Rimbaud’s notorious sonnets
Les Stupra.
Paris: Imprimerie particulière [Albert Messein], 1871 (actually 1923).
Price: $1,850.00
About the item
First edition, number 141 of 150 copies (also 25 on Japon). [20] pp. First and last leaves are blank; text printed on rectos only. 1 vols. 4to. Rimbaud’s notorious sonnets. Wrappers. Very Fine. Green morocco backed slipcase and chemise. Les livres de l’Enfer, col. 1277.
Item #264809
Two of these three homoerotic sonnets (stupra = defilements) are printed here for the first time. The final one, known as the ‘Sonnet du trou du cul’, is infamous. Written together with Verlaine (he wrote the two quatrains, Rimbaud the sestet), it is one of the poems included in the manuscript Album zutique (early 1870s, facsimile published 1962) and circulated round the Latin Quarter before it finally appeared in print in Verlaine’s posthumous Hombres (1903). A number of versions of the poem are known; the one here was used by Louis Forestier in his recent edition of Rimbaud (Oeuvres complètes, correspondance, Paris, Robert Laffont, 2004).
