Sonnet to an Asshole
The Idol—Sonnet to an Asshole (French: L’Idole—Sonnet du trou du cul) is a poem written by Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine in 1871.[1] The sonnet is both a celebration of the human anus[2][3] and a parody of the fetishization of the female body by Albert Mérat and other Parnassian poets.[4] It pushed the limits "not only of acceptable poetic and social behavior, but of French verse in its formal intelligibility too."[1]
Rimbaud and Verlaine were lovers, regarded by scholars as the first openly gay couple in modern literary history.[2][5] Verlaine composed the sonnet's first eight lines and Rimbaud wrote the last six.[6][3] The poem was published in the Album Zutique.[4][7]
Poem
Obscur et froncé comme un œillet violet
Il respire, humblement tapi parmi la mousse
Humide encor d’amour qui suit la fuite douce
Des Fesses blanches jusqu’au cœur de son ourlet.
Des filaments pareils à des larmes de lait
Ont pleuré, sous le vent cruel qui les repousse,
À travers de petits caillots de marne rousse
Pour s’aller perdre où la pente les appelait.
Mon Rêve s’aboucha souvent à sa ventouse;
Mon âme, du coït matériel jalouse,
En fit son larmier fauve et son nid de sanglots.
C’est l’olive pâmée, et la flûte câline,
C’est le tube où descend la céleste praline:
Chanaan féminin dans les moiteurs enclos!
Dark, puckered hole: a purple carnation
That trembles, nestled among the moss (still wet
With love) covering the gentle curvation
Of the white ass, just to the royal eyelet.
Threads resembling milky tears there are spun;
Spray forced back by the south wind's cruel threat
Across the small balls of brown shit has run,
To drip from the crack, which craves for it yet.
Not wishing the prick to have its bent,
My mouth too has often mated with that vent,
My sobbing tongue tried to devour the rose
Flowering in brown moisture. The chute unmanned,
It's a heavenly jam-pot, the Promised Land
Which with other milk and honey overflows!
References
- ^ a b St. Clair, Robert (2018-10-18). "5 (Conclusion) Other Bodies: Rimbaud, Verlaine, and L'Idole—Le Sonnet du trou du cul". Poetry, Politics, and the Body in Rimbaud: Lyrical Material. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. pp. 209–248. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198826583.003.0006.
- ^ a b Meyers, Jeffrey (2011). "The Savage Experiment: Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine". The Kenyon Review. 33 (3): 167–180. ISSN 0163-075X. JSTOR 41304666 – via JSTOR.
- ^ a b White, Edmund (2009-01-10). "Teenage dirtbag". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-07-06.
- ^ a b Whidden, Seth (1999). "Rimbaud Writing on the Body: Anti-Parnassian Movement and Aesthetics in "Venus Anadyomene"". Nineteenth-Century French Studies. 27 (3/4): 333–345. ISSN 0146-7891. JSTOR 23537387 – via JSTOR.
- ^ Schofield, Hugh (2020-09-26). "Rimbaud and Verlaine: France agonises over digging up gay poets". BBC. Retrieved 2025-07-06.
- ^ A Lover's Cock And Other Gay Poems. Translated by Murat, J; Gunn, W (1st ed.). San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press. 1979. pp. 10–11. ISBN 9780917342684.
- ^ Franklin, Ruth (2003-11-09). "Arse Poetica". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2025-07-06.