Alcools (Athlone French Poets) (French Edition)

Guillaume Apollinaire, a leading figure amongst the young writers and artists in France until his death in 1918, published Alcools, his first book of poems, in 1913. With its wide range of verse forms and contrasting registers of style, Alcools had a considerable influence on Surrealist poetry. The poems provide a splendid example of the lyrical art in which the paradoxes of Apollinaire are held in high poetic tension. The editor's introduction and notes place the volume in the development of French poetry in the twentieth century and explain allusions and difficulties in the text. Professor Rees held a Chair of Modern French Literature at the University of Hull. The cover illustration is by Marcoussis (Louis Casimir Ladislas Markus 1883-1941), a painter and illustrator of Polish birth who settled in Paris in 1903 and became a friend of Apollinaire and a supporter of Cubism. The figures refer to the number of the cell occupied by Apollinaire in La Sante prison and occur in the poem 'A la Sante' (p. no). Reproduction by courtesy ofFarrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

THE ATHLONE PRESS o 485 12 708 3

Athlone French Poets GUILLAUME APOLLINAIR E

Alcools

Athlone French Poets General Editor E I L E E N LE B R E T O N

Monographs GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE THEOPHILE GAUTIER HEREDIA JULES LAFORGUE GERARD DE NERVAL SAINT-JOHN PERSE FRANCIS

PONGE

RIMBAUD PAUL VALERY VERLAINE

Critical Editions G U I L L A U M E A P O L L I N A I R E : A L C OO L S THEOPHILE GAUTIER : POESIES JOSE-MARIA

DE H E R E D I A : LES T R O P H E E S

VICTOR HUGO : CHATIMENTS JULES L A F O R G U E : LES COMPLAINTES HENRI M I C H A U X : AU PAYS DE LA MAGIE A L F R E D DE MUSSET : C ONTES D ' E S P A G N E ET D ' l T A L I E G E R A R D DE N E R V A L : LES CHIMERES SAINT-JOHN PERSE : EXIL F R A N C I S P O N G E : LE P A R T I P R I S DBS C H O S E S ARTHUR RIMBAULD : ILLUMINATIONS PAUL V A L E R Y : C H A R M E S OU POEMES PAUL VERLAINE : ROMANCES SANS PAROLES PAUL V E R L A I N E : S A G E S S E

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

Alcools edited by GARNET REES

ATHLONE London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ

First published 1975 by THE ATHLONE PRESS 1 Park Drive, London NW11 7SG and 165 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716 Reprinted 1993 © Garnet Rees 1975 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 485 12708 3 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the University Press, Cambridge

Athlone French Poets General Editor E I L E E N LE B R E T O N Reader in French Language and Literature, Bedford College University of London

This series is designed to provide students and general readers both with Monographs on important nineteenth- and twentiethcentury French poets and Critical Editions of representative works by these poets. The Monographs aim at presenting the essential biographical facts while placing the poet in his social and intellectual context. They contain a detailed analysis of his poetical works and, where appropriate, a brief account of his other writings. His literary reputation is examined and his contribution to the development of French poetry is assessed, as is also his impact on other literatures. A selection of critical views and a bibliography are appended. The critical Editions contain a substantial introduction aimed at presenting each work against its historical background as well as studying its genre, structure, themes, style, etc. and highlighting its relevance for today. The text normally given is the complete text of the original edition. It is followed by full commentaries on the poems and annotation of the text, including variant readings when these are of real significance, and a select bibliography. E. Le B.

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS

ix

INTRODUCTION

I

The Biographical Background, i The Publication and Order of Alcools, 6 Apollinaire's Poetics, 9 The Themes of Alcools, 19 Versification and Style, 26 Conclusion, 32 ALGOOLS

Zone Le Pont Mirabeau La Chanson du Mal-Aime Les Colchiques Palais Chantre Crepuscule Annie La Maison des Morts Clotilde Cortege Marizibill Le Voyageur Marie La Blanche Neige Poeme lu au mariage d'Andre Salmon L'Adieu Salome La Porte Merlin et la Vieille Femme Saltimbanques Le Larron Le Vent Nocturne Lul de Faltenin

37

39 44 45 55 55 57 57 58 59 66 66 69 69 71 72 73 74 75 75 76 78 78 83 84

viii

Contents La Tzigane L'Ermite Automne L'fimigrant de Landor Road Rosemonde Le Brasier Rhenanes: Nuit rhenane Mai La Synagogue Les Cloches La Loreley Schinderhannes Rhenane d'automne Les Sapins Les Femmes Signe Un Soir La Dame Les Fian9ailles Clair de Lune 1909 A la Sante Automne Malade Hotels Cors de Chasse Vendemiaire

85 86 89 89 91 92 94 95 95 96 97 98 99 101 102 104 104 105 105 109 109 no 112 113 114 115

C O M M E N T A R I E S A N D N O T E S 12

1

S E L E C T B I B L I O G R A P H Y l8

o

ABBREVIATIONS C.A.: Guillaume Apollinaire, Chroniques d'art, 1902-1918, ed. L.-C. Breunig, Paris, Gallimard, 1960 Doss.: Michel Decaudin, Le Dossier d' 'Alcools' F.D.R.: Le Flaneur des deux rives, bulletin d'etudes apollinairiennes F.R.: French Review F.S.: French Studies G.A.: Guillaume Apollinaire (periodical) M.F.: Mercure de France O.C.: Guillaume Apollinaire, OSuvres completes (4 vols.), ed. M. Decaudin O.P.: Guillaume Apollinaire, (Euvrespoetiques, ed. M. Adema and M. Decaudin P.M.L.A.: Publications of the Modern Languages Association of America R.L.C.: Revue de Litterature comparee R.S.H.: Revue des Sciences humaines T.S.: Guillaume Apollinaire, Tendre comme le souvenir

This page intentionally left blank

INTRODUCTION THE BIOGRAPHICAL

BACKGROUND

The temptation to dwell on certain of the odder aspects of the life of Guillaume Apollinaire has led to something of a falsification of the man and his work. Certainly, from his death in 1918 until the 19503, considerably more attention was paid to curious biographical details than to the writings themselves, there was little exegesis and editions were few in number. However, many of his friends had piously celebrated Apollinaire's memory and legends began to accumulate. During his lifetime he had encouraged a certain mystery about his birth and origins for, in spite of his gregarious gaiety, Apollinaire had his own marked reticences. The task of literary criticism is too difficult to allow us to dispense with any aids and the poet has given us his own authority for relating discreetly his poetry to his life. 'Chacun de mes poemes est la commemoration d'un evenement de ma vie et le plus souvent il s'agit de tristesse, mais j'ai des joies aussi que je chante', he wrote to Henri Martineau, 19 July 1913 (O.C., iv, p. 768) but before we are tempted to consider his poems as a kind of poeticised autobiography, we must remind ourselves that Apollinaire's brother Albert, brought up in the same bizarre and insecure circumstances, subject to the same shaping forces, developed in a totally different way. This is what Apollinaire wrote of him: J'aime beaucoup mon petit Albert, esprit si droit, intelligence fine, plein de bon sens, travailleur, volontaire et tres doux. Tres pieux, il avait voulu se faire pretre et tres joli garcon, il etait tant que je 1'ai connu aussi chaste que St Louis de Gonzague ou St Stanislas Kostka qui fit penitence toute sa vie pour avoir regarde une femme avec plaisir. (Lettres a Lou, 2 February 1915, p. 154) ' The difference between the two brothers who had a great affection for each other, could hardly be greater. It was not until the publication of M. Adema's authoritative biography, Guillaume Apollinaire le mal-aime in 1952 that the strange circumstances of Apollinaire's birth became known. His mother,

2

Introduction

Angelica de Kostrowitzky, of Russo-Polish descent, was well known to his friends but his father had remained a shadowy figure; Apollinaire himself hinted at a person high in the hierarchy of the Vatican, an allusion taken up by those Picasso drawings which show him smoking a pipe and wearing a high-ranking ecclesiastical hat. In fact, his father was Francesco d'Aspermont, an Italian officer of Swiss descent. Guillaume Apollinaire was born in Rome on 26 August 1880 and, being illegitimate, was registered at birth as Guillaume Albert Dulcigni, issue of an unnamed mother and father. One month later he was baptised and, shortly after, his mother officially re-registered the birth of Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Alexandre Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky. In 1887 his mother moved to Monaco with Guillaume and his brother, born of the same father. He was educated at the Catholic College Saint-Charles and made his first communion there. In 1899 the family moved to Paris to begin a precarious life. One essential point must be retained: Apollinaire was stateless and, although France became his pays d'adoption, the country to which he devotes all his admiration and even his love, he was not French. The search for identity which is a recurring theme in Alcools, hidden and allusive though it is, has its roots here. 'Je me sens abandonne sur terre depuis mon plus jeune age' he wrote in a draft of'Zone', only to delete this too-direct confession as he omitted from the same draft lines which revealed something of his heritage: Et moi en qui se mele le sang slave et le sang latin Je regarde ces pauvres Polonais qui revent aux jours lointains.

Yet there is something more positive in Apollinaire's situation. He was disponible, more detached from the literary tradition which was the natural background of the native French writer. He makes this point in Le Poete assassine (1916), a prose work with a considerable autobiographical content. In a story entitled 'Giovanni Moroni' he wrote: II y a maintenant, comme en tous pays d'ailleurs, tant d'etrangers en France qu'il n'est pas sans interet d'etudier la sensibilite de ceux d'entre eux qui, etant nes ailleurs, sont cependant venus ici assez jeunes pour etre faconnes par la haute civilisation francaise. Us introduisent dans leur pays d'adoption les impressions de leur enfance, les plus vives de toutes,

Introduction

3

et enrichissent le patrimoine spirituel de leur nouvclle nation comme le chocolat et le cafe, par exenvple, ont etendu le doniaine du gout. (O.C., i, p. 310)

Herein, perhaps, is contained one explanation of Apollinaire's interest in innovation, in Tesprit nouveau', which remained so nicely balanced against his discriminating admiration of the masters of the past. In 1899 the brothers were sent to Stavelot, in the Belgian Ardennes, for a three-month holiday which ended abruptly when they absconded without paying their bill. This stay was Apollinaire's first contact with the nordic side of his heritage and aroused dormant atavisms. Forests had a constant fascination for him; he wrote of 'cette prodigieuse matrice qu'est la foret, creatrice de prestiges et de vies sans cesse renouveles' (T.S., 25 May 1915, p. 29). The enchanted forest of Broceliande with its magical personages and his wide readings in medieval literature were brought vividly to life. Here he wrote verse, prose (in particular, UEnchanteur pourrissant] and made notes of strange, rare words which will be recalled in Alcools. His fascination with language was heightened by his contact with Walloon and occasional wallonismes occur later in his verse. This northern contact was renewed in 1901 when Apollinaire set out for a year as tutor to a German family with houses in the Rhineland. Here he saw a world rich in myth and legend, travelled extensively and met fleetingly those characters who decorate the group of poems known as 'Rhenanes' in Alcools. It was a fertile period for him since the challenge of change was something to which he immediately responded. His verse took on its own distinctive note, the physical splendour of autumn, his 'saison mentale', awoke in him the visual sense which was his most sensitive and he fell passionately in love with Annie Playden, the English governess of the family. The story of his relationship with Annie, the first of the powerful amatory experiences which contributed so much to the poems of Alcools and was bitterly elegised in 'La Chanson du mal-aime,' has its own ironies. Some inspired detective work by M. Adema and Robert Goffin, the Belgian poet, succeeded in tracing Annie to America where she had been sent by her father, a strict Anglican architect, in 1904

4

Introduction

(see 'L'Emigrant de Landor Road'). In the fifty years which had elapsed since her last meeting with 'Kostro', the name under which she had known Apollinaire, she had married, become widowed and kept a boarding-kennel establishment with her sister. The subsequent fame o f Guillaume Apollinaire had passed her by for she did not know the pseudonym, but her true Edwardian discretion did not allow her to divulge any intimate details of their relationship during the stay in Germany (see F. Steegmuller, 'Une visite chez Annie', G.A. 2). The oscillation between happiness and unhappiness which is apparent in his relationship with Annie is echoed in the poems of the Rhineland where Apollinaire found the secret of holding in a creative tension those contradictions and opposites which abound in his work: life and death, legend and reality, the supernatural and the ordinary, the solemn and the trivial, the real and the imaginary, hope and despair, all coexist in an ambiguous atmosphere of varied poetic forms and styles. The ending of his love affair with Annie Playden and the irksome tasks of an employe de banque in Paris brought Apollinaire to a period of depression and near silence in which his powers seem to flag and his work to lack direction. He was jerked out of this apathy by a series of unconnected events. Apollinaire had met Picasso in 1904 although his friendship with the painters Andre Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck had begun earlier. His relationship with the young painters, Fauves and Cubistes alike, had given him a great deal of pleasure and aesthetic excitement. His art criticism (collected in the Chroniques d'art 1902—18, Gallimard, 1960) reflects his lively defence of the new art forms; he was the first exegete of Cubism. In 1907 he met Marie Laurencin, herself a painter, fell in love with her and so found renewed hope and stimulus. This is the time of 'Le Brasier' and 'Les Fian9ailles', poems which mark an evolution in his poetic achievement as well as in his views on the role and powers of the poet. J.-P. Richard has well said of this change: Au lieu d'etre celui qui dit adieu aux choses, et qui celebre melancoliquement leur secession, il va devenir celui qui occupe activement, comme un 'brasier', ou un soleil tout neuf, le centre de 1'espace, et a partir duquel seul les choses prendront sens. Le centre du monde n'est plus un la-bas stellaire, recule en d'autres nebuleuses, c'est notre conscience vivante et

Introduction

5

actuelle, inepuisable foyer d'etre, centre infini d'expansion et de metamorphose. ('Etoiles chez Apollinaire' in De Ronsard a Breton: Hommages a M. Raymond] U Enchanteur pourrissant, his first published work, appeared in 1908, but was hardly a success for no more than one quarter of the small edition was sold. L'Heresiarque et Cie was published in 1910 and, according to Apollinaire came close to being awarded the Prix Goncourt. Le Bestiaire ou le Cortege d'Orphee came out in the following year with illustrations by Dufy. His relationship with Marie Laurencin, tender and stormy in turns, came to an end in 1913; the resultant moral depression is reflected in Alcools, particularly in 'Zone'. Another factor contributed to the blackness of this period. In 1911 Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre; the story of this half-tragic, half-farcical event is told in the notes to the poems 'A la Sante' (see pp. 173-4). There is no doubt that Apollinaire received a severe setback. As a stateless person, he might have been deported, losing at one stroke his career, his friends and France. This fear reinforced questions of identity, self-searching and insecurity. This was his mood when Alcools was published in 1913. The rest of the story does not concern us here. It is enough to say that the mercurial nature of Apollinaire reasserted itself, his friendship with the painter Robert Delaunay led to a renewal of ideas, seen in Simultaneisme, in the typographical experiments in Calligrammes. The outbreak of war in 1914 provided him with a new challenge. Since he was not a French citizen, conscription did not affect him but he nevertheless volunteered and was called to the colours in 1915; he became naturalised French. In 1916, a Lieutenant in an Infantry Regiment, he was severely wounded in the head. This year also saw the publication of Le Poete assassine and, in 1918, Calligrammes, poemes de la paix et de la guerre, 19131916. These war years brought him a considerable amount of satisfaction for he seems to have found himself by the simple act of becoming a French soldier. His voice is graver and more selfassured, regret for the past is replaced by a prophetic look to the future. He can now write in 'Merveille de la guerre' (Calligrammes}:

6

Introduction Je legue a 1'avenir Phistoire de Guillaume Apollinaire Qui fut a la guerre et sut etre partout.

He died of the grippe espagnole on 9 November 1918. THE PUBLICATION AND ORDER OF ALCOOLS

Alcools, poemes 1898-1913 with a portrait of Apollinaire by Picasso was published in 1913 by the Mercure de France. Remy de Gourmont, a power in the influential literary review published by the same house, had been very impressed by 'La Chanson du mal-aime' and had recommended Apollinaire's volume to Alfred Vallette, the editor. M. Decaudin (Doss., pp. 42ff.) has shown that in the year of publication there was a fair amount of interest in the volume as reflected in the sales, but this soon fell off although Apollinaire himself claimed in 1914 that Alcools was sold out. The critical reception accorded to the book was mixed. The poet had a good many friends amongst journalists, chroniqueurs and the younger literary critics who wrote understandingly. The most damaging account of Alcools was however written by Georges Duhamel in the Mercure de France itself (15 June 1913). It began: Rien ne fait plus penser a une boutique de brocanteur que ce recueil de vers public par M. Guillaume Apollinaire sous un titre a la fois simple et mysterieux: Alcools. Je dis: boutique de brocanteur parce qu'il est venu echouer dans ce taudis une foule d'objets heteroclites dont certains ont de la valeur, mais dont aucun n'est le produit de 1'industrie du marchand meme. C'est bien la une des caracteristiques de la brocante: elle revend; elle ne fabrique pas. [The review is quoted in full in Doss., pp. 49-50]

This accusation of a conspicuous lack of originality was calculated to hurt Apollinaire whose drive to le nouveau was already apparent. There follows an ironic tribute to the poet's erudition: 'M. Apollinaire ne manque pas d'erudition; on a constamment 1'impression qu'il dit tout ce qu'il sait' but Duhamel judges this to lead to failure, to the 'image manquee'. 'J'aimerais mieux que M. Apollinaire fut illettre et qu'il ecrivit plus souvent selon son cceur' again shocked the poet whose belief in the truth of poetry

Introduction

7

was now paramount. The review so infuriated him that his first instinct was to seek satisfaction by duel but the situation was smoothed over by the intervention of friends. The title Alcools was a late choice, being preferred to the original Eau-de-vie which was included in a portrait of Apollinaire executed by the Polish artist Marcoussis in mid-igia. Both words occur at the end of 'Zone': Et tu bois cct alcool brulant comme ta vie Ta vie que tu bois comme cette eau-de-vie

and he uses both in a rather precious dedication which he inscribed on a copy of the volume which he presented to Marie Laurencin: Mon ALAMBIC vos yeux ce sont mes ALCOOLS Et votre voix m'enivre ainsi qu'une eau-de-vie Des clartes d'astres saouls aux monstrueux faux cols Brulaient votre ESPRIT sur ma nuit inassouvie.

Tristan Tzara has argued that Apollinaire preferred 'la nudite exacte, reelle, sans promiscuite possible, du mot \Alcools\ qui n'est que lui-meme' and, comparing it to the title Les Fleurs du mal which reveals the 'demarche allegorique et symbolique de la pensee baudelairienne', concluded that: les Alcools brutaux et plebeiens, opposes aux fleurs aristocratiques et fines, resument la somme du realisme lyrique qu'Apollinaire jetait dans la balance des temps modernes en contrepartie de celui, historiquement en tous points valable, de Baudelaire. (Alcools, Club du meilleur livre, 1953, pp. 3-4)

The harmonics of the word alcools with its hints at joy and subsequent sadness, pleasure and danger, of distillation in the magic process of fire and water, convey well the excitements and contradictions of the poems. The volume contains fifty poems of which forty-three had already appeared in different literary reviews, six ('La Blanche Neige', 'Un Soir', '1909', 'A la Sante', 'Automne malade' and 'Hotels') were printed in the volume for the first tirne and one ('Chantre') was added on the proofs. As indicated by the title, the date of composition of the poems lies between 1898 and 1913.

