Metanoia …

… When I read Rimbaud’s verse I heard the call at the bottom of the sea | George Szirtes | Comment is free | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

“You are not really serious when you are 17,” says Romance, Rimbaud’s poem about adolescent love. It is a relief to know that when you actually are 17, because then everything seems impossibly serious, especially love. The poem tells you that the girl is cute, that “the sap is champagne and goes straight to your head”, and that, at that age, is all it takes. And how old was Rimbaud when he wrote that? He can’t have been much older than 17 himself, since he started publishing poems at 16 and had finished with poetry by the time he was 21. 

This is peculiar:  "I know one man who lost his Catholic faith by reading Samuel Beckett." That must have been either a poor Catholic or a poor reader or both.