When one reads A Season in Hell now, It reads like a description of someone suffering from the effects of narcotic poisoning, or the aftermath, when he was deprived of drugs or was trying to cure himself.
This was April and May, when the farm needed all the manual labour which it could obtain, yet Rimbaud did not help his family. One can sense much of the family drama. Vitalie only mentions him once more after his arrival, in her Journal - much later, in July, when she remarks on his not helping with the harvest.....

Rimbaud was certainly going through a period of stress and strain. Isabelle says that he was unable to sleep at night, that his light was often to be seen burning into the early hours of the morning, and that he was groaning as if he were struggling with some devil. Often he was to be seen wandering alone through the fields and woods, a poignant figure of desolation and despair. (The scenes writing in the barn, with the sun through his fingers, etc.)

Rimbaud had thought himself the equal of God, but now he discovered that, it was only the distorting fumes of opium which had made him magnify his own image. He was cast down to earth.

It is certain that the work on which he was engaged during April, after he got home to Roche, was A Season in Hell. This is the book which made him impatient with his family, and withdraw from the work of the farm. He remained shut up in the barn while the rest of the family worked in the fields. All this Rimbaud wrote before the events in Belgium, before what is called the Brussels Drama.

At this time he was contemplating a literature of a new kind and indeed the 'Illuminations' composed in England show signs of the changed inspiration. Now he was expressing disgust for all the ideas which he had hitherto held - both artistic and spiritual. There can be little doubt that in the portion of A Season in Hell on which he was now engaged he was liquidating all his previous dreams and aspirations, but he had not yet begun to formulate his positive beliefs for the future, nor his plans for his work. But he was certainly working.
In writing to Delahaye, Rimbaud said, referring to the work which was occupying him, "My fate depends on this book!"

During the composition of the book and on its publication he was far from being disinterested in its fate and he counted very much on its success. It is the only work - besides three poems - which he himself published and we are told that already in April 1873 he had made arrangements with a Belgian firm for its printing.

He did not, however, finish A Season in Hell as quickly as he had hoped. Verlaine was at this time at Jehonville, not far from Roche, on a visit to relations and also at a loose end. He had not been able to see his wife or her parents. He had written to her pointing out how unnecessary were the legal proceedings which she was threatening in order to obtain a legal separation, telling her that he had parted from Rimbaud and that they could still be happy together if she would give him one more chance. He received a letter from her, dictated by her father, informing him that he was not longer to pester her. Then he abandoned all hope of domestic happiness and decided that he would take up again his relationship with Rimbaud. It was then he went to stay with his relations at Jehonville and write several times to Rimbaud. Verlaine finally managed to persuade Rimbaud to accompany him once more to England, where he hoped that they might be as happy as they had been when first they arrived in London the previous year.

Rimbaud made a great mistake in weakening and allowing himself to be persuaded by Verlaine. Perhaps he was exhausted through the efforts of literary creation, perhaps he needed relaxation and alcoholic or drug stimulation - he had been accustomed to compose under the fillip of drugs and drink, and perhaps he was finding it difficult to write without them, for his weaning had been too drastic and too sudden, since he could obtain nothing at Roche. Perhaps there were other reasons - sexual, or emotional or charitable. Perhaps it was compassion for Verlaine's loneliness and need - he had never been proof against appeals to his kindness of heart...... Whatever may be the reason - personal need, compassion or weakness - on 27 May 1873 he accompanied Verlaine to England. He had been home at Roche little more than a month.

Une Saison en Enfer

In August 1873, after many weeks of anguish, Rimbaud finished the work. We do not know how much there was still left to write when he returned wounded from Belgium, nor how much he had written in London, nor yet how much he re-wrote of what he had already written, after his tragic experience. We know definitely that Une Saison en Enfer was the book on which he had been at work since April.

Une Saison en Enfer is composed of nine chapters of varying lengths, each, with the exception of the first, Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood) relating some single aspect of the struggle.

For alchemists the descent in Hell was symbolical for the descent into oneself. This is a terrifying experience and there is the psychological danger of the complete dissolution of the human personality, disintegration. Rimbaud's Une Saison en Enfer was the record of such a descent into himself and with him there was the danger of this disintegration of his personality, but he rose in the end victorious.

Une Saison en Enfer is difficult to interpret as a whole, for Rimbaud has described, simultaneously, the past, the present and the future and he has omitted all the connecting links.

The problem on which so many critics concentrate - the question of whether or not he intended to continue being a poet - pales into insignificance beside the greater spiritual problem Rimbaud was facing.

When he discovered that all his aspirations and hopes had been based on falsehood, he cast aside the art and the philosophy which had deceived him, but there was nothing to prevent his still being a poet, if a poet of a different kind.

Rimbaud had previously imagined that with his art he had soared into the beyond, but he discovered now that it was not Heaven into which he had penetrated, but Hell; it had really been a season in Hell. It was his pride and arrogance which had brought him to such a pass and had led him into the deepest state of sin. This brought him face to face with the problem of evil.