8

Introduction

The poems are not, however, printed in chronological order. A few of the poems are dated by Apollinaire but the problems of dating the remainder are very considerable. The pioneer work of LeRoy C. Breunig ('The Chronology of Apollinaire's Alcools', P.M.L.A., December 1952) and M. Decaudin's Le Dossier d' 'Alcools' are indispensable tools for any examination of this complex issue. Apollinaire wrote quickly, often leaving lines and poems unfinished. They were set aside and fragments incorporated into poems composed at a much later date; examples are quoted in notes to individual poems. Mme M.-J. Durry has described the technique as that of a 'mosaiiste' or 'marqueteur' and Breunig has used the word 'collage'. Nor are existing manuscripts always authoritative evidence for Apollinaire sometimes wrote on headed notepaper acquired years earlier. Because the order of the poems is not chronological there has been much speculation on why any particular poem should occupy the place it does. Since the publication of Les Fleurs du mal and Baudelaire's confession to Alfred de Vigny sent with a copy of the second (1861) edition ('Le seul eloge que je sollicite pour ce livre est qu'on reconnaisse qu'ii n'est pas un pur album et qu'il a un commencement et une fin'), it has become irresistibly tempting to try to discover in any collection of poems a secret order of presentation in which a poem gains added significance from its place, its meaning being influenced by what has gone before and by what is to follow. There is no such evidence to be found in the arrangement of Alcools nor did Apollinaire admit of any such underlying intention. The volume opens and closes with a long poem. 'Zone' (1912) with its private history of despair and alienation presents a moral portrait of the poet which succeeding poems both confirm and contradict. 'Vendemiaire', published the same year but almost certainly written three or fours years earlier, closes the volume, not with any facile optimism but with strong affirmations of man's potential. In the first poem, the poet's geographical wanderings mirror the frantic movements of his mind in his search for explanation and justification, ending in the hopeless light of another despairing dawn; in 'Vendemiaire', it is the world and its cities which come to him, to pay homage to the poet, centre of the universe. Here the dawn has all the trappings of joyful promise. Scott Bates has argued that Apolliri-

Introduction

9

aire broke away from chronology to establish a 'simultaneous unity' of poetic personality and theme. There is no grouping by subject; long poems are separated by short poems. The denial of any facile autobiographical chronology allows the poet to cover his tracks and to diminish the element of direct confession. The variety of styles from the earliest to the later poems confers on the book a greater impression of originality. Typography, too, has a role to play for Apollinaire had a keen eye for lay-out. APOLLINAIRE'S POETICS From a study of the poems of Alcools and of associated material, it is possible to establish a view of Apollinaire's poetics during this period of his life. It is clear that he is a 'natural' poet to whom the act of writing in verse is easier, he confessed, than writing in prose. Even in the trenches, the flow of verse went on uninterrupted, quickened indeed by the new excitements. The Pleiade edition of his poetic works comes to over 1000 pages. Andre Salmon said of him: Tl etait toujours en train d'ecrire quelque chose tire de lui par 1'exterieur ou 1'interieur' (cit. M.-J. Durry, 'Alcools', i, p. 135) but the immediate urge to write is followed by the long, slow process of critical revision. It is the practice of poetry that interested Apollinaire for he is not one of the great poetcritics in the tradition of Baudelaire, Mallarme and Valery. Indeed, Andre Breton described him, with justification, as a 'mediocre estheticien'. Apollinaire's life was too disjointed, too busy to foster mature reflection; much of his critical work was written for those weeklies and monthlies in which he had a regular column. There are some strange and exaggerated pieces in praise of writers like Saint-Georges de Bouhelier, Paul Fort and Jean de Gourmont. Paul Adam is judged to be one of the 'grands ecrivains de son epoque'. This may be because Apollinaire is essentially a critic of encouragement for whom positive affirmation is more important than destruction. He shows a marked preference for the new and the modern, but as he gained experience, there are startling flashes of perception. Above all, he is the master of the revealing anecdote. Curiously enough, his aesthetic meditations are hinged more to the body of his art criticism than to the literary chroniques. The lecture on 'L'Esprit nouveau et les

Io

Introduction

poetes' is the most sustained of his pieces of pure literary criticism. It is clear that Apollinaire's verse is above all lyrical in that it is based on his own emotional experiences, that it is a confession however veiled and that it is poles apart from, for example, the cooler intellectualised verse of Paul Valery, his near contemporary. His statement already quoted that 'chacun de mes poemes est la commemoration d'un evenement de ma vie' admits the personal element which lies behind his work, but is, in some respects, misleading. Apollinaire's reticence guards his ultimate privacy and, at a moment when the poem seems to be on the edge of the last confession, the emotional temperature is abruptly lowered. He denies the traditional closed circle of lyrical obsession —man, emotion, nature—by the violent, unexpected intrusions of the external world at the critical moment. In 'Les Colchiques', a Baudelairian correspondance is established in the first stanza ending: Le colchique coulcur dc cerne ct de lilas Y fleurit tes yeux sont comme cette fleur-la Violatres comme leur cerne et comme cet automne Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s'empoisonne

but the next line denies the claustrophobic atmosphere by introducing a foreign element which has nothing at all to do with the theme of the poem: Les enfants de 1'ecole viennent avec fracas Vetus de hoquetons et jouant de Pharmonica.

There are many examples of such deflations of what is traditionally a private introspection: in 'Marie', soldiers pass through a grey and white landscape of grief; in 'Mai', a whole gallery of strangers crosses the scene, leading their own mysterious lives, present and yet apart: Sur le chemin du bord du fleuve lentement Un ours un singe un chien menes par des tziganes Suivaient une roulotte trainee par un ane Tandis que s'eloignait dans les vignes rhenanes Sur un fifre lointain un air de regiment.

The procedure is too common for it to be explained by the chance of composition of one or two poems. The same effect in defusing

Introduction

11

emotion is sometimes obtained by stylistic means. In 'La Chanson du mal-aime' a harrowing passage of regret on the theme: O mon ombre en dcuil de moi-meme (1. 185)

leads the unsuspecting reader to: Et moi j'ai le cceur aussi gros Qu'un cul de dame damascene (11. 196-7)

The same effect is achieved on a much larger scale by the obscene tone of the intermede, 'Reponse des Cosaques Zaporogues au Sultan de Constantinople' in the same poem. It is one of the many paradoxes of Apollinaire that he should welcome the sufferings imposed on him by life and, in particular, by love. He wrote rather naively to Lou on 11 April 1915: 'Je ne deteste pas que 1'Amour me fasse parfois souffrir. C'est la une source intarissable de poesie. II est vrai qu'il faut que la souffrance ne dure pas trop long temps' (Lettres a Lou, p. 280). It is not of course only the emotion of love which lies at the heart of Apollinaire's lyricism. In 1908 he wrote to Toussaint Luca, an old school-friend: 'Je ne cherche qu'un lyrisme neuf et humaniste en meme temps' (O.C., iv, p. 697) and, in the same year in an article on Jean Royere, said: 'Les miracles lyriques sont quotidiens' (O.C., iii, p. 781). A man of his age, he discovered around him ample material for reflection and yet he never ignored the sweep of history, legend and myth. The curiously disparate allusions which decorate his poems are drawn from a vast range and yet he was not an erudite man in any disciplined sense. His knowledge has been gathered from his omnivorous but undirected reading and a truly remarkable memory permitted him to exhume rare facts which he used to illuminate his ideas. The paradox of the 'modern' poet who calls upon the past is another of the bewildering sides of his work. His devise d'editeur invented for the first edition of Le Bestiaire was 'J'emerveille'; Apollinaire's great gift was to be able to stand in wonder before the past as well as the present. His erudition allowed him another mode of disguise and also conferred a certain universality on the experiences of one man. It was for Apollinaire a manifestation of

12

Introduction

the poetic imagination. Writing on anecdotes featuring Gerard de Nerval reprinted in Les Marges in 1911, Apollinaire repeated a conversation in which Nerval had referred to a number of obscure thinkers and commented: Esprit charmant! Je 1'eusse aime comme un frere. Et qu'on ne s'y trompe point, une telle conversation n'indique pas ce qu'il est convenu aujourd'hui d'appeler de Perudition et qui n'en est point; c'etait tout simplement 1'indice d'une imagination ardente qu'il essayait de mettre a la portee de son interlocuteur en choisissant parmi les notions que tout le monde peut avoir acquises, les plus rares. (O.C., ii, p. 324) Selective, haphazard and betraying his incurable appetite for the more eccentric sides of human behaviour, Apollinaire's erudition allowed his poetic expression at once a new dimension in time and a wider system of reference. It is in this sense that he sought for a 'lyrisme humaniste'. One of the constants in Apollinaire's poetry is the creative tension described in the well-known lines of 'La Jolie Rousse' (Calligrammes]: Je juge cette longue querelle de la tradition et de 1'invention De 1'Ordre et de 1'Aventure. Tradition and ordre represent for Apollinaire the heritage of a long poetic tradition whilst invention and aventure are the aesthetic response to the challenge of contemporary life, both in ideas and in technique. It is a measure of the strength of his belief in the relevance of the past that he, acknowledged leader of the young generation of avant-garde writers, should, in 1917, begin his lecture on L'Esprit nouveau et les poetes in this way: L'esprit nouveau qui s'annonce pretend avant tout heriter des classiques un solide bon sens, un esprit critique assure, des vues d'ensemble sur 1'univers et dans 1'ame humaine, et le sens du devoir qui depouille les sentiments et en limite ou plutot en contient les manifestations. II pretend encore heriter des romantiques une curiosite qui le pousse a explorer tous les domaines propres a fournir une matiere litteraire qui permette d'exalter la vie sous quelque forme qu'elle se presente. (O.C., iii, p. 900)

Introduction

13

His admiration for Villon, Malherbe, Maynard and Racine is unaffected; he is able to describe La Fontaine as 'le parangon des poetes fran9ais'. The lyrical mode encourages a certain backward look and he wrote wryly: 'Les poetes personnels rappellent parfois d'autres poetes'. This admiration for the past is in no way a sterile imitation; it holds in a creative equilibrium his urge to experiment and so, by checks and balances, shapes that part of his poetry which seeks new forms of expressions. 'No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone', wrote T. S. Eliot in his sharply perceptive essay 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (first published in 1919), 'his significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists'. The whole essay is an admirable commentary on the Apollinaire situation. He belongs to the endless tradition of writers who, having suffered the same anguish, triumphantly translated suffering into art. It is in this sense that he could write: II ne faut point voir de tristesse dans mon ceuvre, mais la vie m6me, avec une constante et consciente volupte" de vivre, de connaitre, de voir, de savoir et d'exprimer. (T.S., i i August 1915, p. 89)

It would be absurd to attempt to compartmentalise Apollinaire's work into 'tradition' and 'invention'. Both urges coexisted in him for, as he stated firmly in Les Peintres cubistes: 'Je deteste les artistes qui ne sont pas de leur epoque'. The nature of contemporaneity contains many different things for him: science, the idea of progress, experiments in the arts and, above all, their uses in the exploration of the nature of man. He felt this deeply and at times even uncritically; he was afraid that he might not rise to the challenge of his times, as is apparent in a letter to Andre Gide dated June 1911: Je n'ai faim ni de gloire ni d'argent mais seulement de mon temps . . ., j'ai peur que mon epoque me surpasse sans meme m'&nouvoir. (in M. Adema, Apollinaire, 1968, p. 179)

A fervent adhesion to the new and the modern has many dangers as Paul Valery pointed out: Le nouveau est, par definition, la partie peYissable des choses. Le

14

Introduction

danger du nouveau est qu'il cesse automatiquement de 1'etre et qu'il le cesse en pure perte. Comme la jeunesse et la vie. Essayer de s'opposer a cette perte c'est done agir contre le nouveau. Chercher done le nouveau en tant qu'artiste, c'est ou bien chercher a disparaitre; ou chercher sous le nom du nouveau, toute autre chose, et se livrer a une m^prise. Le nouveau n'a d'attraits irresistibles que pour les esprits qui demandent au simple changement leur excitation maxima. Ce qui est le meilleur dans le nouveau est ce qui repond a un desir ancien. (CEuvres, Pleiade, ii, pp. 560-1) Baudelaire's remarks on modernity would be much more akin to Apollinaire's own view. La modernite, c'est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitie de 1'art, dont 1'autre moitid est Peternel et 1'immuable. II y a eu une modernite pour chaque peintre ancien. ('Le Peintre de la vie moderne', O.C., p. 1163) This is what Apollinaire was saying in a letter of 18 October 1915: 'la meilleure fa9on d'etre classique et pondere est d'etre de son temps en ne sacrifiant rien de ce que les Anciens ont pu nous apprendre' (Lettres a sa marraine, O.C., iv, p. 675). The decor of the age appears often in Alcools, from the 'grace de cette rue industrielle' of 'Zone5 to the lurid noise of the city at night in 'La Chanson du mal-aime': Soirs de Paris ivres du gin Flambant de 1'electricite Les tramways feux verts sur 1'echine Musiquent au long des portees De rails leur folie de machines (11. 281-5) but le nouveau means much more than the simple exaltation of twentieth-century ironmongery which, Apollinaire was well aware, was itself transitory. The challenge of the century expressed itself in the shock and surprise of a new vision, the need of the writer to find an idiom suitable for the expression of new ideas, the changed identity of man, speed and discontinuity. Apollinaire's poetic temperament reacted to these problems in a number of ways. High upon the list of attitudes required by

Introduction

15

the writer in his struggle with the contemporary came surprise, 'le plus grand ressort nouveau'. The technique of surprise for Apollinaire extended to vocabulary, images, versification and registers of style, all of which we shall examine later. It included a sharp sense of incongruity ('La Maison des morts'), of situation (the flight of Christ in 'Zone'), of character ('Merlin et la vieille femme'). Surprise often deepens into shock and the danger here is that surprise may become an end in itself, that the search for the unexpected begins to dominate at the expense of the unity of the poem. The success of Apollinaire within this field must be judged against these words of Valery: La surprise, objet de 1'art ? Mais on se trompe souvent sur le genre de surprise qui est digne de 1'art. II n'y faut pas de surprises finies qui consistent dans le seul inattendu; mais des surprises infinies, qui soient obtenues par une disposition toujours renaissante, et contre laquelle toute 1'attente du monde ne peut preValoir. (CEuvres, Pleiade, ii, p. 560) It was in this deep sense that Apollinaire's poetic ambitions were changed by his relationship with the young painters. Problems concerning the inter-relationship of the arts present enormous difficulties. It is very doubtful whether the description 'poesie cubiste' applied to Apollinaire's work by certain critics has any real significance. It is true that Picasso's great Cubist painting Les Demoiselles d* Avignon dates from November 1907 and that this conveniently coincides with Apollinaire's new aesthetic excitements but Max Jacob, perhaps not always a reliable witness, confessed that both he and Apollinaire had been baffled by the painting and the early creations of Cubism. It makes little sense to talk about Cubist poetry: however close may be the friendship between poets and painters, however similar their drive to experiment, the fact obstinately remains that the painter must work in two dimensions, with paint and canvas, whilst the poet uses words disposed in a syntactical order. The painter creates a picture which can be embraced in a single glance, simultaneously, but poetry requires that we read word by word, line by line, successively, in a series of impressions which cannot achieve the immediacy of impact of painting. Both poets and painters may be impelled by similar reactions, by current ideas, by new aesthetic experiences like the revelations of primitive art in

16

Introduction

exhibitions held in Paris galleries early in the century; certainly, the very fact of friendship presupposes a similarity of temperament and a community of interest. If there is a confusion of terms between Cubist painting and 'poesie cubiste' it is none of Apollinaire's making. In an essay on Henri Matisse dating from 1907, he said clearly: II n'y a pas de rapport de la peinture a la litterature, et je me suis efForc^ de n'e"tablir a cet egard aucune confusion. C'est que chez Matisse 1'expression plastique est un but, de me'me que pour le poete 1'expression lyrique. (O.C., iv, p. 84)

Later, in 1918, with a greater perspective, he wrote more positively: II n'existe pas de relations entre le cubisme et la nouvelle orientation litte"raire. Les peintres cubistes se servent d'e"lements accessoires, d'e'le'ments exterieurs pour construire leurs oeuvres. Leurs oeuvres sont essentiellement destinies aux regards des spectateurs devant lesquels elles exhibent, pour ainsi dire, les secrets de leurs volumes et le jeu de leurs dimensions. Ce sont bien plutot des ceuvres d'analyse, analyse simple chez les uns, complexe chez les autres. Les notres, au contraire, s'acheminent directement vers 1'esprit, aupres duquel elles remplissent plutot une fonction de synthese; ce n'est pas pour rien qu'elles sont lyriques.

(G.A. 7, p. 185)

Common to both statements is the view that the aim of poetry is lyrical expression and that this is something which essentially involves a synthesis; this synthesis will demand a view of reality which is formed, in the true Baudelairian sense, by the imagination drawing from the world's 'magasin d'images et de signes'. These discriminations do not mean that Apollinaire was unaffected by the Cubist experiment: indeed, the example of Picasso, Braque and other painters of similar taste provided him with a mental stimulus which drove him further along the path of le nouveau. There are three ways in which his poetic views gained from his frequentation of Cubism. Firstly, there is the audacity of the work which he described in 1912 as 'la manifestation artistique la plus elevee de notre epoque' (O.C., iv, p. 234). Over the years it stimulated him to reflect on the problems it raised. His collected articles published in the

Introduction

17

Meditations esthetiques—Les Peintres cubistes (1913) were not, he insisted, an 'ouvrage de vulgarisation de cubisme'. They were, he argued, 'meditations esthetiques et rien d'autre'. Yet, in some ways, this is the attraction of opposites, as LeRoy C. Breunig has pointed out, for the style of Cubism was antithetic to Apollinaire: le style cubiste, en d6pit de toute la bonne volont£ d'Apollinaire, lui resta toujours dtranger. C'est un style austere, presque puritain, aux couleurs terreuses, qui veut r^aliser une composition rigoureusement logique. Les elements de la realitd: qui se trouvent pour ainsi dire Iib6res sur la toile doivent a leur tour concourir a former un ensemble coh6rent et parfaitement e"quilibre". L'artiste qui se met a cre"er une telle composition doit poss&ier un esprit ordonne, me"thodique. Plus on connait le temperament violent de Picasso et plus on admire le sacrifice surhumain qu'il s'est impose" entre 1907 et 1912 pour formuler un style si sobre, si asce"tique. G'etait cet effort he"roiique qu'admirait Apollinaire . . . mais quant a la peinture elle-meme nous savons d'apres ses cents qu'il aimait surtout les periodes bleue et rose d'une part et de 1'autre les toiles qui commencent a retrouver de 1'exuberance a partir de 1912. (G.A. i, pp. 22-3) Secondly, Apollinaire recognised as one of the most remarkable ambitions of Cubism the move away from the servile imitation of nature. 'Les peintres, s'ils observent encore la nature, ne 1'imitent plus', he wrote and concluded: 'le sujet ne compte plus ou s'il compte c'est a peine' (O.C., iv, p. 286). This end to vraisemblance, to mimetic art, conferred on all artists a new freedom in which the work of art gained an autonomous existence, became an object in itself creating its own reality and justification. In poetic terms, this encouraged Apollinaire to depart from narration, description and the drive towards the pure evocation of emotion. The act of analysis resulting eventually in the synthesis of a recreated object conferred on the artist the powers of a creator, the ability to 'ordonner un chaos'. Images taken from the Book of Genesis are never very far from Apollinaire's mind in this context. A third and deeply personal gain from Cubism is to be seen in his treatment of time. In his analysis and subsequent recreation of the object, the Cubist painter abolishes successive moments of time in favour of a simultaneous view. We can only perceive the human face in all its shapes from profile to full face in succession.

