Golden Age

A late poem by Rimbaud, "Golden Age" presents itself as a song in short stanzas, with predominantly feminine rhymes and insistent musicality. An angelic voice addresses the poet, but "It is about me", it specifies, creating from the outset a mirror play between enunciation and identity.

The multiple questions, which "branch out", are reduced to "drunkenness and madness": the intellectual quest dissolves into excess. The refrain "Acknowledge this turn / So gay, so easy" returns like an incantatory formula, associating the poem with a simple celebration of the elements — "wave, flora" — and of family. The repetition of the refrain, with its variants, mimics a joyful, almost childlike ritual.

The voice then sings, "visible to the naked eye", and the poet joins in: "I sing with her". Then another voice, "As sister of breaths", expresses itself "In a German tone", but ardent: it proclaims that "The world is vicious" and invites to "Live and leave to the fire / The obscure misfortune". This practical and sensual wisdom stands opposed to sterile metaphysical inquiry.

The evocation of the "lovely castle" and the "Princely nature" opens an Edenic vision, a personal golden age. Finally, the poet in turn sings, surrounded by "Multiple sisters! voices / Not at all public!", demanding a "modest glory". Irony surfaces: the angelic voice reveals itself as multiple, intimate, and poetry becomes the celebration of a world regained through song.

Thus, "Golden Age" celebrates less a lost past than an availability to the present: the poetic voice, by stripping itself of the seriousness of the "thousand questions," attains a fundamental lightness, where shared song and the simplicity of the elements take the place of truth.