both narrators come to disappoint themselves and I will argue how this
is closely linked with a rupture between body and the self (typically for Modernism) and how
this is also closely linked to cristalization (which carries its autonomous destruction within)
and the simulacrum.
1. ʻJE EST UN AUTREʼ: VOYANT AND SENSATIONIST
Rimbaud wrote his letters du voyant from Charlesville, one a critique on the
subjective, hyperpersonal poetry of Georges Izambard on the 13th of May, and a second one
directed to Paul Demeny, oblique and elleptical but gentler in tone on the 15 th of May, both in
1871 (Œuvres Complètes, 248-254). These letters have been studied and analysed, adequately,
by the likes of Bonnefoy and Munier and in this first section, I will give an overview of the
different interpretations of this complex theory and compare it to the sensacionismo prevalent
in Alvaro de Campos. I want to make the point that Rimbaud and Pessoa, under the moniker
of Campos, are what I would call voyants: both Le Bateau Ivre and Ode Mariima explore new
ways of seeing the reality which both narrators of the poems have a complex relationship
with.
The letter du voyant revolves around two crucial phrases: “JE est un autre”, the JE as
capitalized by him in the letter to Izambard (248) and “Le Poète se fait voyant par un long,
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immense, et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens.” from the letter to Demeny two days later.
What connects both these phrases is their common purpose: “Puisquʼil a cultivé son âme, déjà
riche, plus quʼaucun! Il arrive à lʼinconnu, et quand, affolé, il finirait par perdre lʼintelligence
de ses visions, il les a vues!” (251). I will come back to this specific sentence in my
discussion of Le Bateau Ivre, but for now I quoted this phrase in order to point out Rimbaudʼs
quest and neverending search for the unknown, lʼinconnu.
The famous phrase, “Je est un autre”, mentioned in his two letters, according to
Gusmão, “mostra ainda uma crise do cogito cartesiano e uma crise dos modos de
representação do sujeito, mas ao mesmo tempo, tal como por exemplo em Pessoa, diz um
modo de fazer e pensar a poesia, um metódo outro.” (156). This cartesian crisis of knowledge
is not the exclusive prerogative of Rimbaud because it is prevalent throughout the Romantic
period. Pina Coelho indicates this as well when discussing Pessoaʼs sensationism: “Com o
Romantismo há um progresso da centralização da atenção na alma. A sensação passa a ser a
realidade primordial. O objecto exterior cessa como independente da sensação, mas é
enquanto sentido.” (260), or in other words: there is a significant disbelief in the objective
representation of reality since reality now takes its shape and representation from the way it is
experienced by the subject. As Buescu points out in the introduction to Cristalizações:
Fronteiras da Modernidade, it is an epistemological problem according to Gumbrecht, a
problem concerned with the production of knowledge caused by a lack of trust in the
knowledge which is produced by the subject perceiving reality, leading irrevocably to a crisis
of representation, analyzed by Foucault. (25)
I mention this brief historical and philosophical contextualization only to situate
Rimbaudʼs poetic objectives and to point out that he was reacting to a general tendency of
thought very much prevalent in his lifetime. By depersonalizing his own poetry and writing it
as if also he himself is unknown, he blatantly attacks and critiques this Romantic model of
thinking which spills out into the often very self-indulgent poetry of the time as well. This
explains why he lashes out to Izambard in his letter of the 13 th of May: “Sans compter que
votre poésie subjective sera toujours horriblement fadasse. Un jour, jʼespère, - bien dʼautres
espèrent la même chose, - je verrai dans votre principe la poésie objective” (248).
Poet-academic Bonnefoy analyses the phrase “Je est un autre” as a refusal of
formulations which otherwise lose themselves in everyday language use: “Et ce quʼil sait
aussi, et affirme avec la plus grande force, cʼ est que sous le moi est un ʻjeʼ qui, à lʼamont du
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recours aux mots, garde le sujet parlant au contact de façons dʼêtre au monde perdues de vue
par la pensée ordinaire” (28), or in other words: underneath the me, moi, there is an I, je,
which experiences the world instinctively and directly and it is exactly this moi who tries to
derange the perceptions of the deeper, more fundamental je, who perceives the world in a way
which is defined by (social) conventions and habits. Or to put it in the words of Munier in
LʼArdente Patience dʼArthur Rimbaud, “le réalité est dʼabord, est avant. La réalité du réel est
toujours ʻavantʼ.” (11) and it is exactly this perception or experience of reality, which is
instinctive, effective and immediate, that Rimbaud tries to escape and disrupt through a
deregulation of the senses. Inevitably, this results in a paradox: the means through which to
achieve the objective and impersonal, is to penetrate through to the level of the most
subjective, personal and therefore instinctive experience.