18

Introduction

The mouth of a jug moves from a perfect circle, through an infinite number of ellipses to a straight line, if revolved at eye level. These different aspects imply the existence of time as a linear, irreversible flow which is traditionally rendered by the use of perspective. Picasso, Braque and the Cubists present simultaneously aspects of objects which we have been educated to perceive only as successive: they frequently depict the human face in several aspects at once (this was the revelation of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of Picasso). From this Apollinaire discovered the virtues of discontinuity, of the denial of time compartmentalised and separated into past, present and future, concepts which confer on his poetry much of its impact. Tristan Tzara has described in this way the impact of Cubism on Apollinaire's style: Pour Apollinaire, la solution du re"alisme adoptee par les peintres cubistes faisait deja partie de sa conception poetique. La decomposition par eux preconisee des elements objectifs etait destinee a une reconstitution ulterieure selon un ordre plus proche de la nature intime des choses et de leur situation dans I'espace que la vision apparente reproduite sur la toile plane au milieu des tricheries de la perspective et des illusions figuratives. C'est ainsi que la poesie d'Apollinaire faisait appel aux images de choc, bien plus qu'aux me"taphores, la grammaire discursive y e"tant partiellement remplacee par une sorte de syntaxe gestuelle et par le dynamisme de la mise en presence de facteurs apparemment dispar\tes. Alcools se trouve au centre meme de cette epoque critique, capitale •>our la comprehension de 1'art et de 1'esprit d'aujourd'hui. (Alcools, Club du meilleur livre, p. 8)

All these ideas are bound up in the poet's growing conviction that he and his fellows are creators made in the image of God: La vie n'est douloureuse que pour ceux qui se tiennent eloign^s de la poe"sie par quoi il est vrai que nous sommes a 1'image de Dieu. La poesie est (meme etymologiquement) la creation. La creation, expression sereine de 1'intelligence hors du temps est la joie parfaite. (T.S., n August 1915, p. 89)

After Alcools, Apollinaire will add to his vision of poetry the task of prophecy, but in this volume the poet's ambition is to interpret the world, to fit private emotional experience into a more general statement about the human condition and to examine the poet himself in the context of the twentieth century.

Introduction

19

THE T H E M E S OF ALCOOLS

According to P. Guiraud, Index du vocabulaire du Symbolisme, i, Index des mots d' l Alcools' de Guillaume Apollinaire, the noun used most frequently in Alcools is amour (fifty-three times) and aimer (fortynine times), the most used verb after aller. This is a fair indication of the importance of the experience of love as a theme in Alcools. The first four poems, 'Zone', 'Le Pont Mirabeau', 'La Chanson du mal-aime' and 'Les Colchiques' are all concerned with the poet's emotional history although, characteristically, they all include much wider-ranging issues. The major impression received by the reader of Alcools is that of the sadness of love: L'amour lourd comme un ours prive ('La Tzigane')

and: Lotte 1'amour rend triste ('Les Femmes') Close behind is the idea of treachery which informs 'La Chanson du mal-aime': La faussete de 1'amour meme. Apollinaire's own mischance in his sentimental experience leads him to generalise: L'amour est devenu mauvais ('Le Brasier') and to reflect on the transience of love: L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante ('Le Pont Mirabeau') 'La Chanson du mal-aime' is a comprehensive anthology of the poet's conflicting attitudes to love, ranging from tenderness to hate. The happiness of love is rarely evoked in the present tense but the 'Aubade' triumphantly recalls a happy moment of the past. We have already noticed the reticence which veils his poems when they appear to be on the verge of a too-personal confession, but the elaborate use of legendary, historical o r mythological figures also covers his tracks and confers a new

so

Introduction

dimension on private experience. Apollinaire frequently applies the same names and the same references to the different women of his life. The element of eroticism is carefully hidden in Alcools and, indeed, in all the poems Apollinaire published under his own name during his lifetime. There is no doubt that Apollinaire had a considerable interest in eroticism in theory (he published anonymously two pornographic novels Les Memoires de Don Juan and Les Onze mille verges in 1907) as well as in practice, if we are to believe the Lettres a Lou first published in 1969. The obscurity of the sept epees in 'La Chanson du mal-aime' bears witness to his discretion. There is however a saving factor in his dismal record, hinted at in the epigraph to 'La Chanson du mal-aime' and added some years after the events: Et je chantais cette romance En 1903 sans savoir Que mon amour a la semblance Du beau Phenix s'il meurt un soir Le matin voit sa renaissance.

In spite of his own experiences, love remained for Apollinaire a perennial renewal and challenge, its upsurge often coinciding with a change in direction of his aesthetic practices. The lines from the 'Poeme lu au mariage d'Andre Salmon' reflect this positive element: Rejouissons-nous parce que directeur du feu et des poetes L'amour qui emplit ainsi que la lumiere Tout le solide espace entre les etoiles et les planetes L'amour veut qu'aujourd'hui mon ami Andre Salmon se marie.

The general impression engendered by Apollinaire's reflections on love are heightened by the use he makes of nature in this context, as a 'correspondance' or as an 'etat d'ame'; it is almost always autumn which provides the setting. Autumn is the season of death: Dieu de mes dieux morts en automne ('La Chanson du mal-aime', 1. 177)

it is at once the killer: Oh! 1'automne 1'automne a fait mourir 1'ete ('Automne', 1. 7)

Introduction

21

and the victim: Pauvre automne Meurs en blancheur et en richesse De neige et de fruits murs ('Automne malade', 11. 5-7) Above all, it is his preferred season. In 'Signe' he wrote: Je suis soumis au Chef du Signe de PAutomne and, later in the same poem: Mon Automne eternelle 6 ma saison mentale. There is an easy identification here for that melancholy side of Apollinaire, surrendering itself to the long poetic tradition which equates autumn with the death of nature and the death of love. The presence of death is everywhere in Alcools (surprisingly, there are more references to mort and its derivatives in this volume than in Calligrammes, in spite of the war poems) but as an inescapable fact of the human condition rather than as an obsession. The presence of the dead amongst the living in 'La Maison des morts', has sadder overtones in 'Rhenane d'automne'. Apollinaire has a marked feeling for the processes of decay which is manifested with greater subtlety in 'Mai'. The poem begins idyllically: Le mai le joli mai en barque sur le Rhin but spring, the season of love and renewal, is flawed: Or des vergers fleuris se figeaient en arriere Les p^tales tombed des cerisiers de mai Sont les ongles de celle que j'ai tant aim^e Les p&ales fl^tris sont comme ses paupieres. The month of May, dying itself, decorates, not the rebirth of the season but: Le mai le joli mai a par6 les ruines. Apollinaire notes the same phenomenon more briefly in 'Zone': . . . tu observes au lieu d'e'crire ton conte en prose La c£toine qui dort dans le cceur de la rose (11. 97-8)

22

Introduction

From the treatment of the themes of love, nature and death there emerges a deep feeling of sadness at the transience of all things human. Apollinaire, insecure as he was in his life and in his restless search for new aesthetic directions, desired permanence and indeed the dialogue between transience and permanence is central to his work. He confessed in a letter on 4 August 1916: Rien ne determine plus de melancolie chez moi que cette fuite du temps. Elle est en desaccord si formel avec mon sentiment, mon identite, qu'elle est la source meme de ma poesie.

Earlier, in the same letter, he had said: 'Je n'ai jamais desire de quitter pour ma part le lieu ou je vivais et j'ai toujours desire que le present tel qu'il fut perdurat' (Lettres a sa marraine, O.C., iv, p. 686). His attachment to the known is a manifestation of his desire for stability: Les hommes ne se separent de rien sans regret et meme les lieux, les choses et les gens qui les rendirent le plus malheureux, ils ne les abandonnent point sans douleur'. ('Souvenir d'AuteuiP, F.D.R., O.C., ii, p. 17)

but we shall see that this coexists with his need to travel, his desire for errance. His obsession with the passing of time takes on different forms. Sometimes the poet has the irrepressible feeling that time passes him by (the river image is common here) as in 'Le Pont Mirabeau'; at other times, the poet is irrevocably swept away by time from actual or potential happiness, as in 'Mai': Le mai le joli mai en barque sur le Rhin Des dames regardaient du haut de la montagne Vous etes si jolies mais la barque s'eloigne.

This is of course one of the commonest of lyrical themes but Apollinaire gives it a particular individual twist. There is the tough realistic admission that time past cannot be recalled: Ni temps pass£ Ni les amours reviennent ('Le Pont Mirabeau')

and that regret for the past, for 'Ce Passe ces tetes de mort', is

Introduction

23

not an attitude which can help the poet come to grips with himself and with his own age. J'ai eu le courage de regarder en arriere Les cadavres de mes jours ('Les Fiancailles', 11. 37-8)

and from this backward look, not sentimentally regretful, but critical, historical and, above all, imaginative, will come an enrichment of the poet's vision and his powers of prophecy. The lines of'Cortege' are relevant: Temps passes Trepass^s Les dieux qui me formates , Je ne vis que passant ainsi que vous passates Et detournant mes yeux de ce vide avenir En moi-meme je vois tout le passd grandir Rien n'est mort que ce qui n'existe pas encore Pres du pass6 luisant demain est incolore II est informe aussi pres de ce qui parfait Presente tout ensemble et Peffort et Peffet

(11. 66-73) So the past is not dead unless we spend our time regretting events which are forever spent. In this sense time is invincible but in Apollinaire's work, the idea of rebirth and resurrection is strong, as witness the lines from 'Merlin et la vieille femme': Merlin guettait la vie et 1'eternelle cause Qui fait mourir et puis renaitre 1'univers

(11. 7-8) One of the principal agents in the conquest of time is the memory. In the splendid line of 'La Chanson du mal-aime': Mon beau navire 6 ma memoire (I- 50

the poet acknowledges the freedom which memory confers on him to explore the past whilst remaining in the present. The imagination, working on the products of the memory, can reinterpret and override the linear flow of time. The past is thus recreated at the poet's will. There are many references to the Easter mysteries of the Christian faith and to the Phoenix, {ce bucher qui soi-meme s'engendre' ('Zone'). It is however the 2—A

* *

24

Introduction

image of the brazier and of its attendant flames which is the most relevant. Fire is seen as a force which consumes and purifies: J'ai jet£ dans le noble feu Que je transporte et que j 'adore De vives mains et meme feu Ge Pass£ ces tetes de mort Flamme je fais ce que tu veux ('Le Brasier', 11. 1-5) The idea of sacrifice and danger in the surrender to the fire of inspiration is one which will appeal particularly to the Surrealists. The image takes on Christian overtones in: Langues de feu ou sont-elles mes pentecotes ('Palais', 1. 44) and the poet knows he is set apart from other men: II n'y a plus rien de commun entre moi Et ceux qui craignent les brulures ('Le Brasier', 11. 41-2) The flames of Alcools are the dangerous agents of the ideal, the drive to create, symbolising hope, knowledge, light and are set in contrast against the heavy threatening ombres of black despair. Reference has already been made to Apollinaire's insecurities and feelings of alienation: he is one of the earliest writers to feel this problem which becomes dominant as the twentieth century progresses (for a fuller discussion of this point, see my article on 'Guillaume Apollinaire and the Search for Identity' in Order and Adventure in Post-Romantic French Poetry: Essays presented to C. A. Hackett, Oxford, Blackwell, 1973). 'Zone', with its schizophrenic dialogue between the poet's two voices, one using tu and the other je, is perhaps the clearest example of his search but the confession of 'Cortege' is just as revealing: Un jour Un jour je m'attendais moi-meme Je me disais Guillaume il est temps que tu viennes Pour que je sache enfin celui-1^ que je suis Moi qui connais les autres (11. 19-23)

Introduction

25

Apollinaire has merged the Symbolist interest in the errant figure of questing man with the wandering Jew legend to suit his own chronicles of self-discovery. There are no poems in Alcools which have an exclusively religious theme and yet the whole volume draws much sustenance from the Bible. Robert Couffignal (U Inspiration biblique dans Vasuvre de Guillaume Apollinaire), has traced the borrowings which Apollinaire constantly made from the Bible, in his prose as well as his verse. The great central event of the Christian faith—the Resurrection—has a privileged place in his imagery but in the main, except for the fundamental self-questioning, his interest is attached to the minor biblical figures and events which figure in his curious history of human achievement. There is certainly no anti-clericalism in Alcools and no attack on religion. 'Zone' is the poem which most significantly reveals his private religious history, the fervent belief of childhood giving way to the loss of faith which inspired in him, as Mme M.-J. Durry has well said, 'une nostalgic de la foi'. The Bible has of course a strong element of le merveilleux which greatly appealed to Apollinaire and added to his private gallery of other magical figures like Orpheus, Icarus and Merlin. This is another area in which the Surrealists will recognise the originality of his vision. What emerges from Alcools is Apollinaire's growing consciousness that the poet is a unique interpreter of the world, a creator, like God. Le mdtier de poete n'est pas inutile, ni fou, ni frivoie. Les poetes sont les createurs . . . Rien ne vient done sur terre, n'apparait aux yeux des hommes s'il n'a d'abord 6te imaging par un poete he wrote (18 January 1915, Lettres a Lou, p. 120) and he adheres more firmly to this belief as he grows older, adding prophecy to the qualities of the poet. He triumphs over the world: 'la faussete est une mere feconde . . . mais, triomphe de la fausset6, de 1'erreur, de l'imagination, Dieu et le poete creent a 1'envi' ('Jean Royere', O.C., iii, p. 783). The poet's triumph is over nature, time, regret and the human condition itself. The materials from which he creates are all around us; Tart nait ou il peut' he wrote in 1908 (O.C., iii, p. 780) and gives us an example in 'Zone':

26

Introduction

Tu lis les prospectus les catalogues les affiches qui chantent tout haut Voila la poesie ce matin et pour la prose il y a les journaux (11. 11-12)

'Vendemiaire' in its clear affirmations closes the volume with an overriding view of the poet who reflects the world: cje suis ivre d'avoir bu tout 1'univers' (1. 167). If there is to be any renewal of man's vision of the world, it is to the poet that he will owe it: Ni meme on renouvelle le monde en reprenant la Bastille Je sais que seuls le renouvellent ceux qui sonts fondes en poesie ('Poeme lu au mariage d'Andr£ Salmon', 11. 9-10)

This brief analysis of Apollinaire's themes risks injuring the special quality of his poetic voice. His poems hold in tension so many conflicting attitudes and beliefs: a belief in permanence balanced against his apprehension of transience; the present against the past; twentieth-century man against his historical and legendary brothers; the new against the old; intuition against knowledge. Like alcool itself, a magical process involving fire and water, the poems create from conflict a new and heady vision of the world. VERSIFICATION AND STYLE

Apollinaire's deep interest in versification dates from his earliest poetic efforts and reflects the great contemporary obsession with the subject. His youthful poems reveal his preoccupation with traditional forms as well as a desire to avail himself of the new liberties of metrics developed by the Symbolists. Thus, of the poems shown to Toussaint Luca, his friend at the Lycee de Nice in 1897, 'Mort de Pan' (signed with his early pseudonym of Guillaume Macabre) is a sonnet in classical alexandrines, whilst 'Mardi gras' and 'Aurore d'hiver' (O.P., pp. 708-10) are written in irregular rhyming lines. He agreed enthusiastically with Francis Viele-Griffin's definition of free verse as 'une conquete morale' but argued strongly that it was not 'une simplification prosa'ique de la poesie' ('Jean Royere', O.C., iii, p. 782). Its invention gave a boost to lyricism and, whether or not a poet

Introduction

27

availed himself of it, his choice of metre was now more informed, more deliberate, because an alternative was open to him: Pour ce qui est de la po£sie libre dans Alcools il ne peut y avoir aujourd'hui de lyrisme authentique sans la liberte complete du poete et meme s'il 6crit en vers r^guliers c'est sa liberte qui le convie a ce jeu; hors de cette libertd il ne saurait plus avoir de po&ie. (Lettres a sa marraine, 30 October 1915, O.C., iv, p. 676)

Apollinaire never abandoned the traditional metres of French verse; the quatrain of alexandrines and the quintil (five-lined strophes of octosyllabic lines, as in 'La Chanson du mal-aime') were favoured forms. He claimed proudly in a letter to Andre Billy: 'J'ai donne une nouvelle vie aux vers de 8 pieds' (29 July 1918, O.C., iv, p. 778). At the same time as he is writing ' Brasier' and 'Les Fia^ailles' in a form which draws on all his resources as a poet, he is also preparing Le Bestiaire, written in regular metre. There are many references to Apollinaire's methods of composition. He himself said: En effet Madeleine je ne compose qu'en chantant. Un musicien a m£me not6 une fois les trois ou quatre airs qui me servant instinctivement et qui sont la manifestation du rythme de mon existence. (T.S., 3 August 1915, p. 77)

This was confirmed by Max Jacob: Bien loin de faire le vers a sa table comme nous faisions tous . . . il cheminait dans Paris en chantant deux petits airs, toujours les memes, sur lesquels venaient se poser comme une abeille sur une fleur, telle forme de phrase qui exprimait son Emotion du moment, les deux petits airs etaient d'une part la psalmodie des v£pres du dimanche et de 1'autre une certaine chanson du temps de Napoleon III ... Cette poesie etait vraiment inspired, il allongeait les notes pour mettre une syllabe de plus ou au contraire en supprimer. (F.D.R., 8, June 1955, pp. 3-4)

In an important article on 'Le Vers d'Apollinaire (in Le Vers frangais au XXe siecle, ed. Parent, Klincksieck, 1967), M. Decaudin has remarked that 'le compte des syllabes est soumis a 1'oreille bien plus qu'a la regie . . . Apollinaire a le sens de la poesie parlee, il entend le vers'. So, Decaudin argues, one must say in 'Mai':

28

Introduction Vous etes si joli(es) mais la barque s'eloigne

and, in 'La Loreley': Devant son tribunal Pevequ(e) la fit citer D'avance il 1'absolvit a caus(e) de sa beaute O belle Loreley aux yeux pleins de pierr(e)ries De quel magici-en tiens-tu la sorcell(e)rie. But Apollinaire was also affected by the typographical disposition of the poem on the page. Bearing in mind his experiments in Calligrammes where poems are set out in the form appropriate to the subject ('La Cravate et la montre', 'Cceur couronne et miroir', 'II Pleut' printed in slanting lines across the page), he wrote in 'L'Esprit nouveau et le poetes': Les artifices typographiques pousses tres loin avec une grande audace ont 1'avantage de faire naitre un lyrisme visuel qui 6tait presque inconnu avant notre epoque. (O.C., iii, p. 901) Typographical experiments are less advanced in the earlier Alcools but it is interesting to note that when 'Le Pont Mirabeau' first appeared the stanzas were arranged as tercets, thus: Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine.

