[ 1.1 / 8 / ]
Germain Nouveau was born in Pourrières, in Var, France. He attended the College Bourbon in Aix-en-Provence from which he graduated in 1870. He then spent a year as a teacher in Marseilles before moving to Paris in 1872. He frequented the circle attended by several notable poets including Mallarmé and Cros before befriending the symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud. He travelled and lived for a time with Rimbaud in London. Their relationship was neither as scandalous nor as celebrated as Rimbaud‘s grande passion with Verlaine and Nouveau‘s legacy has perhaps suffered as a result. These three pieces are not so much translations as reincarnations or reimaginings of poems by Nouveau.
JAN NOBLE 