Rimbaud is looking for an objective way to see reality, leading him to experiencing it
in a new, innocent way unrestricted by social conventions or society and its ordinary,
conventionalized language use, what Bonnefoy in his book Notre Besoin de Rimbaud has
coined as a “mise en question des habitudes de la parole.” (27). It is also in this context in
which the dérèglement of all of the senses should be situated. Bonnefoy directs the readerʼs
attention to the ambiguity of this specific statement, giving two definitions for these senses.
On the most direct level they are “façons dont le corps se met en rapport avec la réalité
empirique en ce quʼa celle-ci de plus immédiat,”, but tous les sens can also refer to “les
significations, multiples elles aussi, qui sʼinscrivent et ce superposent dans la parole, dans les
textes, dans les poèmes.” (29). If the poet also deranges the significations of his words (by
putting them in unexpected contexts for example), then the logical consequence of this
writing process is that one single poem bears a multitude of references and interpretations
which can be paradoxical or mutually exclusive (just like Pessoa).
It is through this deranging of the senses, both sensations and significations that the
poet-voyant arrives at the inconnu (including the deeper layers of the self, differing between
the moi and the je). The disrupt manifests itself on the sensuous level of the touch, the
sensation and on the level of the gaze. This necessarily means that the disordering of the
senses results in a different way of seeing reality, escaping “ces stéréotypes du quotidien.”
(Bonnefoy, 27), “Désorganiser le regard, lʼouïe, le toucher.” (30). Hence the term voyant,
derived from the verb voir, meaning to see: “Car changer la vision, cʼest dʼabord changer celui
qui voit: le sujet comme il voit. Plus radicalement, cʼest faire quʼil voie, en faire un ʻvoyantʼ.”
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(Munier, 50). A perfect example of this, which comes back time and again in most works
written about Rimbaud, is the poem Voyelles, in which Rimbaud describes the vowels of the
alphabet in terms of colors. This poem hints at a synaesthetic experience which later on would
turn out to be crucial in the Symbolist movement of which Rimbaud was definitely a
forerunner. To call him a Symbolist would be anachronistic as Entiemble indicates in Le
Mythe de Rimbaud: “Non seulement on peut, mais on ʻdoitʼ regarder Rimbaud comme lʼun
des fondateurs, lʼun des pères fondateurs de lʼÉglise symboliste, avec Verlaine et Mallarmé”,
but it would be wrong according to Entiemble to really classify him as a symbolist since the
author in his research only saw the symbolist procédé fully developed “douze ou quinze ans
plus tard les premiers symptômes.” (66). But it is exactly the Symbolist perspective which to a
great extent will influence Pessoaʼs poetry and his conception of Sensationism.
Its direct theoretical precursor, Intersecconism, a term and theory conceived by Pessoa,
deals with the crossing, the intersecting of two dimensions of reality: “celui des ʻsensations
apparemment venues de lʼextérieurʼ avec celui des ʻsensations
apparemment venue de
lʻintérieur” (Lopes, 150). To paraphrase: it was a theory (and a literary practice prominent in
O Livro do Dessassossego or Chuva Obliqua) preoccupied with two different kinds of
perceptions of reality. There is the effectiveness, immediacy of reality (which might be called
the exterior landscape), that is to say, the way it manifests itself in a direct sense to the
subject, exterior sensations on the one hand. At nearly the same time of this experience of
reality, within the subject, there are the direct, internalized reactions to these perceptions (the
interior landscape). The problem however with this line of thinking, as Lopes indicates, is its
two-dimensionality: “Plus quʼun visionnaire, le poète aspire à être un créateur et cʼest
pourquoi le poète ʻinterseccionistaʼ ne pourra pas coexister longtemps avec le créateur des
hétéronymes.” (152). Interseccionism has a descriptive quality since it just tries to describe
how the internal and external landscape intersect, is therefore nearly static and lacks the
aspiration of the dynamic, all-encompassing gaze of Sensationism.
Before I discuss the different characteristics of Sensationism, I want to spend a short
amount of time on Pessoaʼs theory of sensation, giving a brief summary based on the
explanations given by Dutch Pessoa-academic Michaël Stoker. Stoker considers sensation as
the whole of perceptions and awareness and paraphrases Pessoaʼs six elements of sensation:
the sensation of an exterior universe; the sensation of the object which is perceived and
noticed at this time; the association of objective ideas (such as physical characteristics or
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knowledge about the history of this object); association of subjective ideas (the state of mind);
the general character of the observer or subject (his more permanent state); the awareness of
the perception and critical reflection about it. Crucial to this is that “een sensatie zich nooit in
zijn geheel openbaart; het gaat altijd om één of enkele elementen daarvan.” (“a sensation
never reveals itself completely: it always revolves around one or a couple of its elements”) 1
(49).
