Illuminations

About “Illuminations”

Illuminations is an incomplete collection of prose poems by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. It was first published in parts in La Vogue, a Paris literary review, in May–June 1886. The work was later published in book form in October 1886 by Les publications de La Vogue, with the title Les Illuminations, suggested by Rimbaud's former lover, the poet Paul Verlaine. In his preface, Verlaine explained that the title came from the English word "illuminations," referring to colored plates, and noted a subtitle that Rimbaud had already provided. Verlaine dated the composition of the poems between 1873 and 1875. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)