Et nos amours, faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne ? La joie venait toujours apres la peine. In Alcools, its disposition is changed and becomes more interesting : Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine Et nos amours Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne La joie venait toujours apres la peine. His use of rhyme is very daring. Sometimes the rhymes are extremely original and unexpected like locanda/Gouda and Jersey/ gercees ('Zone') and ressemblait d/jeta ('La Chanson du mal-aime'); sometimes they are the barest of assonances like rencontrejhonte, poches I rouges, Egypte/unique in the same poem. He never lost sight of the value of rhyme in the free rhythms of vers libre, both for its importance in marking line endings and for the potential of

Introduction

29

surprise. Warren Ramsey well summarized Apollinaire's importance in the field of versification when he wrote: 'Not the least of Apollinaire's functions was that of reminding other poets of the traditional sources of French verse' (foreword to Alcools, translated by Anne Hyde Greet). The suppression of all punctuation on the proofs of Alcools has given rise to much critical comment. Louise Faure-Favier tells it thus. Paul Morisse of the editorial staff of the Mercure de France picked up a number of errors of punctuation on the proof sheets of Alcools and drew the poet's attention to them. Apollinaire then: dans un mouvement d'impatience et sans plus d'hdsitation, ddcida de supprimer toute la ponctuation. Et d'une plume r&olue, il trace un magistral deleatur s'appliquant a la ponctuation toute entiere & Alcools, de la premiere ligne a la derniere. (Souvenirs sur Apollinaire, Grasset, 1945, pp. 47-8)

There are other and better reasons. Mallarme had suppressed punctuation in his later poems and in 1912 Marinetti's manifestos in favour of Futurism had advocated, amongst other things, the end of punctuation. In the same year, 'Zone' and 'Vendemiaire' appeared in reviews without punctuation, almost certainly before Apollinaire received the proofs of Alcools. Apollinaire's own explanation is contained in a letter to Henri Martineau, 19 July 1913 (O.C., iv, p. 768): Pour ce qui concerne la ponctuation je ne 1'ai supprime'e que parce qu'elle m'a paru inutile et elle Test en effet, le rythme meme et la coupe des vers voila la veritable ponctuation et il n'en est point besoin d'une autre.

The recordings of'Le Pont Mirabeau', 'Marie' and 'Le Voyageur' made by Apollinaire himself for the Archives de la parole in the Sorbonne in 1913 makes clear how the poet, in his grave, rather light voice, observes strictly the ending of each line. The suppression of punctuation adds to the flow of the poem, confers on it an added ambiguity and—an essential tribute which all readers must pay to the poet—causes us to slow down our reading. The style of Apollinaire avoids rhetoric and it is this aspect which has proved most influential. He moved later towards a belief in a rapid notation: il s'agit de vitesse, de raccourci, le style tdl^graphique nous offre des

30

Introduction

ressources auxquelles 1'ellipse donnera une force et une saveur merveilleusement lyriques. (T.S., i July 1915, p. 48)

He did not believe in the existence of a separate poetic language; this is the point made by Michel Butor in arguing the poetic relevance of Apollinaire: a savoir la conscience extremement aigue qu'il a toujours gardee de la re'alite' physique du langage; on peut dire qu'il a fait retomber la po6sie sur la terre dans son admirable incapacity d'oublier que les mots c'est d'abord quelque chose que 1'on entend, et que Ton voit. ('Monument de rien pour Apollinaire', Nouvelle Revue franfaise, May 1965)

The range of vocabulary is very wide: the rare word rubs shoulders with the vulgar; learned neologisms with dialectal borrowings; erudite references with commonplaces. All these create an unstable poetic climate. For Tristan Tzara this marked a reaction away from a 'mallarmeisme savant' back to a tradition: allant de Villon, a travers Ronsard . . . a Rimbaud et a Verlaine, pour ce qui est de la simplicity de I'expression verbale, du ton confidentiel, anti-rhetorique, bien plus re"citatif qu'oratoire, opposd aux complexions grammaticales des romantiques et des symbolistes. (Alcools, Club du meilleur livre, pp. 8-9)

This however does not lead to a simplistic language for Apollinaire is a master of ambiguity. His use of the pun 'le calembour createur' for Mme Durry and 'le calembour tremplin' for Max Jacob, opens up subtle perspectives. The image plays an important role in Apollinaire's poetry but in a somewhat different way from Symbolism. It is rare to find in his work a poem which is entirely constructed around a central image or series of images: perhaps 'Les Sapins' is the only example in Alcools. He does not favour the structure implicit in poems like Baudelaire's 'La Ghevelure' or the 'Spleen' series and had rather turned away from this, as witness his statement in a letter: On s'est habitu6 aux images. II n'en est plus d'inacceptables et tout peut etre symbolise* par tout. Une litte'rature faite d'images enchaine"es comme

Introduction

31

grains de chapelet est bonne toute au plus pr (sic) des snobs f£rus de mysticite\ G'est a la portde de tout le monde. (T.S., 12 July 1915, p. 55)

Apollinaire's images are briefer and are used to illustrate, to enlighten and to strike a particular note in the reader's mind: Paul Reverdy's definition of a literary image as 'le rapprochement spontane de deux realites tres distinctes dont 1'esprit seul a saisi les rapports' is particularly apposite. Apollinaire's inexhaustible curiosity furnishes the diverse elements to make an image combining the traditional with the modern by a striking adaptation of a pastoral image to the context of the city: Bergere 6 tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bele ce soir ('Zone', 1. 2)

and: Des troupeaux d'autobus mugissants pres de toi roulent (ibid., 1. 72)

Sometimes modern industrial life is expressed in classical terms: Nos cheminees a ciel ouvert engrossent les nu£es Comme fit autrefois PIxion mecanique ('Vend6miaire', 11. 43-4)

Images are used for a humorous deflationary effect as: Et moi j'ai le coeur aussi gros Qu'un cul de dame damascene ('La Chanson du mal-aim6', 11. 196-7)

or for the shock of the apparently incongruous: C'est la lune qui cuit comme un ceuf sur le plat ('Les Fiansailles', 1. 19)

There are times in the earlier work of Apollinaire when it is permissible to doubt the spontaneity of the assemblage of the elements of the image: Le soleil ce jour-la s'etalait comme un ventre Maternel qui saignait lentement sur le ciel La lumiere est ma mere 6 lumiere sanglante Les nuages coulaient comme un flux menstruel ('Merlin et la vieille femme', 11. 1-4)

32

Introduction

and: Les bees de gaz pissaient leur flamme au clair de lune ('Les Fiancailles', 1. 19)

Here the shock that Apollinaire is trying to achieve is against certain proprieties rather than the true poetic shock of recognition. It was a long-held belief of his that even the most insignificant object could hold powerful meanings; in 'L'Esprit nouveau et les poetes' he insisted that 'le moindre fait est pour le poete le postulat, le point de depart d'une immensite inconnue ou flambent les feux de joie de significations multiples', and again, 'On peut partir d'un fait quotidien: un mouchoir qui tombe peut etre pour le poete le levier avec lequel il soulevera tout un univers'. It was this emphasis on the presence of poetry in the most banal aspects of life (which he might have found in Baudelaire) which made Apollinaire one of the sources of Surrealism. Andre Breton thought that Apollinaire's 'trouvailles d'images' had the effect of 'creations spontanees' and Tristan Tzara wrote admiringly of his 'images de choc'. Certain obsessive images emerge from the volume. Light signifies lucidity, hope, confidence, the future and, combined with fire, the magic and dangerous alcool as well as the poet's sacrifice in creation. Darkness and particularly ombres represent despair, the subconscious, the past seen not as the repository of happiness but as a dead weight across the future. CONCLUSION

The reputation and influence of Alcools have steadily grown since its publication for a number of reasons. Firstly, the denial of eloquence practised by Apollinaire has become an accepted ambition of young poets in England and America as well as in France. If Eluard admired his elder it was largely for this reason, seen in his own statement: Rien de plus affreux que le langage po£tis6, que des mots trop jolis gracieusement H6s a d'autres perles. La po6sie veritable s'accommode de nudit^s crues . . . ('Les Senders et les routes de la po&ie', O.C., Pl&ade, ii, p. 530)

The range of Apollinaire's poetic vocabulary is immense,

Introduction

33

developing the ideas advanced by Rimbaud and taking to a very advanced stage Hugo's proud claim to have put a 'bonnet rouge sur le vieux dictionnaire'. He finally destroyed any lingering idea of hierarchy of poetic vocabulary. Next, Apollinaire's consciousness of the discontinuity of the human experience of reality is sharp and very much in accord with twentieth-century rejections of nineteenth-century concepts of literary realism. The structure of the poems of Alcools rarely depends on narrative structures or time sequences rigorously preserved. Linear time is confused by a subtle use of tenses. The controlling power of the imagination over the memory recreates the past and the present into a Proustian dimension where both are equally privileged. Then there is the experience of alienation, most strongly described in 'Zone' but apparent even in the earlier Rhineland poems. Its taste is sharp and disturbing although it never seeks the black hopelessness of Sartre's La Nausee. Here again Apollinaire is dealing with a key theme of twentieth-century literature. The struggle with angoisse is never very far beneath the surface although the resultant depressions never last for very long. It is this affirmation of optimism which was recognised by Paul Eluard when he said of Apollinaire in a broadcast in 1948: Celui qui a dit: 'La grande force est le desir, savait en effet que le monde n'est pas donne une fois pour toutes et que 1'homme est en meme temps la mesure et la source de toutes choses. A y regarder de pres, il n'y a, dans 1'oeuvre d'Apollinaire, que cette certitude cent fois avouee, a travers les themes les plus diflfdrents. Apollinaire nous dit sans cesse 1'avenir en travail dans 1'esprit humain. (O.C., Pleiade, ii, p. 895)

This view is of course derived from the whole of the range of Apollinaire's work—the assertions of Alcools are more muted and tentative. What does come through with increasing force is his view of the role of the poet as creator. It is a revival of the nineteenthcentury view of the poet-magus in Baudelaire, Mallarme and Rimbaud but its reformulation by Apollinaire, firmly in the context of his own age, takes on a considerable significance.

34

Introduction

His use of humour—of phrase, situation and character— lightens the melancholy of many of the poems and the latent surprise, lying in wait for the unwary and yielding reader are two ingredients which will appeal permanently to Surrealists. Quoting Apollinaire's view that 'la surprise est le plus grand ressort nouveau', Andre Breton went on to say: 'le surrealisme, non seulement s'est range a cette opinion, mais s'en est fait une loi imprescriptible' (Entretiens avec Andre Parinaud, N.R.F., 1952, p. 242). Lastly, there is Apollinaire's dazzling handling of a diversity of verse forms and of images. His use of the octosyllabic line proved a powerful example for both Aragon and Eluard. His paradoxical nature provides an undogmatic example of the potential of poetry. Poet of the city, he is also a nature poet of deep perceptiveness; poet of bonte, he is also a poet of war; poet of the new, he is also a poet whose debt to the past is always generously acknowledged. Apollinaire solved unselfconsciously the problem that was to confound so many writers of Surrealism and of the later 'underground'. If poetry is to reach a wider audience and is to be rescued from the jealous hands of an elite (remembering Lautreamont's much-applauded statement that 'la poesie doit etre faite par tous et non par un'), it must have as its first requirement an ability to communicate directly. The apostles of the avant-garde demand experimental forms and so alienate the very converts they seek, readers whose literary upbringing has been strictly in the most conventional of forms: in this way they succeed in speaking only to another albeit different elite. There is, in Apollinaire, a sense of discretion which bears in mind the abilities of the reader and bends the whole poem to the end of communication and pleasure. Apollinaire had a genuinely poetic mind in the sense defined by T. S. Eliot in an essay on 'The Metaphysical Poets' (first published in 1921): When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular and fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of his typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.

Introduction

35

When the poetic mind is eager to record and illuminate human experience as was Apollinaire's, then the resulting poetry will be fresh and will bring a new direction to lyricism. Apollinaire's ambition was to please, to explore and to communicate with as wide a range of readers as possible: it is an ambition which is at once modest, human and, above all, immensely difficult.

This page intentionally left blank

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

ALGOOLS

This page intentionally left blank

ZONE A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien Bergere 6 tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bele ce matin Tu en as assez de vivre dans 1'antiquite grecque et romaine Ici meme les automobiles ont 1'air d'etre anciennes La religion seule est restee toute neuve la religion Est restee simple comme les hangars de Port-Aviation Seul en Europe tu n'es pas antique 6 Christianisme L'Europeen le plus moderne c'est vous Pape Pie X Et toi que les fenetres observent la honte te retient D'entrer dans une eglise et de t'y confesser ce matin Tu lis les prospectus les catalogues les affiches qui chantent tout haut Voila la poesie ce matin et pour la prose il y a les journaux II y a les livraisons a 25 centimes pleines d'aventures policieres Portraits des grands hommes et mille titres divers J'ai vu ce matin une jolie rue dont j'ai oublie le nom Neuve et propre du soleil elle etait le clairon Les directeurs les ouvriers et les belles steno-dactylographes Du lundi matin au samedi soir quatre fois par jour y passent Le matin par trois fois la sirene y gemit Une cloche rageuse y aboie vers midi Les inscriptions des enseignes et des murailles Les plaques les avis a la fagon des perroquets criaillent J'aime la grace de cette rue industrielle Situee a Paris entre la rue Aumont-Thieville et 1'avenue des Ternes

4

8

12

16

20

24

4O

%one

Voila la jeune rue et tu n'es encore qu'un petit enfant Ta mere ne t'habille que de bleu et de blanc Tu es tres pieux et avec le plus ancien de tes camarades Rene Dalize Vous n'aimez rien tant que les pompes de l'£glise II est neuf heures le gaz est baisse tout bleu vous sortez du dortoir en cachette Vous priez toute la nuit dans la chapelle du college Tandis qu'eternelle et adorable profondeur amethyste Tourne a jamais la flamboyante gloire du Christ C'est le beau lys que tous nous cultivons C'est la torche aux cheveux roux que n'eteint pas le vent C'est le fils pale et vermeil de la douloureuse mere C'est 1'arbre toujours touffu de toutes les prieres C'est la double potence de 1'honneur et de 1'eternite C'est 1'etoile a six branches C'est Dieu qui meurt le vendredi et ressuscite le dimanche C'est le Christ qui monte au ciel mieux que les aviateurs II detient le record du monde pour la hauteur Pupille Christ de 1'ceil Vingtieme pupille des siecles il sait y faire Et change^ en oiseau ce siecle comme Jesus monte dans 1'air Les diables dans les abimes levent la tete pour le regarder Us disent qu'il imite Simon Mage en Judee Us crient s'il sait voler qu'on Pappelle voleur Les anges voltigent autour du joli voltigeur I care finoch filie Apollonius de Thyane Flottent autour du premier aeroplane Us s'ecartent parfois pour laisser passer ceux que transporte la Sainte-Eucharistie Ces pretres qui montent e'ternellement elevant 1'hostie L'avion se pose enfin sans refermer les ailes Le ciel s'emplit alors de millions d'hirondelles A tire d'aile viennent les corbeaux les faucons les hiboux D'Afrique arrivent les ibis les flamants les marabouts L'oiseau Roc celebre par les conteurs et les poetes Plane tenant dans les serres le crane d'Adam la premiere tete

28

32

36

40

44

48

52

56

Zjone L'aigle fond de 1'horizon en poussant un grand cri Et d'Amerique vient le petit colibri De Chine sont venus les pihis longs et souples Qui n'ont qu'une seule aile et qui volent par couples Puis voici la colombe esprit immacule Qu'escortent 1'oiseau-lyre et le paon ocelle Le phenix ce bucher qui soi-meme s'engendre Un instant voile tout de son ardente cendre Les sirenes laissant les perilleux detroits Arrivent en chantant bellement toutes trois Et tous aigle phenix et pihis de la Chine Fraternisent avec la volante machine

41 60

64

68

Maintenant tu marches dans Paris tout seul parmi la foule Des troupeaux d'autobus mugissants pres de toi roulent 72 L'angoisse de 1'amour te serre le gosier Comme si tu ne devais jamais plus etre aime Si tu vivais dans 1'ancien temps tu entrerais dans un monastere Vous avez honte quand vous vous surprenez a dire une priere 76 Tu te moques de toi et comme le feu de 1'Enfer ton rire petille Les etincelles de ton rire dorent le fond de ta vie C'est un tableau pendu dans un sombre musee Et quelquefois tu vas le regarder de pres 80 Aujourd'hui tu marches dans Paris les femmes sont ensanglantees C'etait et je voudrais ne pas m'en souvenir c'etait au declin de la beaute Entouree de flammes ferventes Notre-Dame m'a regarde a Chartres Le sang de votre Sacre-Coeur m'a inonde a Montmartre 84 Je suis malade d'ouir les paroles bienheureuses L'amour dont je souffre est une maladie honteuse Et 1'image qui te possede te fait survivre dans 1'insomnie et dans 1'angoisse C'est toujours pres de toi cette image qui passe 88

42

%one

Maintenant tu es au bord de la Mediterranee Sous les citronniers qui sont en fleur toute 1'annee Avec tes amis tu te promenes en barque L'un est Nissard il y a un Mentonasque et deux Turbiasques 92 Nous regardons avec effroi les poulpes des profondeurs Et parmi les algues nagent les poissons images du Sauveur Tu es dans le jardin d'une auberge aux environs de Prague Tu te sens tout heureux une rose est sur la table Et tu observes au lieu d'ecrire ton conte en prose La cetoine qui dort dans le cosur de la rose fipouvante tu te vois dessine dans les agates de Saint-Vit Tu etais triste a mourir le jour ou tu t'y vis Tu ressembles au Lazare affole par le jour Les aiguilles de 1'horloge du quartier juif vont a rebours Et tu recules aussi dans ta vie lentement En montant au Hradchin et le soir en ecoutant Dans les tavernes chanter des chansons tcheques

96

i oo

104

Te voici a Marseille au milieu des pasteques Te voici a Coblence a 1'hotel du Geant Te voici a Rome assis sous un neflier du Japon

108

Te voici a Amsterdam avec une jeune fille que tu trouves belle et qui est laide Elle doit se marier avec un etudiant de Leyde On y loue des chambres en latin Cubicula locanda Je m'en souviens j'y ai passe trois jours et autant a Gouda

112

Tu es a Paris chez le juge d'instruction Comme un criminel on te met en etat d'arrestation Tu as fait de douloureux et de joyeux voyages Avant de t'apercevoir du mensonge et de 1'age Tu as souffert de 1'amour a vingt et a trente ans J'ai vecu comme un fou et j'ai perdu mon temps