The central purpose of Sensationism has of course been quoted many times, but the
phrase, written by the heteronym Álvaro de Campos, bears repeating: “sentir tudo de todas as
maneiras” (qtd. in Stoker, 38). The implications of this particular statement mean several
things: if art and literature as conceived by Pessoa are supposed to describe every possible
feeling, then that entails a what I would call paradoxical, inward regression. I use the word
ʻparadoxicalʼ because if in one poem every possible sensation (as a reaction to the external
reality) can be included, then logically, as with Rimbaudʼs multi-interpretable poetry, certain
sensations will be paradoxical and mutually exclusive. It is also an ʻinward regressionʼ. If the
purpose of Sensationism is to feel everything in every possible way, then that means that there
is also a critical reflection about those sensations, which, according to José Gil, “fazendo
nascer outros espaços, que acompanham as sensações minúsculas; trata-se por fim de testar os
processos de abstracção das emoções, procurando criar sensações jà analisadas.” (Gil, 20).
This means inevitably that also critical analyzes about those critical analyzes are possible and
this kind of procédé seems to me to be infinitely regressive into the experiencing self. Pessoa
“escreve sobre a possibilidade infinita de escrever, sobre a incessante proliferação das
palavras e das sensações” (10).
José Gil also distinguishes between two different poetical principles of Sensationism.
The first principle is that writers become organs of feelings and sensations but experience
these sensations as intellectual phenomena (hence the self-critical analysis I mentioned
before) which provokes poetical emotion. The whole purpose of this particular principle bears
some resemblence to Décadence: “no limite, sentir come se escreve um poema, viver como se
compõe uma obra de arte: ʻQuero ser uma obra de arteʼ, exclama Bernardo Soares.” (21). Just
like with Rimbaud, in this sense, the gaze of the poet (since he is critically overlooking both
an external and his own internal landscape) plays a crucial role.
The second principle according to Gil lies in the capacity of the poet to become others,
which is inevitable if the poet or artist wants to experience everything in every possible way,
1 Note of the author: my translation.
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therefore explaining the necessity of the existence of heteronyms. “Vivo-me estheticamente
em outro. Esculpi a minha vida como a uma estatua de materia alheia a meu ser.” (Soares qtd.
in Gil, 21). According to Gil, this does not necessarily mean that ʻthe otherʼ should be the
only subject of the work of art: “Não há um sujeito artistico, mas uma multiplicidade; não há
apenas um devir-outro, mas uma pluralidade indefinida.” (21).
The means through which Pessoa can experience everything in every possible way is
depersonalization, not in the sense of an absence of subjects, au contraire, but in the sense of
the absence of the personal characteristics of the author, who specifically goes looking for
otherness outside of himself (which comically paradoxical is so all-defining that Pessoa, in his
obsessive search for other perspectives and sensations, actually lets his work bear a heavy
mark of the author himself). Sensationism resembles “des Symbolistes et des Décadents
français, mais ils le font en tant que personnages. Ils sont le fruit dʼune création, dʼune
ʻobjectivationʼ. Dʼaprès Pessoa, ce qui compte pour lʼart ce ne sont pas les sensations mais la
conscience que lʼartiste a de ses sensations.” (Lopes, 156). It is also in this respect that Pessoa
and all of his heteronyms are as much voyants as Rimbaud: they all are trying to critically see
what it is that they experience. The crucial difference between Rimbaud and Pessoa is actually
indicated by this quote from Monteiro, in the context of the difference between Symbolism
and Modernism:
“Mas o simbolismo acha-se, em relação ao ʻmodernismoʼ, num plano muito
mais limitado. O simbolismo é um aspecto da evolução das formas de
expressão, e não um movimento que implique uma transformação profunda da
literatura – ele é, exactemente como na pintura o impressionismo, um ʻfimʼ, e
não um ʻprincipioʼ” (Monteiro, 33).
To summarize, if we apply this quotation to Rimbaud and Pessoa, then I would say
that Rimbaud is purposefully looking for a depersonalization, considering the self also as
other, as strange, as much of an object to be analyzed and described in poetry as any other.
