Evil

Poem by Arthur Rimbaud Collection PoetryThemes WarPeriod 19th centuryArthur's analysis ↓

While the red spittle of the musketry
Whistles all day through the infinite blue sky;
While scarlet or green, near the King who mocks them,
Battalions crumble in mass in the fire;

While a horrifying madness crushes
And makes of a hundred thousand men a smoking heap;
– Poor dead! in summer, in the grass, in your joy,
Nature! O you who made these men in holiness!…

– There is a God, who laughs at the damask cloths
Of altars, at incense, at great golden chalices;
Who in the rocking of hosannas falls asleep,

And wakes, when mothers, huddled
In anguish, and weeping beneath their old black bonnet,
Give him a big penny tied in their handkerchief!

Arthur Rimbaud

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-evil-arthur-rimbaud/

Interpretation

Arthur's analysis

Composed in the form of a sonnet—two quatrains and two tercets—this poem by Arthur Rimbaud constitutes a vehement critique of war and religion.

Beginning with a description of the violence of war and the multitude of its dead, Rimbaud attacks here above all politicians and Kings rather than men, holding them responsible for war. For him, these powerful figures are indifferent to the fate of men fighting in their names and, rather than pitying them, prefer to mock them (line 3).

Furthermore, Rimbaud also suggests to his reader that war and those responsible for it will not be his only victims here. Indeed, by beginning his first two quatrains with the phrase “While,” he implies that another entity besides politicians waits while the belligerents kill each other.

This entity is God and religion, which, like the Kings, laughs at the ravages of war, too removed from the world in its “damask cloths,” its “altars,” its “great golden chalices,” “rocked” in its religious songs.

But, Rimbaud tells us, this God sometimes awakens to become aware of the violence surrounding him. When? When grieving mothers come to make offerings to him, to give him “a big penny tied in their handkerchief.”

Full of contempt for the dead and their families, Rimbaud describes to us a religion and a God insensitive, enriching themselves from the misery of the poorest. The mothers, thinking they are saving the souls of their sons, give everything they possess: a single penny, and a single handkerchief.

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