116

Zone Tu n'oses plus regarder tes mains et a tous moments je voudrais sangloter Sur toi sur celle que j'aime sur tout ce qui t'a epouvante Tu regardes les yeux pleins de larmes ces pauvres emigrants Us croient en Dieu ils prient les femmes allaitent des enfants Us emplissent de leur odeur le hall de la gare Saint-Lazare Ils ont foi dans leur etoile comme les rois-mages Ils esperent gagner de 1'argent dans 1'Argentine Et revenir dans leur pays apres avoir fait fortune Une famille transporte un edredon rouge comme vous transportez votre coeur Get edredon et nos reves sont aussi irreels Quelques-uns de ces emigrants restent ici et se logent Rue des Rosiers ou rue des ficouffes dans des bouges Je les ai vus souvent le soir ils prennent 1'air dans la rue Et se deplacent rarement comme les pieces aux echecs II y a surtout des Juifs leurs femmes portent perruque Elles restent assises exsangues au fond des boutiques Tu es debout devant le zinc d'un bar crapuleux Tu prends un cafe a deux sous parmi les malheureux

43

120

124

128

132

136

Tu es la nuit dans un grand restaurant Ces femmes ne sont pas mechantes elles ont des soucis cependant Toutes meme la plus laide a fait souffrir son amant Elle est la fille d'un sergent de ville de Jersey Ses mains que je n'avais pas vues sont dures et gercees J'ai une pitie immense pour les coutures de son ventre J'humilie maintenant a une pauvre fille au rire horrible ma bouche

140

&ne

44

Tu es seul le matin va venir Les laitiers font tinter leurs bidons dans les rues

144

La nuit s'eloigne ainsi qu'une belle Metive C'est Ferdine la fausse ou Lea 1'attentive Et tu bois cet alcool brulant comme ta vie Ta vie que tu bois comme une eau-de-vie Tu marches vers Auteuil tu veux aller chez toi a pied Dormir parmi tes fetiches d'Oceanic et de Guinee Us sont des Christ d'une autre forme et d'une autre croyance Ce sont les Christ inferieurs des obscures esperances

148

15 2

Adieu Adieu Soleil cou coupe

LE PONT MIRABEAU Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine Et nos amours Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne La joie venait toujours apres la peine

4

Vienne la nuit sonne 1'heure Les jours s'en vont je demeure Les mains dans les mains restons face a face Tandis que sous Le pont de nos bras passe Des eternels regards 1'onde si lasse Vienne la nuit sonne 1'heure Les jours s'en vont je demeure

8

12

Le Pont Mirabeau

45

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante L'amour s'en va Comme la vie est lente Et comme 1'Esperance est violente

16

Vienne la nuit sonne 1'heure Les jours s'en vont je demeure Passent les jours et passent les semaines Ni temps passe Ni les amours reviennent Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine Vienne la nuit sonne 1'heure Les jours s'en vont je demeure

20

24

LA CHANSON DU MAL-AIMfi A Paul Leautaud Et je chantais cette romance En 1903 sans savoir Que mon amour a la semblance Du beau Ph^nix s'il meurt un soir Le matin voit sa renaissance Un soir de demi-brume a Londres Un voyou qui ressemblait a Mon amour vint a ma rencontre Et le regard qu'il me jeta Me Jit baisser lesyeux de honte

5

Je suivis ce mauvais garfon Qui sifflotait mains dans les poches Nous semblions entre les maisons Onde ouverte de la mer Rouge Lui les Hebreux moi Pharaon

10

46

La Chanson du Mal-Aime Que tombent ces vagues de bnques Si tu nefus pas bien aimee Je suis le souverain d'Egypte Sa s&ur-epouse son armee Si tu ries pas Vamour unique

15

Au tournant d'une rue brulant De tous lesfeux de sesfagad.es Plaies du brouillard sanguinolent Oil se lamentaient les facades Unefemme lui ressemblant

20

C'etait son regard d'inhumaine La cicatrice a son cou nu Sortit saoule d'une taverne Au moment oiije reconnus Lafaussete de I1 amour meme

25

Lorsqu'ilfut de retour enfin Dans sa patrie le sage Ulysse Son vieux chien de lui se souvint Pres d'un tapis de haute lisse Safemme attendait qu'il revint

30

L'epoux royal de Sacontale Las de vaincre se rejouit Quand il la retrouva plus pale D'attente et d'amouryeux pdlis Caressant sa gazelle male

35

J'ai pense a ces rois heureux Lorsque lefaux amour et celle Dontje suis encore amoureux Heurtant leurs ombres injideles Me rendirent si malheureux

40

Regrets sur quoi Venfer sefonde Qifun del d'oubli s'ouvre a mes voeux Pour son baiser les rois du monde

La Chanson du Mal-Aime

47

Seraient morts les pauvres fameux Pour elle eussent vendu leur ombre

45

J }ai hiverne dans mon passe Revienne le soleil de Pdques Pour chauffer un cceur plus glace Que les quarante de Sebaste Mains que ma vie martyrises

50

Mon beau navire 6 ma memoire Avons-nous assez navigue Dans une onde mauvaise a boire Avons-nous assez. divague De la belle aube au triste soir

55

Adieuxfaux amour confondu Avec lafemme qui s'eloigne Avec celle que fai perdue L"annee derniere en Allemagne Etqueje ne reverrai plus

60

Voie lactee 6 sceur lumineuse Des blancs ruisseaux de Chanaan Et des corps blancs des amoureuses Nageurs morts suivrons-nous d'ahan Ton cours vers d'autres nebuleuses

65

Je me souviens d'une autre annee C'etait I'aube d'unjour d'avril J'ai chante majoie bien-aimee Chante I'amour a voix virile Au moment d''amour de Vannee

70

48

La Chanson du Mal-Aime AUBADE GHANTfiE A LvETARE UN AN PASSfi C'est le printemps viens-t'en Paquette Te promener au bois joli Les poules dans la cour caquetent L'aube au del fait de roses plis L'amour chemine a ta conquete

75

Mars et Venus sont revenus Us s'embrassent a bouches folles Devant des sites ingenus Ou sous les roses qui feuillolent De beaux dieux roses dansent nus

80

Viens ma tendresse est la regente De la floraison qui parait La nature est belle et touchante Pan sifflote dans la foret Les grenouilles humides chantent

85

Beaucoup de ces dieux out peri C'est sur eux que pleurent les saules Le grand Pan Vamour Jesus-Christ Sont bien marts et les chats miaulent Dans la cour je pleure a Paris

90

Moi qui sais des lais pour les reines Les complaintes de mes annees Des hymnes d'esclave aux murenes La romance du mal-aime Et des chansons pour les sirenes

95

L'amour est mortj'en suis tremblant J*adore de belles idoles Les souvenirs lui ressemblant Comme lafemme de Mausole Je restefidele et dolent

ioo

La Chanson du Mal-Aime

49

Je suisfidele comme un dogue Au maitre le lierre au tronc Et les Cosaques ^aporogues Ivrognes pieux et larrons Aux steppes et au decalogue

105

Portez comme unjoug le Croissant Qu'interrogent les astrologues Je suis le Sultan tout-puissant 0 mes Cosaques ^aporogues Votre Seigneur eblouissanl

11 o

Devenez mes sujets fideles Leur avait ecrit le Sultan Us rirent a cette nouvelle Et repondirent a V instant A la lueur d'une chandelle

115

R f i P O N S E DES COSAQUES ZAPOROGUES AU SULTAN DE CONSTANTINOPLE Plus criminel que Barrabas Cornu comme les mauvais anges Quel Belzebuth es-tu la-bas Nourri d'immondice et de fange Nous n'irons pas a tes sabbats

120

Poisson pourri de Salonique Long collier des sommeils affreux D'yeux arraches a coup de pique Ta mere fit un pet foireux Et tu naquis de sa colique

125

Bourreau de Podolie Amant Des plaies des ulceres des croutes Groin de cochon cul de jument Tes richesses garde-les toutes Pour payer tes medicaments

130

50

La Chanson du Mal-Aime Voie lactee 6 sosur lumineuse Des blancs ruisseaux de Chanaan Et des corps blancs des amoureuses Nageurs marts suivrons-nous d'ahan Ton cours vers d'autres nebuleuses

13 5

Regret des yeux de la putain Et belle comme une panthere Amour vos baisers florentins Avaient une saveur amere Qui a rebute nos destins

140

Ses regards laissaient une tratne D'etoiles dans les soirs tremblants Dans ses yeux nageaient les sirenes Et nos baisers mordus sanglants Faisaient pleurer nos fees marraines

145

Mais en veriteje Vattends Avec man cosur avec man dme Et sur le pant des Reviens-t'en Sijamais revient cettefemme Je lui dirai Je suis content

150

Man cosur et ma tete se vident Tout le del s'ecoule par eux 0 mes tonneaux des Dana'ides Comment faire pour etre heureux Comme un petit enfant candide

155

Je ne veuxjamais foublier Ma colombe ma blanche rade 0 marguerite exfoliee Mon Ue au loin ma Desirade Ma rose mon giroflier

160

Les satyres et les pyraustes Les egypans les feux follets Et les destins damnes oufaustes

La Chanson du Mal-Aime

51

La corde au cou comme a Calais Sur ma douleur quel holocauste

165

Douleur qui doubles les destins La licorne et le capricorne Mon dme et man corps incertain Tefuient 6 bucher divin qu'ornent Des astres desfleurs du matin

170

Malheur dieu pale auxyeux d'ivoire Tes pretres fous font-ils pare Tes victimes en robe noire Ont-elles vainement pleure Malheur dieu qu'il nefaut pas croire

175

Et toi qui me suis en rampant Dieu de mes dieux marts en automne Tu mesures combien d'empans J'ai droit que la terre me donne 0 mon ombre 6 mon vieux serpent

180

Au soleil parce que tu Vaimes Je t'ai menee souviens-t'en bien Tenebreuse epouse quej'aime Tu es a moi en rfetant rien O mon ombre en deuil de moi-meme

185

Lhiver est mart tout enneige On a brule les ruches blanches Dans les jardins et les vergers Les oiseaux chantent sur les branches Le printemps clair Vavril leger

190

Mort d'immortels argyraspides La neige aux boucliers d'argent Fuit les dendrophores livides Du printemps cher aux pauvres gens Qui resourient lesyeux humides

195

52

La Chanson du Mal-Aime Et moifai le casur aussi gros Qu'un cul de dame damascene 0 mon amour je faimais trop Et maintenant j'ai trop de peine Les sept epees hors dufourreau

200

Sept epees de melancolie Sans morfil 6 claires douleurs Sont dans mon casur et lafolie Veut raisonner pour mon malheur Comment voulez-vous quefoublie

205

LES SEPT £P£ES La premiere est toute d'argent Et son nom tremblant c'est Paline Sa lame un ciel d'hiver neigeant Son destin sanglant gibeline Vulcain mourut en la forgeant

21 o

La seconde nominee Noubosse Est un bel arc-en-ciel joyeux Les dieux s'en servent a leurs noces Elle a tue trente Be-Rieux Et fut douee par Carabosse

215

La troisieme bleu feminin N'en est pas moins un chibriape Appele Lul de Faltenin Et que porte sur une nappe L'Hermes Ernest devenue nain

220

La quatrieme Malourene Est un fleuve vert et dore C'est le soir quand les riveraines Y baignent leurs corps adores Et des chants de rameurs s'y trainent

225

La Chanson du Mal-Aime

53

La cinquieme Sainte-Fabeau C'est la plus belle des quenouilles C'est un cypres sur un tombeau Ou les quatre vents s'agenouillent Et chaque nuit c'est un FLAMBEAU

230

La sixieme metal de gloire C'est 1'ami aux si douces mains Dont chaque matin nous separe Adieu voila votre chemin Les coqs s'epuisaient en fanfares

235

Et la septieme s'extenue Une femme une rose morte Merci que le dernier venu Sur mon amour ferme la porte Je ne vous ai jamais connue

240

Voie lactee 6 soeur lumineuse Des blancs ruisseaux de Chanaan Et des corps blancs des amoureuses Nageurs marts suivrons-nous d'ahan Ton cours vers d'autres nebuleuses

245

Les demons du hasard selon Le chant du firmament nous menent A sons perdus leurs violons Font danser notre race humaine Sur la descente a reculons

250

Destins destins impenetrates Rois secoues par lafolie Et ces grelottantes etoiles De fausses femmes dans vos lits Aux deserts que Phistoire accable

255

Luitpold le vieux prince regent Tuteur de deux royantes folks

54

La Chanson du Mal-Aime Sanglote-t-il eny songeant Quand vacillent les lucioles Mouches dorees de la Saint-Jean

260

Pres d'un chateau sans chatelaine La barque aux barcarols chantants Sur un lac blanc et sous Vhaleine Des vents qui tremblent au printemps Voguait cygne mourant sirene

265

Unjour le roi dans I'eau d'argent Se noya puis la bouche ouverte II s'en revint en surnageant Sur la rive dormir inerte Face tournee au del changeant

2 70

Juin ton soldi ardente lyre Brule mes doigts endoloris Triste et melodieux delire J'erre d travers man beau Paris Sans avoir le cceur d'y mourir

275

Les dimanches s'y eternisent Et les argues de Barbaric T sanglotent dans les cours grises Lesfleurs aux balcons de Paris Penchent comme la tour de Pise

280

Soirs de Paris ivres du gin Flambant de Uelectridte Les tramways feux verts sur rechine Musiquent au long des portees De rails leurfolie de machines

285

Les cafes gonfles defumee Orient tout ramour de lews tziganes De tons leurs siphons enrhumes De leurs garfons veins d'un pagne Vers toi toi quej'ai tant aimee

290

Les Colchiques

55

Moi qui sais des lais pour les reines Les complaintes de mes annees Des hymnes d'esdave aux murenes La romance du mal-aime Et des chansons pour les sirenes

295

LES COLCHIQUES Le pre est veneneux mais joli en automne Les vaches y paissant Lentement s'empoisonnent Le colchique couleur de cerne et de lilas Y fleurit tes yeux sont comme CETTE FLEUR-LA

5

Violatres comme leur cerne et comme cet automne Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s'empoisonne Les enfants de 1'ecole viennent avec fracas Vetus de hoquetons et jouant de 1'harmonica Us cueillent les colchiques qui sont comme des meres Filles de leurs filles et sont couleur de tes paupieres Qui battent comme les fleurs battent au vent dement Le gardien du troupeau chante tout doucement Tandis que lentes et meuglant les vaches abandonnent Pour toujours ce grand pre mal fleuri par I'automne

10

15

PALAIS A Max Jacob Vers le palais de Rosemonde au fond du Reve Mes reveuses pensees pieds nus vont en soiree Le palais don du roi comme un roi nu s'eleve Des chairs fouettees des roses de la roseraie 3-A

4

56

Palais On voit venir au fond du jardin mes pensees Qui sourient du concert joue par les grenouilles Elles ont envie des cypres grandes quenouilles Et le soleil miroir des roses s'est brise

8

Le stigmate sanglant des mains contre les vitres Quel archer mal blesse du couchant le troua La resine qui rend amer le vin de Chypre Ma bouche aux agapes d'agneau blanc Peprouva

12

Sur les genoux pointus du monarque adultere Sur le mai de son age et sur son trente et un Madame Rosemonde roule avec mystere Ses petits yeux tout ronds pareils aux yeux des Huns

16

Dame de mes pensees au cul de perle fine Dont ni perle ni cul n'egale 1'orient Qui done attendez-vous De reveuses pensees en marche a 1'Orient Mes plus belles voisines Toe toe Entrez dans 1'antichambre le jour baisse La veilleuse dans 1'ombre est un bijou d'or cuit Pendez vos tetes aux pateres par les tresses Le ciel presque nocturne a des lueurs d'aiguilles On entra dans la salle a manger les narines Reniflaient une odeur de graisse et de graillon On cut vingt potages dont trois couleur d'urine Et le roi prit deux ceufs poches dans du bouillon Puis les marmitons apporterent les viandes Des rotis de pensees mortes dans mon cerveau Mes beaux reves mort-nes en tranches bien saignantes Et mes souvenirs faisandes en godiveaux

20

24

28

32

Palais Or ces pensees mortes depuis des millenaires Avaient le fade gout des grands mammouths geles Les os ou songe-creux venaient des ossuaires En danse macabre aux plis de mon cervelet Et tous ces mets criaient des choses nonpareilles Mais nom de Dieu! Ventre affame n'a pas d'oreilles Et les convives mastiquaient a qui mieux mieux Ah! nom de Dieu! qu'ont done crie ces entrecotes Ces grands pates ces os a moelle et mirotons Langues de feu ou sont-elles mes pentecotes Pour mes pensees de tous pays de tous les temps

57

36

40

44

CHANTRE Et 1'unique cordeau des trompettes marines

CRfiPUSCULE A Mademoiselle Marie Laurencin

Frolee par les ombres des morts Sur 1'herbe ou le jour s'extenue L'arlequine s'est mise nue Et dans 1'etang mire son corps

4

Un charlatan crepusculaire Vante les tours que 1'on va faire Le ciel sans teinte est constelle D'astres pales comme du lait

8

58

Crepuscule Sur les treteaux 1'arlequin bleme Salue d'abord les spectateurs Des sorciers venus de Boheme Quelques fees et les enchanteurs

12

Ayant decroche une etoile II la rnanie a bras tendu Tandis que des pieds un pendu Sonne en mesure les cymbales

16

L'aveugle berce un bel enfant La biche passe avec ses faons Le nain regarde d'un air triste Grandir 1'arlequin trismegiste

20

ANNIE Sur la cote du Texas Entre Mobile et Galveston il y a Un grand jardin tout plein de roses II contient aussi une villa Qui est une grande rose

5

Une femme se promene souvent Dans le jardin toute seule Et quand je passe sur la route bordee de tilleuls Nous nous regardons Comme cette femme est mennonite Ses rosiers et ses vetements n'ont pas de boutons II en manque deux a mon veston La dame et moi suivons presque le meme rite

IO

La Maison des Morts

59

LA MAISON DES MORTS A Maurice Raynal

S'etendant sur les cotes du cimetiere La maison des morts 1'encadrait comme un cloitre A 1'interieur de ses vitrines Pareilles a celles des boutiques de modes Au lieu de sourire debout Les mannequins grimagaient pour 1'eternite Arrive a Munich depuis quinze ou vingt jours J'etais entre pour la premiere fois et par hasard Dans ce cimetiere presque desert Et je claquais des dents Devant toute cette bourgeoisie Exposee et vetue le mieux possible En attendant la sepulture Soudain Rapide comme ma memoire Les yeux se rallumerent De cellule vitree en cellule vitree Le ciel se peupla d'une apocalypse Vivace Et la terre plate a 1'infini Comme avant Galilee Se couvrit de mille mythologies immobiles Un ange en diamant brisa toutes les vitrines Et les morts m'accosterent Avec des mines de 1'autre monde Mais leur visage et leurs attitudes Devinrent bientot moins funebres Le ciel et la terre perdirent Leur aspect fantasmagorique

4

8

12

16

20

24

28

6o

La Maison des Morts Les morts se rejouissaient De voir leurs corps trepasses entre eux et la lumiere Us riaient de leur ombre et 1'observaient 32 Comme si veritablement G'eut etc leur vie passee Alors je les denombrai Us etaient quarante-neuf hommes Femmes et enfants Qui embellissaient a vue d'oeil Et me regardaient maintenant Avec tant de cordialite Tant de tendresse meme Que les prenant en amitie Tout a coup Je les invitai a une promenade Loin des arcades de leur maison Et tous bras dessus bras dessous Fredonnant des airs militaires Oui tous vos pech^s sont absous Nous quittames le cimetiere Nous traversames la ville Et rencontrions souvent Des parents des amis qui se joignaient A la petite troupe des morts recents Tous etaient si gais Si charmants si bien portants Que bien malin qui aurait pu Distinguer les morts des vivants Puis dans la campagne On s'eparpilla Deux chevau-legers nous joignirent On leur fit fete Us couperent du bois de viorne Et de sureau