One of the main reasons for beginning to write une Saison en Enfer was to solve, once and for all, the problem of this conflict between Good and Evil. His whole nature, his mind and soul, had been formed and moulded by the civilization from which he had thought he could escape.

The second leitmotif is that of Rimbaud's longing for God. His need of God was one of the fundamental needs of his nature and when he found that he could no longer accept the God of his Catholic teaching he could not rest until he had found a God which would satisfy his spiritual aspirations. He had staked everything on expressing God and the infinite, on becoming like unto God himself. When this conviction failed he was left bewildered and lost. His problem was not whether he could return to the humble Christian position in front of God. From the beginning to the end of Une Saison en Enfer we find expressed his burning longing for a religion in which to lose himself, but his longing is damped down by his inability to accept the loss of personality and liberty. He was incapable of the simple trusting faith of Verlaine; he would not be God's humble servant.

Une Saison en Enfer is, for the greater part, an acute expression of the idealism of youth hurt by the ugliness which it encounters and which it cannot explain, since it has not yet learnt to make concessions with our ideals and principles, and to accept the second best. Rimbaud never learned to make concessions and since he was not able to possess what he believed was 'the real life' he would have nothing. He intended to create his own life, on his own conditions. He would destroy everything that existed naturally in himself; he would build everything again and transform life.
Whatever he might say or think, reality was what Rimbaud was never able - and never would be able - to accept. His only certainty was his anguish and distress and his conviction that all his past life and art had been a delusion.

When he looked back into his past he saw himself as having been alone and solitary. When he looked into the future he saw nothing but loneliness ahead of him. No one had ever really understood his ideas or appreciated his dreams and he had been persecuted like Joan of Arc and Merlin. No man had ever truly been a friend to him and friendship with women had been impossible. All those who had come into contact with him had seen nothing but vice and had not looked any further - none had looked into his heart......

But now he knew that the life he had led had been foolish and wrong, that vice was stupid and so was debauch, that it had all brought him nothing but remorse, regret and ill-health.

Une Saison en Enfer was the only complete work which he himself published, and he corrected the proofs with care. Why did he send copies to his friends and to men of letters in Paris, whom he admired, hoping that they would review it favourably in the press? The truth is that, when the book was ready, he was anxious concerning its reception and success as any author............ he was bitterly disappointed at its reception.

Rimbaud thought that everything he had written was crystal clear and self-evident. He did not realize that to understand it one must has a knowledge of the background of his mind. If anyone had asked him what it signified he would have answered as he had answered his mother when she asked him in amazement what it all means.

'It means exactly what I've said, literally and completely, in all respects.'

Rimbaud carefully superintended the printing of his book and went in person to collect the copies in Belgium in October 1873. An entry in the records of the police in Brussels states that 'Rimbaud Arthur, man of letters, residing at No. 1 Rue des Brasseurs, departed furtively on 24 October, without giving his new address.'

After dispatching the copies of Une Saison to those whom he knew, Rimbaud set out for Paris to find out what kind of reception the book was getting, and it is probable that he was very coldly received. It was only four months after the affair in Brussels, and few literary men were unaware of the nature of the doctor's report on Verlaine.
Few approved of Verlaine's conduct, though many were fond of him, but all considered Rimbaud a monster who was his evil genius and who had brought him to this pass. In 1875, when he came out of prison, Verlaine was to be considerend 'indigne' (unworthy) by many of his close friends, how much more infamous must Rimbaud have seemed in 1873, just after the tragedy, to those who, in any case, had never liked him and thought his work that of a lunatic? It is very probable that he was received with hostility and snubs, and that his book was not even read. Rimbaud's pride and sensitiveness gained thereby a wound that he was never afterwards able to forget. There are few things more easily wounded than proud humility......

Albert Poussin, the poet, relates how on 1 November 1873, he saw Rimbaud sitting in the little literary Cafe Tabourey, where Verlaine and he had once spent so many happy evenings together. It was a holiday and the cafe was thronged with writers chatting merrily together, but Rimbaud sat alone, sunk in the deepest despair. All the other tables were crowded, but there was no one with him though most of those present must have known him at least by sight, for his was a striking face not easily forgotten, even if he had not been notorious. Poussin had only recently come from the provinces, he did not then know who Rimbaud was, but, seeing this pale and gloomy young man sitting alone, he went up to him in a friendly way and offered him a drink. Rimbaud looked at him with vacant unseeing eyes, and then turned away without answering. Poussin left him, not wishing to intrude further on a grief which was too deep for his comprehension.......

Later, when the cafe closed, Rimbaud went silently away, without saying a word to anyone. He returned on foot to his native Charleville. When he arrived, we are told, he set fire to all of the manuscripts in his possession, and of the wole edition of his book.

What is possible - and it would be very characteristic of Rimbaud - is that he burned his papers as a gesture of repudiation and loathing of the literary circles of his day, and, in so doing, he was modelling himself once more on Baudelaire.......