This Post Was Inevitable

I'm into Rimbaud, DEAL WITH IT.

Miku, the rad-looking girl in my takoyaki party post, drew this picture of Rimbaud for me. Thank you, Miku, I love you. You don't read this blog, but it don't matter.

"The first task of the man who wants to be a poet is to study his own awareness of himself, in its entirety; he seeks out his soul, he inspects it, he tests it, he learns it. As soon as he knows it, he must cultivate it! That seems simple: every brain experiences a certain natural development; hundreds of egoists call themselves authors; there are many more who attribute their intellectual progress to themselves! -- But the problem is to make the soul into a monster, like the comprachicos, you know? Think of a man grafting warts onto his face and then growing them there.

"I say you have to be a visionary, make yourself a visionary.

"...And there will be poets like these! When the eternal slavery of Women is destroyed, when she lives for herself and through herself, when man -- up till now abominable -- will have set her free, she will be a poet as well! Women will discover the unknown! Will her world of ideas differ from ours? She will discover strange things, unfathomable, repulsive, delightful; we will accept them and understand them."
(Rimbaud to George Izambard, May 13th, 1871. Translated by Paul Schmidt.)