36

40

44

48

52

56

60

La Maison des Morts Dont ils firent des sifflets Qu'ils distribuerent aux enfants Plus tard dans un bal champetre Les couples mains sur les epaules Danserent au son aigre des cithares Ils n'avaient pas oublie la danse Ces morts et ces mortes On buvait aussi Et de temps a autre une cloche Annon$ait qu'un nouveau tonneau Allait etre mis en perce Une morte assise sur un bane Pres d'un buisson d'epine-vinette Laissait un etudiant Agenouille a ses pieds Lui parler de fian9ailles Je vous attendrai Dix ans vingt ans s'il le faut Votre volonte sera la mienne Je vous attendrai Toute votre vie Repondait la morte Des enfants De ce monde ou bien de 1'autre Chantaient de ces rondes Aux paroles absurdes et lyriques Qui sans doute sont les restes Des plus anciens monuments poetiques De Phumanite L'etudiant passa une bague A Pannulaire de la jeune morte Voici le gage de mon amour

61 64

68

72

76

80

84

88

92

62

La Maison des Marts

De nos fiancailles Ni le temps ni 1'absence Ne nous feront oublier nos promesses Et un jour nous aurons une belle noce Des touffes de myrte A nos vetements et dans vos cheveux Un beau sermon a Peglise De longs discours apres le banquet Et de la musique De la musique Nos enfants Dit la fiancee Seront plus beaux plus beaux encore Helas! la bague etait brisee Que s'ils etaient d'argent ou d'or D'e"meraude ou de diamant Seront plus clairs plus clairs encore Que les astres du firmament Que la lumiere de 1'aurore Que vos regards mon fiance Auront meilleure odeur encore Helas! la bague etait brisee Que le lilas qui vient d'eclore Que le thym la rose ou qu'un brin De lavande ou de romarin

96

100

104

108

112

116

120

Les musiciens s'en etant alles Nous continuames la promenade Au bord d'un lac On s'amusa a faire des ricochets Avec des cailloux plats Sur 1'eau qui dansait a peine Des barques etaient amarre'es Dans un havre On les detacha Apres que toute la troupe se fut embarquee

124

128

La Maison des Marts Et quelques morts ramaient Avec autant de vigueur que les vivants A 1'avant du bateau que je gouvernais Un mort parlait avec une jeune femme Vetue d'une robe jaune D'un corsage noir Avec des rubans bleus et d'un chapeau gris Orne d'une seule petite plume deTrisee Je vous aime Disait-il Comme le pigeon aime la colombe Comme 1'insecte nocturne Aime la lumiere Trop tard Repondait la vivante Repoussez repoussez cet amour defendu Je suis mariee Voyez 1'anneau qui brille Mes mains tremblent Je pleure et je voudrais mourir Les barques e"taient arrivees A un endroit ou les chevau-legers Savaient qu'un echo repondait de la rive On ne se lassait point de 1'interroger II y cut des questions si extravagantes Et des reponses tellement pleines d'a-propos Que c'etait a mourir de rire Et le mort disait a la vivante Nous serions si heureux ensemble Sur nous 1'eau se refermera Mais vous pleurez et vos mains tremblent Aucun de nous ne reviendra

63 13 2

136

140

144

148

152

156

160

64

La Maison des Morts On reprit terre et ce fut le retour Les amoureux s'entr'aimaient Et par couples aux belles bouches Marchaient a distances inegales Les morts avaient choisi les vivantes Et les vivants Des mortes Un genevrier parfois Faisait Peffet d'un fantome Les enfants dechiraient 1'air En soufflant les joues creuses Dans leurs sifflets de viorne Ou de sureau Tandis que les militaires Chantaient des tyroliennes En se repondant comme on le fait Dans la montagne Dans la ville Notre troupe diminua peu a peu On se disait Au revoir A demain A bientot Beaucoup entraient dans les brasseries Quelques-uns nous quitterent Devant une boucherie canine Pour y acheter leur repas du soir Bientot je restai seul avec ces morts Qui s'en allaient tout droit Au cimetiere Ou Sous les Arcades Je les reconnus Couches Immobiles Et bien vetus Attendant la sepulture derriere les vitrines

164

168

172

176

180

184

188

192

196

La Maison des Marts Us ne se doutaient pas De ce qui s'etait passe Mais les vivants en gardaient le souvenir C'etait un bonheur inespere Et si certain Qu'ils ne craignaient point de le perdre Us vivaient si noblement Que ceux qui la veille encore Les regardaient comme leurs egaux Ou meme quelque chose de moins Admiraient maintenant Leur puissance leur richesse et leur genie Gar y a-t-il rien qui vous eleve Comme d'avoir aime un mort ou une morte On devient si pur qu'on en arrive Dans les glaciers de la memoire A se confondre avec le souvenir On est fortifie pour la vie Et Ton n'a plus besoin de personne

65 200

204

208

212

216

66

Clotilde CLOTILDE L'anemone et 1'ancolie Ont pousse dans le jardin Ou dort la melancolie Entre 1'amour et le dedain

4

II y vient aussi nos ombres Que la nuit dissipera Le soleil qui les rend sombres Avec elles disparaitra

8

Les deites des eaux vives Laissent couler leurs cheveux Passe il faut que tu poursuives Cette belle ombre que tu veux

12

CORTEGE A M Leon Bailby Oiseau tranquille au vol inverse oiseau Qui nidifie en Fair A la limite ou notre sol brille deja Baisse ta deuxieme paupiere la terre t'eblouit Quand tu leves la tete Et moi aussi de pres je suis sombre et terne Une brume qui vient d'obscurcir les lanternes Une main qui tout a coup se pose devant les yeux Une voute entre vous et toutes les lumieres Et je m'eloignerai m'illuminant au milieu d'ombres Et d'alignements d'yeux des astres bien-aim^s

5

IO

Cortege Oiseau tranquille au vol inverse oiseau Qui nidifie en 1'air A la limite ou brille deja ma memoire Baisse ta deuxieme paupiere Ni a cause du soleil ni a cause de la terre Mais pour ce feu oblong dont 1'intensite ira s'augmentant Au point qu'il deviendra un jour 1'unique lumiere Un jour Un jour je m'attendais moi-meme Je me disais Guillaume il est temps que tu viennes Pour que je sache enfin celui-la que je suis Moi qui connais les autres Je les connais par les cinq sens et quelques autres II me suffit de voir leurs pieds pour pouvoir refaire ces gens a milliers De voir leurs pieds paniques un seul de leurs cheveux Ou leur langue quand il me plait de faire le medecin Ou leurs enfants quand il me plait de faire le prophete Les vaisseaux des armateurs la plume de mes confreres La monnaie des aveugles les mains des muets Ou bien encore a cause du vocabulaire et non de Pecriture Une lettre ecrite par ceux qui ont plus de vingt ans II me suffit de sentir 1'odeur de leurs eglises L'odeur des fleuves dans leurs villes Le parfum des fleurs dans les jardins publics O Corneille Agrippa 1'odeur d'un petit chien m'eut suffi Pour decrire exactement tes concitoyens de Cologne Leurs rois-mages et la ribambelle ursuline Qui t'inspirait 1'erreur touchant toutes les femmes II me suffit de gouter la saveur du laurier qu'on cultive pour que j'aime ou que je bafoue Et de toucher les vetements Pour ne pas douter si 1'on est frileux ou non O gens que je connais II me suffit d'entendre le bruit de leurs pas Pour pouvoir indiquer a jamais la direction qu'ils ont prise

67

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

68

Cortege

II me suffit de tous ceux-la pour me croire le droit De ressusciter les autres Un jour je m'attendais moi-meme Je me disais Guillaume il est temps que tu viennes Et d'un lyrique pas s'avanc^aient ceux que j'aime Parmi lesquels je n'etais pas Les geants couverts d'algues passaient dans leurs villes Sous-marines ou les tours seules etaient des iles Et cette mer avec les clartes de ses profondeurs Coulait sang de mes veines et fait battre mon coeur Puis sur terre il venait mille peuplades blanches Dont chaque homme tenait une rose a la main Et le langage qu'ils inventaient en chemin Je 1'appris de leur bouche et je le parle encore Le cortege passait et j'y cherchais mon corps Tous ceux qui survenaient et n'etaient pas moi-meme Amenaient un a un les morceaux de moi-meme On me batit peu a peu comme on eleve une tour Les peuples s'entassaient et je parus moi-meme Qu'ont forme tous les corps et les choses humaines

50

55

60

65

Temps passes Trepasses Les dieux qui me formates Je ne vis que passant ainsi que vous passates Et detournant mes yeux de ce vide avenir En moi-meme je vois tout le passe grandir Rien n'est mort que ce qui n'existe pas encore Pres du passe luisant demain est incolore II est informe aussi pres de ce qui parfait Presente tout ensemble et 1'effort et Peffet

70

Marizibill MARIZIBILL

69

Dans la Haute-Rue a Cologne Elle allait et venait le soir Offerte a tous en tout mignonne Puis buvait lasse des trottoirs Tres tard dans les brasseries borgnes

5

Elle se mettait sur la paille Pour un maquereau roux et rose C'etait un juif il sentait 1'ail Et 1'avait venant de Formose Tiree d'un bordel de Changa'i

io

Je connais gens de toutes sortes Us n'egalent pas leurs destins Indecis comme feuilles mortes Leurs yeux sont des feux mal eteints Leurs cceurs bougent comme leurs portes

15

LE VOYAGEUR A Fernand Fleuret Ouvrez-moi cette porte ou je frappe en pleurant La vie est variable aussi bien que 1'Euripe Tu regardais un bane de nuages descendre Avec le paquebot orphelin vers les fievres futures Et de tous ces regrets de tous ces repentirs Te souviens-tu Vagues poissons arques fleurs surmarines Une nuit c'etait la mer Et les fleuves s'y repandaient

5

70

Le Voyageur Je m'en souviens je m'en souviens encore Un soir je descendis dans une auberge triste Aupres de Luxembourg Dans le fond de la salle il s'envolait un Christ Quelqu'un avait un furet Un autre un herisson L'on jouait aux cartes Et toi tu m'avais oublie

10

15

Te souviens-tu du long orphelinat des gares Nous traversames des villes qui tout le jour tournaient Et vomissaient la nuit le soleil des journees 20 O matelots 6 femmes sombres et vous mes compagnons Souvenez-vous-en Deux matelots qui ne s'^taient jamais quittes Deux matelots qui ne s'etaient jamais parle Le plus jeune en mourant torriba sur le cote

25

O vous chers compagnons Sonneries electriques des gares chant des moissonneuses Traineau d'un boucher regiment des rues sans nombre Cavalerie des ponts nuits livides de 1'alcool Les villes que j'ai vues vivaient comme des folles 30 Te souviens-tu des banlieues et du troupeau plaintif des paysages Les cypres projetaient sous la lune leurs ombres J'ecoutais cette nuit au declin de 1'ete Un oiseau langoureux et toujours irrite Et le bruit eternel d'un fleuve large et sombre Mais tandis que mourants roulaient vers 1'estuaire Tous les regards tous les regards de tous les yeux Les bords etaient deserts herbus silencieux Et la montagne a 1'autre rive etait tres claire

35

Le Voyageur Alors sans bruit sans qu'on put voir rien de vivant Centre le mont passerent des ombres vivaces De profil ou soudain tournant leurs vagues faces Et tenant 1'ombre de leurs lances en avant Les ombres centre le mont perpendiculaire Grandissaient ou parfois s'abaissaient brusquement Et ces ombres barbues pleuraient humainement En glissant pas a pas sur la montagne claire

71 40

45

Qui done reconnais-tu sur ces vieilles photographies Te souviens-tu du jour ou une abeille tomba dans le feu G'etait tu t'en souviens a la fin de 1'ete 50 Deux matelots qui ne s'etaient jamais quittes L'aine portait au cou une chaine de fer Le plus jeune mettait ses cheveux blonds en tresse Ouvrez-moi cette porte ou je frappe en pleurant La vie est variable aussi bien que 1'Euripe

55

MARIE Vous y dansiez petite fille Y danserez-vous mere-grand C'est la maclotte qui sautille Toutes les cloches sonneront Quand done reviendrez-vous Marie Les masques sont silencieux Et la musique est si lointaine Qu'elle semble venir des cieux Oui je veux vous aimer mais vous aimer a peine Et mon mal est delicieux

5

IO

72

Marie Les brebis s'en vont dans la neige Flocons de laine et ceux d'argent Des soldats passent et que n'ai-je Un coeur a moi ce coeur changeant Changeant et puis encor que sais-je

15

Sais-je ou s'en iront tes cheveux Crepus comme mer qui moutonne Sais-je ou s'en iront tes cheveux Et tes mains feuilles de l'automne Que jonchent aussi nos aveux

20

Je passais au bord de la Seine Un livre ancien sous le bras Le fleuve est pareil a ma peine II s'ecoule et ne tarit pas Quand done finira la semaine

25

LA BLANCHE NEIGE Les anges les anges dans le ciel L'un est vetu en officier L'un est vetu en cuisinier Et les autres chantent

4

Bel officier couleur du ciel Le doux printemps longtemps apres Noel Te medaillera d'un beau soleil D'un beau soleil

8

Le cuisinier plume les oies Ah! tombe neige Tombe et que n'ai-je Ma bien-aimee entre mes bras

ia

Au Manage cT Andre Salmon

73

PO£ME LU AU M A R I A G E D'ANDRfi SALMON Le igjuillet 1909 En voyant des drapeaux ce matin je ne me suis pas dit Voila les riches vetements des pauvres Ni la pudeur democratique veut me voiler sa douleur Ni la liberte en honneur fait qu'on imite maintenant Les feuilles 6 liberte vegetale 6 seule liberte terrestre Ni les maisons flambent parce qu'on partira pour ne plus revenir Ni ces mains agitees travailleront demain pour nous tous Ni meme on a pendu ceux qui ne savaient pas profiler de la vie Ni meme on renouvelle le monde en reprenant la Bastille Je sais que seuls le renouvellent ceux qui sont fondes en poesie On a pavoise Paris parce que mon ami Andre Salmon s'y marie

4

8

Nous nous sommes rencontres dans un caveau maudit 12 Au temps de notre jeunesse Fumant tous deux et mal vetus attendant 1'aube fipris epris des memes paroles dont il faudra changer le sens Trompes trompes pauvres petits et ne sachant pas encore rire 16 La table et les deux verres devinrent un mourant qui nous jeta le dernier regard d'Orphee Les verres tomberent se briserent Et nous apprimes a rire Nous partimes alors pelerins de la perdition 20 A travers les rues a travers les contrees a travers la raison Je le revis au bord du fleuve sur lequel flottait Ophelie Qui blanche flotte encore entre les nenuphars II s'en allait au milieu des Hamlets blafards 24 Sur la flute jouant les airs de la folie Je le revis pres d'un moujik mourant compter les beatitudes En admirant la neige semblable aux femmes nues Je le revis faisant ceci ou cela en 1'honneur des memes paroles 28

74

Au Manage d'Andre Salmon

Qui changent la face des enfants et je dis toutes ces choses Souvenir et Avenir parce que mon ami Andre Salmon se marie Rejouissons-nous non pas parce que notre amitie a ete le fleuve qui nous a fertilises Terrains riverains dont 1'abondance est la nourriture que tous esperent 32 Ni parce que nos verres nous jettent encore une fois le regard d'Orphee mourant Ni parce que nous avons tant grandi que beaucoup pourraient confondre nos yeux et les etoiles Ni parce que les drapeaux claquent aux fenetres des citoyens qui sont contents depuis cent ans d'avoir la vie et de menues choses a defendre Ni parce que fondes en poesie nous avons des droits sur les paroles qui forment et defont 1'Univers 36 Ni parce que nous pouvons pleurer sans ridicule et que nous savons rire Ni parce que nous fumons et buvons comme autrefois Rejouissons-nous parce que directeur du feu et des poetes L'amour qui emplit ainsi que la lumiere 40 Tout le solide espace entre les etoiles et les planetes L'amour veut qu'aujourd'hui mon ami Andre Salmon se marie

L'ADIEU J'ai cueilli ce brin de bruyere L'automne est morte souviens-t'en Nous ne nous verrons plus sur terre Odeur du temps brin de bruyere Et souviens-toi que je t'attends

5

Salome

75

SALOMfi Pour que sourie encore une fois Jean-Baptiste Sire je danserais mieux que les seraphins Ma mere dites-moi pourquoi vous etes triste En robe de comtesse a cote du Dauphin

4

Mon cceur battait battait tres fort a sa parole Quand je dansais dans le fenouil en ecoutant Et je brodais des lys sur une banderole Destinee a flotter au bout de son baton

8

Et pour qui voulez-vous qu'a present je la brode Son baton refleurit sur les bords du Jourdain Et tous les lys quand vos soldats 6 roi Herode L'emmenerent se sont fletris dans mon jardin

12

Venez tous avec rnoi la-bas sous les quinconces Ne pleure pas 6 joli fou du roi Prends cette tete au lieu de ta marotte et danse N'y touchez pas son front ma mere est deja froid

16

Sire marchez devant trabants marchez derriere Nous creuserons un trou et 1'y enterrerons Nous planterons des fleurs et danserons en rond Jusqu'a 1'heure ou j'aurai perdu majarretiere Le roi sa tabatiere L'infante son rosaire Le cure son breviaire

18

LA PORTE La porte de 1'hotel sourit terriblement Qu'est-ce que cela peut me faire 6 ma maman D'etre cet employe pour qui seul rien n'existe Pi-mus couples allant dans la profonde eau triste

4

76

Merlin et la Vieille Femme Anges frais debarques a Marseille hier matin J'entends mourir et remourir un chant lointain Humble comme je suis qui ne suis rien qui vaille Enfant je t'ai donne ce que j'avais travaille

8

M E R L I N ET LA V I E I L L E F E M M E Le soleil ce jour-la s'e"talait comme un ventre Maternel qui saignait lentement sur le ciel La lumiere est ma mere 6 lumiere sanglante Les nuages coulaient comme un flux menstruel

4

Au carrefour ou nulle fleur sinon la rose Des vents mais sans epine n'a fleuri 1'hiver Merlin guettait la vie et 1'eternelle cause Qui fait mourir et puis renaitre 1'univers

8

Une vieille sur une mule a chape verte S'en vint suivant la berge du fleuve en aval Et 1'antique Merlin dans la plaine deserte

Se frappait la poitrine en s'ecriant Rival

12

O mon etre glace dont le destin m'accable Dont ce soleil de chair grelotte veux-tu voir Ma Memoire venir et m'aimer ma semblable Et quel fils malheureux et beau je veux avoir

16

Son geste fit crouler 1'orgueil des cataclysmes Le soleil en dansant remuait son nombril Et soudain le printemps d'amour et d'heroisme Amena par la main un jeune jour d'avril

20

Les voies qui viennent de 1'ouest etaient couvertes D'ossements d'herbes drues de destins et de fleurs Des monuments tremblants pres des charognes vertes Quand les vents apportaient des poils et des malheurs