The means through which to achieve this depersonalization is through a deregulation of the
senses, both in terms of sensations and the significations of the words in the poem. Pessoa
however uses depersonalization as his guiding principle (and not as a purpose) and is
therefore able to take it further than Rimbaud ever could, multiplying himself through various
heteronyms (the most important ones are Ricardo Reis, Bernando Soares, Alberto Caeiro and
Álvaro de Campos). The purpose of this depersonalization (the absence of the characteristics
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of the author in his work but still focusing on the experiences of a multitude of subjects) is to
ʻsentir tudo de todas as maneirasʼ. The deregulation with Pessoa happens both on the level of
the self and on the level of the sensations and significations of words (which are a means to
portray a multitude of sensations). Their poetry does however have one destination in
common, which is the arrival at the unknown. This unknown manifests itself in both Le
Bateau Ivre and Ode Marítima in different ways and it is on this unknown and its
consequential freeing effects that I will focus in the next chapter.
2. EXALTED LIBERTY
When Rimbaud seeks to arrive at the inconnu, he is actually looking to free and
emancipate himself from socio-cultural conventions and institutions as Yuat already indicates:
“Cʼest peut-être dans et par la poésie que lʼhomme retrouve son lien primordial avec la
nature.” (228): the goal is to make a tabula rasa with everything that is part of the sociocultural structure, symbolised by the “porteur de blés flamands ou de cotons anglais” (122) as
argued by Haugen (149). What is important in this particular quote is the word primordial,
since it indicates something crucial about Rimbaudʼs poetic project: he wants to experience
reality in an immediate way, in an original way as if it was new and for the first time, an
experience unrestricted by society. According to Bonnefoy, the phrase “Acteurs de drames très
antiques” should be regarded in this context: “ils semblent remémorer des scènes des premiers
temps de la vie, avec entre leurs protagonisteds des heurts qui furent cause dʼeffroi si ce nʼest
de marques durables sur lʼavenir dʼun petit témoin.” (40).
Logically, in the associated imagery of the first scenes of life, there seems to be a
search for the Romantic motif of childhood and innocence, which is imagery which crops up
time and again throughout Le Bateau Ivre: “plus sourd que les cerveaux dʼenfants”, “plus
douce quʼaux enfants la chair des pommes sures” (123) and also in the second to last stanza:
“Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses” (125). Also in his exaltation, the poet-voyant
(symbolized by the boat, drunk on the poem of the sea, delirious because of his many
experiences and sensations) he resembles the almost naïve enthusiasm of a child, depicting
the hope for everlasting happiness and Liberty: “tohu-bohus plus triomphants”, “Plus léger
quʼun bouchon jʼai dansé sur les flots” (“il dance son abandon” (Munier, 63)) and most
importantly: “Les Fleuves mʼont laissé descendre où je voulais.” (122), finding a contrast in
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their own impassibility just one stanza before, pointing to a journey into the unknown. The
narrator is blissfully unaware of the loss of a specific place which these Fleuves will cause
(something I will come back to in the next chapter).
This is what Haugen calls “le moment de la liberté”: “Dans les premières strophes du
poème sʼexprime le rêve de lʼinstant enivrant, où la répression perd son pouvoir, où les murs
tombent”, “cʼest lʼabandonnement: le bateau cède, avec une jouissance passive, aux forces de
la nature.” (152). So in this sense, the poet-voyant not only returns to a childlike innocence in
order to experience new sensations, even more he looks to surrender himself, passively, to the
forces of nature, another way of rebelling against the conventions of society, Haugen
continues: “impliquerait une nouvelle soumission aux contraintes aveugles de la nature. La
liberté nʼest réalisable que par le chemin dur de la répression civilisatrice.” (154). Crucial to
realise is that poet-voyant finds joy and exaltation in being another (in this case, imagining
himself to be a drunken boat, therefore forcing himself to rediscover and to see himself as
anew and other), reflected also in the constant redefinitions of the self-narrator: “Jʼétais
insoucieux” (122), “Je courus!”, “Jʼai dansé”, “Moi, lʼautre hiver, plus sourd que les cerveaux
dʼenfants,” (123). In the next chapter I will explain how this ecstatic state turns to selfdeprecation.
What the poet-voyant seems to be expressing is the gaze of the child, which could be
regarded as the most plausible, the most possible access to the sensation unregulated by social
conventions. But it is exactly the rupture between the desire to have a childlike gaze (and
innocence) and the impossibility to go back to that which is crucial to the failure of the poetvoyant: “Cʼest ici quʼintervient dès lʼabord la logique de Rimbaud: il nʼy a évolution quʼen
apparence; entre la vie de lʼenfant et celle qui la prolonge cʼest une rupture.” (Dhôtel, 22). It
is something which in the next chapter I will label as the transient nature of the cristilization
of his visions: “Puisque la vie la plus enviable est profondément altérée par lʼidée dʼune fin
nécessaire” (25). However, he does not want to evade or distract himself from this pending,
unavoidable destruction: “Ce principe lui permettra de mieux comprendre ce quʼil a perdu et
de se situer sans erreur par rapport à la vie parfaite de lʼenfance qui est la vraie vie, la seule
vie.” (26).
