ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the central role of translation in these varied encounters with French poetry, and identifies translation's productive position within a redefining of modern poetry's relationship with nineteenth-century poetry, both English and French. It captures the fascination felt by many poets and commentators. The Arthur Rimbaud of the poem is a child whose genius cuts through the hypocrisies of his age, liberating poetry and ultimately liberating himself from poetry. Surrealist and non-Surrealist poetic interaction during the 1930s was taking place in a politically charged atmosphere which seeped into literary magazines and poetry alike. This seepage played a defining role in the relationship between English and French poetry. English interest in French Surrealism, and the attempts by admirers of the movement to implant a similar one in England, represented the most intense phase of engagement with French poetry of the 1930s.
