And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.
I am alone in possessing a key to this barbarous sideshow.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the solitude of having unique insights that others do not understand or appreciate.
In this quote, Arthur Rimbaud expresses a sense of isolation in holding knowledge or experiences that are foreign or misunderstood by the majority. The term 'barbarous sideshow' suggests that he sees societal norms or common experiences as primitive, and yet he possesses the 'key', symbolizing his unique perspective or understanding. This statement highlights the loneliness that can accompany intellectual or artistic insight, where one feels set apart from a society that may not recognize or value their distinct viewpoint.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about creativity and the arts, this quote could illustrate the challenges faced by visionaries.
More from Arthur Rimbaud
All quotes βMy wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?
In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.
I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.
Similar quotes
Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not / You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
The world is governed by opinion.
The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.
If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique.
Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.