Important to notice is also how the narrator looks to free himself from concrete reality
and the Fleuves which the boat sails upon, into abstraction (therefore a deregulation of
signification): “Fleuves, avec une majuscule: tous les fleuves que peut descendre un bateau
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comme celui-ci. Ils sont ʻimpassiblesʼ, comme le réel ordinaire, effectif et interte.” (62). Ode
Marítima mentions something similar: “O Cais Absoluto por cujo modelo inconscientemente
imitado” (81), therefore, the opening lines, “Sozinho, no cais deserto, a esta manhã de Verão”
(80) signify de Campos standing there at every possible-to-imagine wharf: “olho prò
Indefinido” (80). Güntert explains it thus: “O consciente de Pessoa desperta por conseguinte
como um pensar que olha e ao mesmo tempo deseja, que espera o prolongamento deste olhar
e anseia por resisistir.” (29). In this sense, he is no different from the poet-voyant Rimbaud:
“O seu pensamento e sobretudo visual: tal como a vista, ele cria distância” (39).
Now that I have briefly pointed out, also in the previous chapter, how feeling
everything in every possible way is strongly connected to seeing (the critical gaze of
observing both the external and internal landscape giving sensationism its dynamic), I want to
ask the question of how for de Campos, the unknown, the implied Liberty of every possible
sensation is depicted in the poem. I would say that, unlike Rimbaud, Campos, with the same
passionate, almost desperate abandon, does not try to go back, but instead finds himself
looking forward to the glory of Futurism, filling him with awe and childlike wonder: “as
maquinas que duplicam a nossa força, os navios que nos trazem as mensagens através dos
mares. O homem, este novo Ulisses, subjuga o mundo com o auxílio da civilização moderna.”
(174).
The recurring symbol throughout the poem is the inner flywheel: “E dentro de mim
um volante começa a girar” (80). It is a flywheel that, according to Stoker, “Campos in de
Ode van de zee nog met almaar toenemende snelheid voortstuwde, verder en verder zijn kop
in alvorens vaart te minderen en hem achter te laten op de kade, alleen met zijn ziel”
(“propelled Campos forward with a constantly increasing speed, further and further into his
head before slowing down and leaving him behind on the wharf, alone with his soul” 2)
(Stoker, 39). This flywheel represents the glory of Futurism and progress which Campos so
almost naively hopeful believes in: “A minha imaginação higiénica, forte, pratica,/Preocupase agora apenas com as coisas modernas e úteis,/Com os navios de carga, com os paquetes e
os passageiros,/Com as fortes coisas imediatas, modernas, comerciais, verdadeiras./Abranda o
seu giro dentro de mim o volante.” (103), he goes on to describe machines in poetic terms,
praising commercial trade and the shortening of distances but does end up lamenting the poor
steamer, out of fashion: “Enternece-me o pobre vapor, tão humilde vai ele e tão natural.”
(106) and laments also throughout the poem the disappearing of discoveries and the loss of
2 Note of the author: my translation.
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imagining worlds unknown, “Esses mares, maiores, porque se navegava mais devagar./Esses
mares, misteriosos, porque se sabia menos deles.” (86), hinting at the mythical nature of the
sea (also present in his self-identification with Ulysses).
Just like the Fleuves of Rimbaud, also the Sea of de Campos is an abstract one: “Aqui
a universalidade abstracta e simbólica do mar, cede o lugar a uma visão metafisica e onírica
da vida como mar e do mar como metáfora da vida, chamamento intemporal e terrível das
águas eternas. Nesse mar se recortam todos os mares.” (Lourenço, 167). In other words: de
Camposʼ experience is a universal one, incorporating every possibly imaginable sea and every
life associated with it in his mind. But the sea itself is, as Lourenço argues, a symbol: “Em
boa verdade, a Ode Marítima não é evocação do mar ou dos mares que há no mar, mas da
viagem, do nosso destino como viagem a partir de um cais anterior” (170), resulting in a
metaphyisical search for what I would call the unknown.
