William Hazlitt, author of Bookkake’s Liber Amoris, is the subject of this week’s series of evening essays on BBC Radio 3. The philosopher and historian Jonathan Rée is arguing that William Hazlitt was a committed philosopher as well as a great essayist, and on the strength of the first episode, it’s convincing and highly enjoyable stuff.
You can listen to the programmes for up to a week, as they appear, on the BBC programmes site. You can also read Zeeba Sadiq’s introduction to the Bookkake edition of Liber Amoris, read a free ebook, or purchase the book itself.
I cycled through Camden this morning, past the house of Rimbaud and Verlaine, which I wrote about here. The bright sun was reflecting savagely from the white stucco, and the canal behind stank of wet moss and waste: the smell of sex and poetry. Here’s to the boy poet, and his echoes.
L’Idole (Sonnet du Trou du Cul)
Dark, wrinkled as a purple pink,
It breathes, it nestles in that bed of moss,
Still damp from love, which hugs the slope,
The white thighs’ slope, to your crater’s heart.
Threads, gossamer, milky tears
Wept, wept, in scouring wind
That drove them over clots of scarlet scree
Till they tumbled on the edge, were gone.
My dreams touch kisses, kisses to the gate.
Soul envies couplings of the flesh,
Its tear-bottle this, its nest of sobs.
Ecstatic olive! Seductive flute!
Throat sucking almond-sweet sublime!
Moss-circled, female, promised land!
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