24

Merlin et la Vieille Femme

77

Laissant sa mule a petits pas s'en vint 1'amante A petits coups le vent defripait ses atours Puis les pales amants joignant leurs mains dementes L'entrelacs de leurs doigts fut leur seul laps d'amour

28

Elle balla mimant un rythme d'existence Criant Depuis cent ans j'esperais ton appel Les astres de ta vie influaient sur ma danse Morgane regardait du haut du mont Gibel

32

Ah! qu'il fait doux danser quand pour vous se declare Un mirage ou tout chante et que les vents d'horreur Feignent d'etre le rire de la lune hilare Et d'effrayer les fantomes avant-coureurs 36 J'ai fait des gestes blancs parmi les solitudes Des lemures couraient peupler les cauchemars Mes tournoiments exprimaient les beatitudes Qui toutes ne sont rien qu'un pur effet de 1'Art

40

Je n'ai jamais cueilli que la fleur d'aubepine Aux printemps finissants qui voulaient defleurir Quand les oiseaux de proie proclamaient leurs rapines D'agneaux mort-nes et d'enfants-dieux qui vont mourir 44 Et j'ai vieilli vois-tu pendant ta vie je danse Mais j'eusse etc tot lasse et 1'aubepine en fleurs Get avril aurait eu la pauvre confidence D'un corps de vieille morte en mimant la douleur

48

Et leurs mains s'elevaient comme un vol de colombes Clarte sur qui la nuit fondit comme un vautour Puis Merlin s'en alia vers Test disant Qu'il monte Le fils de la Memoire egale de 1'Amour

52

Qu'il monte de la fange ou soit une ombre d'homme II sera bien mon fils mon ouvrage immortel Le front nimbe de feu sur le chemin de Rome II marchera tout seul en regardant le ciel

56

78

Saltimbanques La dame qui m'attend se nomme Viviane Et vienne le printemps des nouvelles douleurs Couche parmi la marjolaine et les pas-d'ane Je m'eterniserai sous 1'aubepine en fleurs

60

SALTIMBANQUES A Louis Dumur

Dans la plaine les baladins S'eloignent au long des jardins Devant 1'huis des auberges grises Par les villages sans eglises

4

Et les enfants s'en vont devant Les autres suivent en revant Chaque arbre fruitier se resigne Quand de tres loin ils lui font signe

8

Us ont des poids ronds ou carrds Des tambours des cerceaux dores L'ours et le singe animaux sages Quetent des sous sur leur passage

12

LE LARRON Choeur Maraudeur etranger malheureux malhabile Voleur voleur que ne demandais-tu ces fruits Mais puisque tu as faim que tu es en exil II pleure il est barbare et bon pardonnez-lui

4

Le Larron

79

Larron Je confesse le vol des fruits doux des fruits murs Mais ce n'est pas 1'exil que je viens simuler Et sachez que j'attends de moyennes tortures Injustes si je rends tout ce que j'ai vole

8

Vieillard Issu de 1'ecume des mers comme Aphrodite Sois docile puisque tu es beau Naufrage Vois les sages te font des gestes socratiques Vous parlerez d'amour quand il aura mange

12

Chosur Maraudeur etranger malhabile et malade Ton pere fut un sphinx et ta mere une nuit Qui charma de lueurs Zacinthe et les Cyclades As-tu feint d'avoir faim quand tu volas les fruits

16

Larron Possesseurs de fruits murs que dirai-je aux insultes Ou'ir ta voix ligure en n^nie 6 maman Puisqu'ils n'eurent enfin la pubere et 1'adulte De pretexte sinon de s'aimer nuitamment

20

II y avait des fruits tout ronds comme des ames Et des amandes de pomme de pin jonchaient Votre jardin marin ou j'ai laisse mes rames Et mon couteau punique au pied de ce pecher

24

Les citrons couleur d'huile et a saveur d'eau froide Pendaient parmi les fleurs des citronniers tordus Les oiseaux de leur bee ont blesse vos grenades Et presque toutes les figues e"taient fendues

28

8o

Le Larron L'Acteur II entra dans la salle aux fresques qui figurent L'inceste solaire et nocturne dans les nues Assieds-toi la pour mieux ouir les voix ligures Au son des cinyres des Lydiennes nues

32

Or les hommes ayant des masques de theatre Et les femmes ayant des colliers ou pendait La pierre prise au foie d'un vieux coq de Tanagre Parlaient entre eux le langage de la Chaldee

36

Les autans langoureux dehors feignaient 1'automne Les convives c'etaient tant de couples d'amants Qui dirent tour a tour Voleur je te pardonne Re?ois d'abord le sel puis le pain de froment

40

Le brouet qui froidit sera fade a tes levres Mais I'outre en peau de bouc maintient frais le vin blanc Par ironic veux-tu qu'on serve un plat de feves Ou des beignets de fleurs trempes dans du miel blond 44 Une femme lui dit Tu n'invoques personne Crois-tu done au hasard qui coule au sablier Voleur connais-tu mieux les lois malgre les hommes Veux-tu le talisman heureux de mon collier

48

Larron des fruits tourne vers moi tes yeux lyriques Emplissez de noix la besace du heros II est plus noble que le paon pythagorique Le dauphin la vipere male ou le taureau

52

Qui done es-tu toi qui nous vins grace au vent scythe II en est tant venu par la route ou la mer Conqu^rants 6gares qui s'eloignaient trop vite Golonnes de clins d'yeux qui fuyaient aux eclairs

56

Le Larron

81

Choeur Un homme begue ayant au front deux jets de flammes Passa menant un peuple infime pour 1'orgueil De manger chaque jour les cailles et la manne Et d'avoir vu la mer ouverte comme un ceil

60

Les puiseurs d'eau barbus coiffes de bandelettes Noires et blanches centre les maux et les sorts Revenaient de 1'Euphrate et les yeux des chouettes Attiraient quelquefois les chercheurs de tresors

64

Get insecte jaseur 6 poete barbare Regagnait chastement a 1'heure d'y mourir La foret precieuse aux oiseaux gemmipares Aux crapauds que 1'azur et les sources murirent

68

Un triomphe passait gemir sous l'arc-en-ciel Avec de blemes laures debout dans les chars Les statues suant les scurriles les agnelles Et 1'angoisse rauque des paonnes et des jars

72

Les veuves precedaient en egrenant des grappes Les eveques noirs reverant sans le savoir Au triangle isocele ouvert au mors des chapes Pallas et chantaient 1'hymne a la belle mais noire

76

Les chevaucheurs nous jeterent dans 1'avenir Les alcancies pleines de cendre ou bien de fleurs Nous aurons des baisers florentins sans le dire Mais au jardin ce soir tu vins sage et voleur

80

Ceux de ta secte adorent-ils un signe obscene Belphegor le soleil le silence ou le chien Cette furtive ardeur des serpents qui s'entr'aiment L'Acteur Et le larron des fruits cria Je suis chretien

84

82

Le Larronn

Choeur Ah! Ah! les colliers tinteront cherront les masques Va-t'en va-t'en centre le feu 1'ombre prevaut Ah! Ah! le larron de gauche dans la bourrasque Rira de toi comme hennissent les chevaux

88

Femme Larron des fruits tourne vers moi tes yeux lyriques Emplissez de noix la besace du heros II est plus noble que le paon pythagorique Le dauphin la vipere male ou le taureau

92

Chceur Ah! Ah! nous secouerons toute la nuit les sistres La voix ligure etait-ce done un talisman Et si tu n'es pas de droite tu es sinistre Comme une tache grise ou le pressentiment

96

Puisque Pabsolu choit la chute est une preuve Qui double devient triple avant d'avoir etc Nous avouons que les grossesses nous emeuvent Les ventres pourront seuls nier Paseite

100

Vois les vases sont pleins d'humides fleurs morales Va-t'en mais denude puisque tout est a nous Ou'is du chceur des vents les cadences plagales Et prends Pare pour tuer Punicorne ou le gnou

104

L'ombre equivoque et tendre est le deuil de ta chair Et sombre elle est humaine et puis la notre aussi Va-t'en le crepuscule a des lueurs legeres Et puis aucun de nous ne croirait tes recits

108

II brillait et attirait comme la pantaure Que n'avait-il la voix et les jupes d'Orphee

Le Larron

83

Et les femmes la nuit feignant d'etre des taures L'eussent aime comme on 1'aima puisqu'en effet

112

II etait pale il etait beau comme un roi ladre Que n'avait-il la voix et les jupes d'Orphee La pierre prise au foie d'un vieux coq de Tanagre Au lieu du roseau triste et du funebre faix

116

Que n'alla-t-il vivre a la cour du roi d'fidesse Maigre et magique il cut scrute le firmament Pale et magique il cut aime des poetesses Juste et magique il eut epargne les demons

120

Va-t'en errer credule et roux avec ton ombre Soit! la triade est male et tu es vierge et froid Le tact est relatif mais la vue est oblongue Tu n'as de signe que le signe de la croix

124

LE VENT N O C T U R N E Oh! les cimes des pins grincent en se heurtant Et Ton entend aussi se lamenter 1'autan Et du fleuve prochain a grand'voix triomphales Les elfes rire au vent ou corner aux rafales Attys Attys Attys charmant et debraille C'est ton nom qu'en la nuit les elfes ont raille Parce qu'un de tes pins s'abat au vent gothique La foret fuit au loin comme une armee antique Dont les lances 6 pins s'agitent au tournant Les villages eteints meditent maintenant Comme les vierges les vieillards et les poetes Et ne s'eveilleront au pas de nul venant Ni quand sur leurs pigeons fondront les gypaetes

4

8

12

84

Lul de Faltenin LUL DE F A L T E N I N A Louis de Gonzaque Frick Sirenes j'ai rampe vers vos Grottes tiriez aux mers la langue En dansant devant leurs chevaux Puis battiez de vos ailes d'anges Et j'ecoutais ces chceurs rivaux

5

Une arme 6 ma tete inquiete J'agite un feuillard defleuri Pour ecarter 1'haleine tiede Qu'exhalent centre mes grands cris Vos terribles bouches muettes

10

II y a la-bas la merveille Au prix d'elle que valez-vous Le sang jaillit de mes otelles A mon aspect et je 1'avoue Le meurtre de mon double orgueil

15

Si les bateliers ont rame Loin des levres a fleur de 1'onde Mille et mille animaux charmes Flairent la route a la rencontre De mes blessures bien-aimees

20

Leurs yeux etoiles bestiales ficlairent ma compassion Qu'importe ma sagesse egale Gelle des constellations Car c'est moi seul nuit qui t'etoile

25

Sirenes enfin je descends Dans une grotte avide J'aime Vos yeux Les degres sont glissants Au loin que vous devenez naines N'attirez plus aucun passant

30

Lul de Faltenin

85

Dans 1'attentive et bien-apprise J'ai vu feuilloler nos forets Mer le soleil se gargarise Ou les matelots desiraient Que vergues et mats reverdissent

35

Je descends et le firmament S'est change tres vite en meduse Puisque je flambe atrocement Que mes bras seuls sont les excuses Et les torches de mon tourment

40

Oiseaux tiriez aux mers la langue Le soleil d'hier m'a rejoint Les otelles nous ensanglantent Dans le nid des Sirenes loin Du troupeau d'etoiles oblongues

45

LA T Z I G A N E La tzigane savait d'avance Nos deux vies barrees par les nuits Nous lui dimes adieu et puis De ce puits sortit 1'Esperance

4

L'amour lourd comme un ours prive Dansa debout quand nous voulumes Et 1'oiseau bleu perdit ses plumes Et les mendiants leurs Ave

8

On sait tres bien que Ton se damne Mais 1'espoir d'aimer en chemin Nous fait penser main dans la main A ce qu'a predit la tzigane

ia

86

UErmite L'ERMITE A Felix Feneon Un ermite dechaux pres d'un crane blanchi Cria Je vous maudis martyres et depresses Trop de tentations malgre moi me caressent Tentations de lune et de logomachies

4

Trop d'etoiles s'enfuient quand je dis mes prieres O chef de morte O vieil ivoire Orbites Trous Des narines rongees J'ai faim Mes cris s'enrouent Voici done pour mon jeune un morceau de gruyere

8

O Seigneur flagellez les nuees du coucher Qui vous tendent au ciel de si jolis culs roses Et c'est le soir les fleurs de jour deja se closent Et les souris dans 1'ombre incantent le plancher

12

Les humains savent tant de jeux 1'amour la mourre L'amour jeu des nombrils ou jeu de la grande oie La mourre jeu du nombre illusoire des doigts Seigneur faites Seigneur qu'un jour je m'enamoure

16

J'attends celle qui me tendra ses doigts menus Combien de signes blancs aux ongles les paresses Les mensonges pourtantj'attends qu'elle les dresse Ses mains enamourees devant moi 1'Inconnue

20

Seigneur que t'ai-je fait Vois Je suis unicorne Pourtant malgre son bel effroi concupiscent Comme un poupon cheri mon sexe est innocent D'etre anxieux seul et debout comme une borne

24

Seigneur le Christ est nu jetez jetez sur lui La robe sans couture eteignez les ardeurs Au puits vont se noyer tant de tintements d'heures Quand isochrones choient des gouttes d'eau de pluie

28

L'Ermite

4—A

87

J'ai veille trente nuits sous les lauriers-roses As-tu sue du sang Christ dans Gethsemani Crucifie reponds Dis non Moi je le nie Car j'ai trop espere en vain 1'hematidrose

32

J'ecoutais a genoux toquer les battements Du cceur le sang roulait toujours en ses arteres Qui sont de vieux coraux ou qui sont des clavaires Et mon aorte etait avare eperdument

36

Une goutte tombe Sueur Et sa couleur Lueur Le sang si rouge et j'ai ri des damnes Puis enfin j'ai compris que je saignais du nez A cause des parfums violents de mes fleurs

40

Et j'ai ri du vieil ange qui n'est point venu De vol tres indolent me tendre un beau calice J'ai ri de Paile grise etj'ote mon cilice Tisse de crins soyeux par de cruels canuts

44

Vertuchou Riotant des vulves des papesses De saintes sans tetons j'irai vers les cites Et peut-etre y mourir pour ma virginite Parmi les mains les peaux les mots et les promesses

48

Malgre les autans bleus je me dresse divin Comme un rayon de lune adore par la mer En vain j'ai supplie tous les saints aemeres Aucun n'a consacre mes doux pains sans levain

52

Et je marche Je fuis 6 nuit Lilith ulule Et clame vainement et je vois de grands yeux S'ouvrir tragiquement O nuit je vois tes cieux S'etoiler calmement de splendides pilules

56

Un squelette de reine innocente est pendu A un long fil d'etoile en desespoir severe La nuit les bois sont noirs et se meurt 1'espoir vert Quand meurt le jour avec un rale inattendu

60

*

88

UErmite Et je marche je fuis 6 jour Pemoi de 1'aube Ferma le regard fixe et doux de vieux rubis Des hiboux et voici le regard des brebis Et des truies aux tetins roses comme des lobes

64

Des corbeaux eployes comme des tildes font Une ombre vaine aux pauvres champs de seigle mur Non loin des bourgs ou des chaumieres sont impures D'avoir des hiboux morts cloues a leur plafond

68

Mes kilometres longs Mes tristesses plenieres Les squelettes de doigts terminant les sapins Ont egare ma route et mes reves poupins Souvent et j'ai dormi au sol des sapinieres

72

Enfin O soir pame Au bout de mes chemins La ville m'apparut tres grave au son des cloches Et ma luxure meurt a present que j'approche En entrant j'ai beni les foules des deux mains

76

Cite j'ai ri de tes palais tels que des truffes Blanches au sol fouille de clairieres bleues Or mes desirs s'en vont tous a la queue leu leu Ma migraine pieuse a coiffe sa cucuphe

80

Car toutes sont venues m'avouer leurs peches Et Seigneur je suis saint par le vceu des amantes Zelotide et Lorie Louise et Diamante Ont dit Tu peux savoir 6 toi 1'effarouche

84

Ermite absous nos fautes jamais venielles O toi le pur et le contrit que nous aimons Sache nos cceurs sache les jeux que nous aimons Et nos baisers quintessences comme du miel

88

Et j'absous les aveux pourpres comme leur sang Des poetesses nues des fees des fornarines

Automne

89

Aucun pauvre desir ne gonfle ma poitrine Lorsque je vois le soir les couples s'enlasant

92

Car je ne veux plus rien sinon laisser se clore Mes yeux couple lasse au verger pantelant Plein du rale pompeux des groseilliers sanglants Et de la sainte cruaute des passiflores

96

AUTOMNE Dans le brouillard s'en vont un paysan cagneux Et son boeuf lentement dans le brouillard d'automne Qui cache les hameaux pauvres et vergogneux Et s'en allant la-bas le paysan chantonne Une chanson d'amour et d'infidelite Qui parle d'une bague et d'un coeur que Ton brise Oh! 1'automne 1'automne a fait mourir 1'ete Dans le brouillard s'en vont deux silhouettes grises

4

8

I M M I G R A N T DE LANDOR ROAD A Andre Billy Le chapeau a la main il entra du pied droit Chez un tailleur tres chic et fournisseur du roi Ce commersant venait de couper quelques tetes De mannequins vetus comme il faut qu'on se vete

4

La foule en tous les sens remuait en melant Des ombres sans amour qui se trainaient par terre Et des mains vers le ciel plein de lacs de lumiere S'envolaient quelquefois comme des oiseaux blancs

8

go

U Emigrant de Landor Road Mon bateau partira demain pour 1'Amerique Et je ne reviendrai jamais Avec Pargent gagne dans les prairies lyriques Guider mon ombre aveugle en ces rues que j'aimais

12

Car revenir c'est bon pour un soldat des Indes Les boursiers ont vendu tous mes crachats d'or fin Mais habille de neuf je veux dormir enfin Sous des arbres pleins d'oiseaux muets et de singes

16

Les mannequins pour lui s'etant deshabilles Battirent leurs habits puis les lui essayerent Le vetement d'un lord mort sans avoir paye Au rabais 1'habilla comme un millionnaire

20

Au dehors les annees Regardaient la vitrine Les mannequins victimes Et passaient enchainees

24

Intercalees dans 1'an c'etaient les journees veuves Les vendredis sanglants et lents d'enterrements De blancs et de tout noirs vaincus des cieux qui pleuvent Quand la femme du diable a battu son amant 28 Puis dans un port d'automne aux feuilles indecises Quand les mains de la foule y feuillolaient aussi Sur le pont du vaisseau il posa sa valise Et s'assit

32

Les vents de 1'Ocean en soufHant leurs menaces Laissaient dans ses cheveux de longs baisers mouilles Des emigrants tendaient vers le port leurs mains lasses Et d'autres en pleurant s'etaient agenouilles 36 II regarda longtemps les rives qui moururent Seuls des bateaux d'enfant tremblaient a 1'horizon Un tout petit bouquet flottant a 1'aventure Couvrit 1'Ocean d'une immimmense floraison

40

VEmigrant de Landor Road II aurait voulu ce bouquet comme la gloire Jouer dans d'autres mers parmi tous les dauphins Et 1'on tissait dans sa memoire Une tapisserie sans fin Qui figurait son histoire Mais pour noyer changees en poux Ces tisseuses tetues qui sans cesse interrogent II se maria comme un doge Aux cris d'une sirene moderne sans epoux Gonfle-toi vers la nuit O Mer Les yeux des squales Jusqu'a 1'aube ont guette de loin avidement Des cadavres de jours ronges par les 6toiles Parmi le bruit des flots et les derniers serments