“Com tal velocidade desmedida, pavorosa/A máquina de febre das minhas viões
transbordantes/Gira agora que a minha consciência, volante/E apenas um nevoento círculo
assobiando no ar.” (95), expressing how the flywheel represents the dizzying multitude of
sensations which he encounters and how he seems to be unable to stop them. In this particular
stanza, the flywheel is his consciousness, indicating a (temporary) convergence between the
things he dreams of and sees (the ships, the ocean, progress and discoveries) with himself. It
is exactly this convergence which is the second major characteristic of the Liberty expressed
in Ode Marítima: the Liberty to become all possible to imagine being others, which, as I have
pointed out in the previous chapter is a logical consequence of feeling everything in every
possible way. He imagines himself a pirate expressed by a childlike shouting out of pirate
songs, making this particular poem one of the noisiest of Pessoaʼs body of work (“Fifteen
men on a dead manʼs chest,/Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” (95)), he imagines himself a
barbarian (96) even the woman who was either raped or who eagerly waits for her man to
come home (94). In other words, we can draw a conclusion from this work similar to that
which Yuat has drawn from the work of Rimbaud: “ʻJeʼ nʼest plus fermé comme lʼunité du
moi personnel, mais un opéra fabuleuxʼ où se mèlent et se parlent plusieurs voix, les voix des
autres. Le poète est donc conduit à affirmer: à chacue être, plusieurs autre vies me semblaient
duesʼ.” (Yuat, 241).
In conclusion, even though Rimbaud and de Campos share the metaphyisical search
for the unknown, sailing seas of endless possibilities and Liberty, they do experience this
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Liberty in different ways. For Rimbaud, it consists of a return to childhood and to
surrendering to the powers of nature in order to escape the limiting structure of social
conventions and experience the world as if for the first time, with a childlike innocence and
abandon, finding himself again in the otherness of the narrator of the drunken boat. De
Campos however experiences his Liberty as a propulsion into Futurism which opens up the
seas in order to explore them, in order to meet other people and travel the world (which he
seems to experience as a double-edged sword) combined with the Sensationist possiblity to
become others and he does this in a more explicit way than Rimbaud (who uses the symbol of
the drunken boat in order to present the poet-voyant anew), because he literally imagines
himself to live every kind of life he could possibly think of. In the next chapter I will explain
how both these forms of Liberty ultimately cause disappointment and disillusion.
3. THE EDGES OF THE UNKNOWN
In the previous section, I established that both poems conceptualize the unknown as a
form of Liberty: for Rimbaud it is a childlike Liberty unrestricted by social conventions
whereas for de Campos, textual Liberty and Futurism become intertwined with the potential
of a similar childlike imagination which lead him to reconsider himself in other lives. So if
these poems both celebrate their own Liberty and their own purpose (the search for the
unknown), why then do they both express such disappointment in their search, to such an
extent that the reader can only conclude that they have failed? By the end of the poem, de
Campos is left alone on the wharf in the utter silence of his soul: “Traça um semicírculo de
não sei que emoção/No silêncio comovido da minhʼalma...” (107).
I would argue that de Camposʼ most prominent disappointment is his inability to
return, or rather to recapture the experience of his childhood, through his imagined being of a
pirate: “Todo este tempo não tirei os olhos do meu sonho longínquo./Da minha casa ao pé do
rio,/Da minha infância ao pé do rio,” (100).Coto Fagundes argues that remembering is not
enough: “The flow of time would have to be reversible, hence its new inverted course would
erase the present (that is, the adult) consciousness of fugit irreparable tempus and transport
the poet to the paradisaical past where time and its ravages are of no concern.” (110). In other
words, his quest in this sense is quite similar to Rimbaud but, unlike Rimbaud (who uses
symbols), the disappointment is more immediate and direct as soon as he mentions his
13
childhood home. The logical consequence for Campos is of course propelling himself with
great abandon into the progress of the future, something which, as I have alluded to in the
previous chapter, he also finds disappointing because of the disuse of the old steamer, the
stories of worlds unknown and imagination in general. Therefore, when the Ode Marítima
finally ends, de Campos finds himself alone and in the silence of the present, disappointed
because of “the poetʼs inability to recapture the self associated with lost childhood” failing to
reconcile “the imaginative past with the state of mind of the child who first experienced it.”
(126).
It is of course logical that his own disappointment, disillusionment and nostalgia
become equally as prominent as their ecstatic counterparts described in the previous section
since the goal of his poetic project is to ʻsentir tudo de todas as maneirasʼ, including also the
opposite side of the same experience, countering it and therefore creating within the poem two
completely irreconcilable experiences, only textually not mutually exclusive since they all
share the same poem.
