When Rimbaud said, “Je suis l’autre,” if that is the correct French, meaning actually, “I am the other,” what did he mean?
Hope you read French well enough 'cause I’d be hard-pressed to explain it to you (even in French:D)…
(The passage of interest to you is about three quarters of the page down)
Je no read French at all, un peu. I had un peu in college. However, I was able to make out the following:
something about the ambivalence of Nervall’s sentiment when confronted with the search of the true me, I guess in himself, who he was, etc. This refers to “Aurelia.” Is reported the famous episode where, not something measure of porter a something affirmation on himself, “Who is it?”
Evidently he was going into a room and knocked and the porter asked who is it. Nerval was then confronted with his portrait. His portrait was not a resemblance. (It doesn’t say what happened to the porter). Nerval cried, “I am the other.” Richard, it says, comments here that something is distinguished from “I is an other” of Rimbaud. He then killed himself aboard an ultimate moment. So it’s I am the other, or possibly I am another, in other words this portrait doesn’t look like me, it looks like somebody else, versus Rimbaud’s I is an other, with the I underlined, or possibly I is another, which would mean that the I within me is always already an other because one can always think of that I with another I, in which case the first I becomes another I. This is what I always thought it meant. Merci,
et je wish que there would be more translations from French, such as comment on the works of novelist Raymond Roussel, Jarry, et so on. I might be able to find out pourquoi the French such as Mallarme and Baudelaire liked Poe. He must sound less sing-song in French, although B learned English in order to read Poe and M taught English!
And you said you didn’t read French!
:::I knew I should have stayed far away from this…:::
De Nerval’s sentiment is ambivalent when confronted with the search of his true self. Richard refers to the famous (?) episode when de Nerval, no longer able to come to any affirmative judgement on himself, comes face to face with his own portrait. And his portrait is only a semblance of himself. He writes: “I am the other” and, in commenting this episode, Richard distinguishes this from Rimbaud’s “I is another person”. According to Richard, de Nerval’s suicide is aimed at suppressing ‘the other’, at eradicating his ‘double’.
Now, I haven’t got the foggiest idea if this clarifies things a bit for you and realize that Rimbaud was not the main subject matter of this excerpt. But it gives you somewhat of a context. That’s pretty much all a preliminary search with Google gave me that I found to be useful. You’ll have to admit that Rimbaud isn’t exactly the easiest subject to deal with. Aside from his Vaisseau d’Or and his particular ‘friendship’ with Verlaine, I (at the risk of stating the obvious) know next to nothing about the man.
Philosophy/existentialism, as you might have gathered, wasn’t necessarily my forte in college…