Matin by Keith Vaughan

Matin (1943)
Keith Vaughan (English, 1912-1977)
Collage, pen and ink, crayon, wash and gouache
21 x 14 cm.

In 1943, Keith Vaughan began a series of gouaches based on Arthur Rimbaud's cycle of poems Une Saison En Enfer (A Season in Hell).

Morning by Arthur Rimbaud

Didn't I once have a happy youth, heroic and fabulous, to be written on leaves of gold? Too much luck! By what crime, through what error, have I deserved my present weakness? You who maintain that animals sob with grief, that the sick despair, that the dead have bad dreams, try and give an account of my downfall and present slumber. I can no more explain myself than the beggar with his endless Paters and Ave Marias. I no longer know how to speak.

From the same wilderness, in the same night, my tired eyes always awaken to the same silver star; always, through the Kings of life, the three magi - the heart, the soul, the spirit - are not stirred. Where shall we go, beyond the shorelines and the mountains, to hail the birth of the new work, the new wisdom, the flight of tyrants and demons, the end of superstition, to worship - the first to do so! Christmas on Earth?

The song of heaven, the march of peoples! Slaves, let us not curse life.