I do however want to look a bit further than just de Camposʼ poetic goals. For me, part
of the answer to his disappointment, lies in the experience of Modern times, so obviously
expressed by his Futurist ode to the ship and discoveries. When Buescu researches the
frontiers of Modernity, she writes about the two novels she is discussing:
Neste sentido, os corpos invisíveis, divididos e expostos que aqui lemos são
tanto uma forma de questionar a demasiadamente directa relação entre corpo e
identidade pessoal como um modo de, por metonímia, evocar os tempos e os
espaços que formulam uma certa identidade comunitária. (193)
Described here is the Modern experience of the body with relation to ones own
identity: the disturbance of this relationship appears to be crucial to Modernism. As
Tucherman, quoted by Buescu, indicates, the penultimate experience of Modernity is the
crisis of the body, caused by both desire of an intense nature and “linguagem (capacidade de
representar o mundo). Apesar de poder pensar o intemporal e de perceber em si a acção da
temporalidade, o corpo existe no presente e é o suporte da sua experiência de sujeito, assim
como de objecto.” (Tucherman qtd. in Buescu, 194). In this sense, it is a continuation of
Rimbaud: the experience of the body in the presence and the awareness of subjectivity of his
experience, therefore causing a disrupt between the body and the experience since the very
nature of reality and experience is questioned and deemed too personal to be universal or
14
completely trustworthy. In other words, in the quote from Rimbaud “ʻOn me penseʼ, lʼunité
du moi, lʼidentité subjective, nʼest plus certaine.” (Yuasa, 230). In de Camposʼ constant
obsession with imagining himself in another life, he places himself at the forefront of
Modernism and showcases exactly the problematic relationship of the body with the self
which is no longer singular but forever fractured, due to an increasing self-reflection and the
awareness of the subjectivity of our experiences. Pessoa does not seek to resolve an
epistemological problem, rather, he expands upon it and creates them himself through
imagining himself in other lives who in turn imagine themselves in other lives.
According to Brooks, also mentioned in Cristalizaçoes: Fronteiras da Modernidade,
“we live after a Fall from a time of greater unity of consciousness, language and being.”
leaving us only able to “think back to, or invent such unity only through our present
consciousness of division” (qtd. in Buescu, 208). The consequence is that we now live in a
world surrounded by the Baudrillard-coined term of simulacrum: “a produção de uma imagem
cujo carácter virtual, mais do que representar, substitui a própria realidade” (198). In other
words, since the Modernist subject now is aware of his own subjectivity, his authority to
represent reality becomes a personal one, only there in terms of how the subject experiences
the reality he is surrounded by, and how much he is aware of the particularity of his
experience.
Closely linked to the simulacrum is the concept of cristalization: “Cristalizações:
momentos precários de passagem do estado líquido ao sólido, que instavelmente fixam uma
imagem-num-momento.” (Buescu, 27, my italics). Fixation is crucial to the idea of
cristalization since the whole concept is unstable since the solid state can once again go back
to the liquid state of time passing, dissolving in its final illusion. In other words, cristalization
tries to capture the momentariness, the temporariness of the experienced present therefore
already entailing its very own destruction, highlighting the precariousness of the experience.
This idea of cristalization also connects itself to the epistemological problem of its time, since
it is only an impossible poetic impetus for those who have an indestructible belief in the
truthfulness of their own point of view since cristalization tries to capture the moment of time
passing in the present as it is utmost subjectively, personally experienced. What Rimbaud tries
to capture however, I would say, is not so much the momentariness of a precarious present but
rather the momentariness of the experiences of his visions, the childlike gaze, the abandon
within ecstatic experiences.
15
To me, the failure inherent to the concept of cristalization and the simulacrum prove to
be crucial in Le Bateau Ivre as Munier indirectly points out: “Comme les fleurs qui
accompagnaient sa dérive alors apaisée nʼétaient pas des fleurs, mais des ʻécumes de fleursʼ,
des fleurs qui étaient le feston dʼécume ʻberçantʼ sa coque ou de lʼécume qui était fleurs... Le
voyant ne saurait dire.” (69). It is in the verse which Munier quotes that for me, the poetvoyant for the first time expresses disappointment in his own abilities and vision: “Jʼaurais
voulu montrer aux enfants ces dorades/Du flot bleu, ces poissons dʼor, ces poissons chantants.
- Des écumes de fleurs ont bercé mes dérades/Et dʼineffables vents mʼont ailé par instants.”
(Rimbaud, 124). In other words, the poet-voyant (symbolized by the boat), finds himself
unable to actually capture that which he sees. It is the logical consequence of all the stanzas
that came before, which consisted mostly of a summation of “Je sais”, “Jʼai vu” and “Jʼai
rêvé” (123-124) but never does he say: I captured or I kept: “cʼest moins une énumération, un
catalogue de merveilles, quʼune capacité de voir, de savoir, de rêver quʼil va célébrer dans les
dix strophes à venir.” (Munier, 65).
