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Poetry: First Lines
Quick Facts
French:
“Vowels”
In full:
Sonnet des voyelles
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Voyelles

poem by Rimbaud
Also known as: “Sonnet des voyelles”
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History

Voyelles, sonnet by Arthur Rimbaud, published in Paul Verlaine’s Les Poètes maudits (1884). Written in traditional alexandrine lines, the poem is far from traditional in its subject matter; it arbitrarily assigns to each of the vowels a different, specific colour.

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Suggestions as to the inspiration for the poem include a child’s coloured alphabet book, alchemy, or simple poetic obfuscation. The poem may also be a reference to Charles Baudelaire’s theory of the role of synesthesia (the association of two different senses—in this case sight and sound) in poetry.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.