Essential to the understanding of Le Bateau Ivre, is the link between the simulacrum
and the impossibility of the eternal cristalization. From this point onwards, the poet-voyant
himself is aware of the finiteness of his visions and experiences since he is not able to show to
children those singing fishes of which he writes. He finds himself unable to catch them and
take them with him: his visions pass him by transiently. Therefore, his inability to capture his
visions makes his very poem riddled with inadequacy, since the words he uses to describe his
visions and experiences fall short in actually capturing the experience itself, rather just
register the nature of his subjective experiences (I know, I have seen, I have dreamed...).
Therefore, the simulacrum, the absence of reality in the text penetrates the whole poem: the
boat is not bathed in the sea but in the “Poème de la Mer”, drawing attention to the solely
textual existence of the sea; the flowers do not appear to be present, they are in there in
memory, represented by the foam.
It is also from this stanza onwards that the boat starts to describe and redefine himself
(described as a form of Liberty in the previous chapter) in pejorative terms: “Preque île”
(124), “Or moi, bateau perdu sous les cheveux des anses/Jeté par lʼouragan dans lʼéther sans
oiseau”, “Libre, fumant”, “Planche folle, escorté des hippocampes noirs”, “Moi qui
tremblais”, exclaiming finally: “Je regrette lʼEurope aux anciens parapets!” (125), in other
words: “il se perd dans lʼespace inconnu. Mer et ciel à présent se confondent. Le réel est
16
percé, ʻtrouéʼ dans un bond délirant.” (Munier, 71). That he regrets or longs for Europe is
significant: “Les perspectives étant cosmiques, cʼest à lʼEurope quʼil pense (…) celui des
ʻparapetsʼ justements, cʼest-à-dire dʼun réel balisé, bien défendu, sans dangers.” (Munier, 72).
In other words, the Liberty searched for by the voyant, appears to be disappointing and too
all-encompassing and transient to ever capture the experience of the vision, therefore leaving
him in a no-place, or as Bonnefoy says: “Là même où Rimbaud grandi semblait avoir
transgressé toute localisation de ses expériences” (41).
This lack of a specific place causes him to long for the old continent of Europe. In the
second to last stanza, Europe returns again: “Si je désire une eau dʼEurope, cʼest la
flache/Noire et froide où vers le crépuscule embaumé/Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses,
lâche/Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai.” (Rimbaud, 125). According to Bonnefoy,
the place described here, is a poor place, “noire et froide”: “Le seul bateau qui ait sens, ici,
cʼest ce simularcre, ʻfrêle comme un papillon de maiʼ, simple bout de papier peut-être, et de
durée brève.” (41). In other words: his textual incapability to fixate his visions – the “fleuves
impassibles” could have just as easily been “fleuves impossibles” – spills over into his selfdeprecating descriptions and the imagery of the poem which is very much influenced by the
Baudrillard-like idea of the simulacrum, the culmination of the textual failure to represent his
experiences.
I would also define the many pirate-like cries of de Campos as simulacra: they no
longer, for him refer to any kind of reality, but rather refer to his inability to represent the
childlike reality which he has forever lost and can only vaguely, textually recreate. In the
process, according to Cota Fagundes, he constructs two pasts: the involuntary memory
(represented by the pirate-like cries, showcasing the gap between his actual child-self making
the cries and his adult-self) and the factual memory which just reminds him of what he no
longer is and no longer can regain, being his house and childhood by the river. (116-117)
CONCLUSION
Whereas both poets invest in a metaphysical search for the unknown and Liberty, they do deal
with it in different ways, as I have established in the first chapter: for Rimbaud,
depersonalization is the purpose whereas it is a guiding principle for Pessoa. They both
experience their respective Liberty in ecstatic ways throughout the poem, Rimbaud reimagines himself in the body of a drunken boat sailing the poem of the sea having visions of
17
great beauty and mystery whilst simultaneously looking for a way to re-imagine and redefine
the self through a childlike gaze and a passive surrender to nature. De Campos finds his
liberty however in progress of Futurism and the constant, more explicit re-imagination of
himself in other lives. The obvious conclusion in both poems is disappointment which has to
do with the increasing prominence of the Modern awareness that there is a rupture between
the body and the self and the consequential epistemological doubt. Both poems deal with the
consequences and find themselves, in completely different ways unable to cristalize their
childhood gaze (the innocent, unstained way of seeing and experiencing the world) resulting
in two poems riddled with simulacra. Both poems deal with an abstract Sea, therefore
showcasing how time, symbolized by the sea, and the Liberty which it is supposed to yield in
Modern life no longer has the same capacity as it used to have since the simulacra seems to
be the all-pervasive and we can no longer return to a previous, more singular state of things,
only reflect on the loss from this permanent fractured state between the body and the self.
18
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