91

44

48

52

ROSEMONDE A Andre Derain Longtemps au pied du perron de La maison ou entra la dame Que j'avais suivie pendant deux Bonnes heures a Amsterdam Mes doigts jeterent des baisers

5

Mais le canal etait desert Le quai aussi et nul ne vit Comment mes baisers retrouverent Celle & qui j'ai donne ma vie Un jour pendant plus de deux heures

10

Je la surnommai Rosemonde Voulant pouvoir me rappeler Sa bouche fleurie en Hollande Puis lentement je m'en allai Pour queter la Rose du Monde

15

92

Le Brasier

LE BRASIER A Paul-Napoleon Roinard

J'ai jete dans le noble feu Que je transporte et que j'adore De vives mains et meme feu Ge Passe ces tetes de morts Flamme je fais ce que tu veux

5

Le galop soudain des etoiles N'etant que ce qui deviendra Se mele au hennissement male Des centaures dans leurs haras Et des grand'plaintes vegetales

io

Ou sont ces tetes que j'avals Ou est le Dieu de ma jeunesse L'amour est devenu mauvais Qu'au brasier les flammes renaissent Mon ame au soleil se devet

15

Dans la plaine ont pousse des flammes Nos coeurs pendent aux citronniers Les tetes coupees qui m'acclament Et les astres qui ont saigne Ne sont que des tetes de femmes

20

Le fleuve epingle sur la ville T'y fixe comme un vetement Partant a 1'amphion docile Tu subis tous les tons charmants Qui rendent les pierres agiles

25

Le Brasier

93

Je flambe dans le brasier a 1'ardeur adorable Et les mains des croyants m'y rejettent multiple innombrablement Les membres des intercis flambent aupres de moi filoignez du brasier les ossements Je suffis pour 1'eternite a entretenir le feu de mes delices 30 Et des oiseaux protegent de leurs ailes ma face et le soleil O Memoire Combien de races qui forlignent Des Tyndarides aux viperes ardentes de mon bonheur Et les serpents ne sont-ils que les cous des cygnes Qui etaient immortels et n'etaient pas chanteurs Voici ma vie renouvelee De grands vaisseaux passent et repassent Je trempe une fois encore mes mains dans 1' Ocean Voici le paquebot et ma vie renouvelee Ses flammes sont immenses II n'y a plus rien de commun entre moi Et ceux qui craignent les brulures

Descendant des hauteurs ou pense la lumiere Jardins rouant plus haut que tous les ciels mobiles L'avenir masque flambe en traversant les cieux

35

40

45

Nous attendons ton bon plaisir 6 mon amie J'ose a peine regarder la divine mascarade Quand bleuira sur 1'horizon la Desirade Au dela de notre atmosphere s'eleve un theatre Que construisit le ver Zamir sans instrument Puis le soleil revint ensoleiller les places D'une ville marine apparue contremont Sur les toits se reposaient les colombes lasses

50

94

Le Brasier Et le troupeau de sphinx regagne la sphingerie A petits pas II orra le chant du patre toute la vie La-haut le theatre est bati avec le feu solide Comme les astres dont se nourrit le vide Et void le spectacle Et pour toujours je suis assis dans un fauteuil Ma tete mes genoux mes coudes vain pentacle Les flammes ont pousse sur moi comme des feuilles Des acteurs inhumains claires betes nouvelles Donnent des ordres aux hommes apprivoises Terre O Dechiree que les fleuves ont reprisee

55

60

65

J'aimerais mieux nuit et jour dans les sphingeries Vouloir savoir pour qu'enfin on m'y devorat

RHfiNANES NUIT RHfiNANE Mon verre est plein d'un vin trembleur comme une flamme ficoutez la chanson lente d'un batelier Qui raconte avoir vu sous la lune sept femmes Tordre leurs cheveux verts et longs jusqu'a leurs pieds

4

Debout chantez plus haut en dansant une ronde Que je n'entende plus le chant du batelier Et mettez pres de moi toutes les filles blondes Au regard immobile aux nattes repliees

8

Le Rhin le Rhin est ivre ou les vignes se mirent Tout 1'or des nuits tombe en tremblant s'y refleter La voix chante toujours a en rale-mourir Ces fees aux cheveux verts qui incantent 1'ete Mon verre s'est brise comme un eclat de rire

12

Rhenanes

95

MAI Le mai le joli mai en barque sur le Rhin Des dames regardaient du haut de la montagne Vous etes si jolies mais la barque s'eloigne Qui done a fait pleurer les saules riverains

4

Or des vergers fleuris se figeaient en arriere Les petales tombes des cerisiers de mai Sont les ongles de celle que j'ai tant aimee Les petales fletris sont comme ses paupieres

8

Sur le chemin du bord du fleuve lentemeht Un ours un singe un chien menes par des tziganes Suivaient une roulotte trainee par un ane Tandis que s'eloignait dans les vignes rhenanes Sur un fifre lointain un air de regiment Le mai le joli mai a pare les ruines De lierre de vigne vierge et de rosiers Le vent de Rhin secoue sur le bord les osiers Et les roseaux jaseurs et les fleurs nues des vignes

12

16

LA SYNAGOGUE Ottomar Scholem et Abraham Loeweren Coiffes de feutres verts le matin du sabbat Vont a la synagogue en longeant le Rhin Et les coteaux ou les vignes rougissent la-bas

4

Us se disputent et orient des choses qu'on ose a peine traduire Batard con^u pendant les regies ou Que le diable entre dans ton pere Le vieux Rhin souleve sa face ruisselante et se detourne pour sourire Ottomar Scholem et Abraham Loeweren sont en colere

8

96

Rhenanes

Parce que pendant le sabbat on ne doit pas fumer Tandis que les Chretiens passent avec des cigares allumes Et pare qu'Ottomar et Abraham aiment tous deux Lia aux yeux de brebis et dont le ventre avance un peu

12

Pourtant tout a 1'heure dans la synagogue 1'un apres 1'autre Us baiseront la thora en soulevant leur beau chapeau Parmi les feuillards de la fete des cabanes Ottomar en chantant sourira a Abraham

16

Us dechanteront sans mesure et les voix graves des hommes Feront gemir un Leviathan au fond du Rhin comme une voix d'automne Et dans la synagogue pleine de chapeaux on agitera les loulabim Hanoten ne Kamoth bagoim tholahoth baleoumim

20

LES CLOCHES Mon beau tzigane mon amant Ecoute les cloches qui sonnent Nous nous aimions eperdument Croyant n'etre vus de personne

4

Mais nous etions bien mal caches Toutes les cloches a la ronde Nous ont vu du haut des clochers Et le disent a tout le monde

8

Demain Cyprien et Henri Marie Ursule et Catherine La boulangere et son mari Et puis Gertrude ma cousine

12

Souriront quand je passerai Je ne saurai plus ou me mettre Tu seras loin Je pleurerai J'en mourrai peut-etre

16

Rhenanes

97

LA LORELEY A Jean Seve A Bacharach il y avait une sorciere blonde Qui laissait mourir d'amour tous les hommes a la ronde Devant son tribunal 1'eveque la fit citer D'avance il 1'absolvit a cause de sa beaute

4

O belle Loreley aux yeux pleins de pierreries De quel magicien tiens-tu ta sorcellerie Je suis lasse de vivre et mes yeux sont maudits Ceux qui m'ont regardee eVeque en ont p£ri

8

Mes yeux ce sont des flammes et non des pierreries Jetez jetez aux flammes cette sorcellerie Je flambe dans ces flammes 6 belle Loreley Qu'un autre te condamne tu m'as ensorcele

12

fiveque vous riez Priez plutot pour moi la Vierge Faites-moi done mourir et que Dieu vous protege Mon amant est parti pour un pays lointain Faites-moi done mourir puisque je n'aime rien

16

Mon cceur me fait si mal il faut bien que je meure Si je me regardais il faudrait que j'en meure Mon coeur me fait si mal depuis qu'il n'est plus la Mon coeur me fit si mal du jour ou il s'en alia L'eVeque fit venir trois chevaliers avec leurs lances Menez jusqu'au couvent cette femme en demence

20

98

Rhenanes

Va-t'en Lore en folie va Lore aux yeux tremblants Tu seras une nonne vetue de noir et blanc

24

Puis ils s'en allerent sur la route tous les quatre La Loreley les implorait et ses yeux brillaient comme des astres Chevaliers laissez-moi monter sur ce rocher si haut Pour voir une fois encore mon beau chateau

28

Pour me mirer une fois encore dans le fleuve Puis j'irai au couvent des vierges et des veuves La-haut le vent tordait ses cheveux deroules Les chevaliers criaient Loreley Loreley

32

Tout la-bas sur le Rhin s'en vient une nacelle Et mon amant s'y tient il m'a vue il m'appelle Mon coeur devient si doux c'est mon amant qui vient Elle se penche alors et tombe dans le Rhin

36

Pour avoir vu dans 1'eau la belle Loreley Ses yeux couleur du Rhin ses cheveux de soleil SCHINDERHANNES A Marius-Ary Leblond Dans la foret avec sa bande Schinderhannes s'est desarme Le brigand pres de sa brigande Hennit d'amour au joli mai

4

Benzel accroupi lit la Bible Sans voir que son chapeau pointu A plume d'aigle sert de cible A Jacob Born le mal foutu

8

Rhenanes

99

Juliette Blaesius qui rote Fait semblant d'avoir le hoquet Hannes pousse une fausse note Quand Schulz vient portant un baquet

12

Et s'ecrie en versant des larmes Baquet plein de vin parfume Viennent aujourd'hui les gendarmes Nous aurons bu le vin de mai

16

Allons Julia la mam'zelle Bois avec nous ce clair bouillon D'herbes et de vin de Moselle Prosit Bandit en cotillon

20

Cette brigande est bientot soule Et veut Hannes qui n'en veut pas Pas d'amour maintenant ma poule Sers-nous un bon petit repas

24

II faut ce soir que j'assassine Ce riche juif au bord du Rhin Au clair des torches de resine La fleur de mai c'est le florin

28

On mange alors toute la bande Pete et rit pendant le diner Puis s'attendrit a rallemande Avant d'aller assassiner

32

RHfiNANE D'AUTOMNE A Toussaint Luca Les enfants des morts vont jouer Dans le cimetiere Martin Gertrude Hans et Henri Nul coq n'a chante aujourd'hui Kikiriki

5

ioo

Rhenanes Les vieilles femmes Tout en pleurant cheminent Et les bons anes Braillent hi ban et se mettent a brouter les fleurs Des couronnes mortuaires C'est le jour des morts et de toutes leurs ames Les enfants et les vieilles femmes Allument des bougies et des cierges Sur chaque tombe catholique Les voiles des vieilles Les nuages du ciel Sont comme des barbes de biques

10

15

L'air tremble de flammes et de prieres Le cimetiere est un beau jardin Plein de saules gris et de romarins II vous vient souvent des amis qu'on enterre Ah! que vous etes bien dans le beau cimetiere Vous mendiants morts saouls de biere Vous les aveugles comme le destin Et vous petits enfants morts en priere Ah! que vous etes bien dans le beau cimetiere Vous bourgmestres vous bateliers Et vous conseillers de regence Vous aussi tziganes sans papiers La vie vous pourrit dans la panse La croix vous pousse entre les pieds Le vent du Rhin ulule avec tous les hiboux II eteint les cierges que toujours les enfants rallument Et les feuilles mortes Viennent couvrir les morts Des enfants morts parlent parfois avec leur mere Et des mortes parfois voudraient bien revenir

20

25

30

35

Rhenanes Oh! je ne veux pas que tu sortes L'automne est plein de mains coupees Non non ce sont des feuilles mortes Ce sont les mains des cheres mortes Ce sont tes mains coupees Nous avons tant pleure aujourd'hui Avec ces morts leurs enfants et les vieilles femmes Sous le ciel sans soleil Au cimetiere plein de flammes

101

40

45

Puis dans le vent nous nous en retournames A nos pieds roulaient des chataignes Dont les bogues etaient Comme le coeur blesse de la madone Dont on doute si elle cut la peau Couleur des chataignes d'automne

50

LES SAFINS Les sapins en bonnets pointus De longues robes revetus Comme des astrologues Saluent leurs freres abattus Les bateaux qui sur le Rhin voguent

5

Dans les sept arts endoctrines Par les vieux sapins leurs aines Qui sont de grands poetes Us se savent predestines A briller plus que des planetes

10

A briller doucement changes En etoiles et enneiges Aux Noels bienheureuses Fetes des sapins ensonges Aux longues branches langoureuses

15

102

Rhenanes Les sapins beaux musiciens Chantent des noels anciens Au vent des soirs d'automne Ou bien graves magiciens Incantent le ciel quand il tonne

2O

Des rangees de blancs cherubins Remplacent 1'hiver les sapins Et balancent leurs ailes L'ete ce sont de grands rabbins Ou bien de vieilles demoiselles

25

Sapins medecins divagants Us vont offrant leurs bons onguents Quand la montagne accouche De temps en temps sous 1'ouragan Un vieux sapin geint et se couche

30

LES FEMMES Dans la maison du vigneron les femmes cousent Lenchen remplis le poele et mets I'eau du cafe Dessus—Le chat s'etire apres s'etre chauffe —Gertrude et son voisin Martin enfin s'epousent

4

Le rossignol aveugle essaya de chanter Mais 1'effraie ululant il trembla dans sa cage Ce cypres Id-bas a Fair du pape en voyage Sous la neige—Lefacteur vient de s'arreter

8

Pour causer avec le nouveau maitre d'ecole —Get hiver est tresfroid le vin sera tres bon —Le sacristain sourd et boiteux est moribond —Lafille du vieux bourgmestre brode une etole

I2

Rhenanes

103

Pour la fete du cure La foret la-bas Grace au vent chantait a voix grave de grand orgue Le songe Herr Traum survint avec sa sceur Frau Sorge Keethi tu n'as pas bien raccommode ces bos

16

—Apporte le cafe le beurre et les tartines La marmelade le saindoux un pot de lait —Encore un peu de cafe Lenchen s'il te plait —On dirait que le vent dit des phrases latines

20

—Encore un peu de cafe Lenchen s'il te plait —Lotte es-tu triste 0 petit casur—Je crois qu'elle aime —Dieu garde—Pour ma partje n'aime que moi-meme —Chut A present grand'mere dit son chapelet

24

—// mefaut du sucre candi Lenije tousse —Pierre mene son fur et chasser les lapins Le vent faisait danser en rond tous les sapins Lotte I'amour rend triste—Use la vie est douce

28

La nuit tombait Les vignobles aux ceps tordus Devenaient dans 1'obscurite des ossuaires En neige et replies gisaient la des suaires Et des chiens aboyaient aux passants morfondus

32

// est mort ecoutez La cloche de 1'eglise Sonnait tout doucement la mort du sacristain Lise ilfaut attiser le poele qui s'eteint Les femmes se signaient dans la nuit indecise

36

Septembre 1901-Mai 1902

IO4

Signe SIGNE Je suis soumis au Chef du Signe de 1'Automne Partant j'aime les fruits je jleteste les fleurs Je regrette chacun des baisers que je donne Tel un noyer gaule dit au vent ses douleurs

4

Mon Automne eternelle 6 ma saison mentale Les mains des amantes d'antan jonchent ton sol Une epouse me suit c'est mon ombre fatale Les colombes ce soir prennent leur dernier vol

8

UN SOI R Un aigle descendit de ce del blanc d'archanges Et vous soutenez-moi Laisserez-vous trembler longtemps toutes ces lampes Priez priez pour moi

4

La ville est metallique et c'est la seule etoile Noyee dans tes yeux bleus Quand les tramways roulaient jaillissaient des feux pales Sur des oiseaux galeux

8

Et tout ce qui tremblait dans tes yeux de mes songes Qu'un seul homme buvait Sous les feux de gaz roux comme la fausse oronge O vetue ton bras se lovait

12

Vois 1'histrion tire la langue aux attentives Un fantome s'est suicide L'apotre au figuier pend et lentement salive Jouons done cet amour aux des

16

Des cloches aux sons clairs annongaient ta naissance Vois

La Dame Les chemins sont fleuris et les palmes s'avancent Vers toi

105 20

LA DAME Toe toe II a ferme sa porte Les lys du jardin sont fletris Quel est done ce mort qu'on emporte Tu viens de toquer a sa porte Et trotte trotte Trotte la petite souris

4

LES F I A N G A I L L E S A Picasso

Le printemps laisse errer les fiances parjures Et laisse feuilloler longtemps les plumes bleues Que secoue le cypres ou niche 1'oiseau bleu Une Madone a 1'aube a pris les eglantines Elle viendra demain cueillir les giroflees Pour mettre aux nids des colombes qu'elle destine Au pigeon qui ce soir semblait le Paraclet

4

Au petit bois de citronniers s'enamourerent D'amour que nous aimons les dernieres venues Les villages lointains sont comme leurs paupieres Et parmi les citrons leurs coeurs sont suspendus

8

Mes amis m'ont enfin avoue leur mepris Je buvais & pleins verres les etoiles Un ange a extermine pendant que je dormais

12

106

Les Fiangailles

Les agneaux les pasteurs des tristes bergeries De faux centurions emportaient le vinaigre Et les gueux mal blesses par Pepurge dansaient fitoiles de 1'eveil je n'en connais aucune Les bees de gaz pissaient leur flamme au clair de lune Des croque-morts avec des bocks tintaient des glas A la clarte des bougies tombaient vaille que vaille Des faux cols sur des flots de jupes mal brossees Des accouchees masquees fetaient leurs relevailles La ville cette nuit semblait un archipel Des femmes demandaient 1'amour et la dulie Et sombre sombre fleuve je me rappelle Les ombres qui passaient n'etaient jamais jolies

Je n'ai plus meme pitie de moi Et ne puis exprimer mon tourment de silence Tous les mots que j'avais a dire se sont changes en etoiles Un Icare tente de s'elever jusqu'a chacun de mes yeux Et porteur de soleils je brule au centre de deux nebuleuses Qu'ai-je fait aux betes theologales de 1'intelligence Jadis les morts sont revenus pour m'adorer Et j'esperais la fin du monde Mais la mienne arrive en sifflant comme un ouragan

16

20

24

28

32

36

J'ai eu le courage de regarder en arriere Les cadavres de mes jours Marquent ma route et je les pleure Les uns pourrissent dans les eglises italiennes 40 Ou bien dans de petits bois de citronniers Qui fleurissent et fructifient En meme temps et en toute saison D'autres jours ont pleure avant de mourir dans des tavernes 44 Ou d'ardents bouquets rouaient Aux yeux d'une mulatresse qui inventait la poesie Et les roses de 1'electricite s'ouvrent encore Dans le jardin de ma memoire 48

Les Fiangailles Pardonnez-moi mon ignorance Pardonnez-moi de ne plus connaitre 1'ancien jeu des vers Je ne sais plus rien et j'aime uniquement Les fleurs a mes yeux redeviennent des flammes Je medite divinement Et je souris des etres que je n'ai pas crees Mais si le temps venait ou 1'ombre enfin solide Se multipliait en realisant la diversite formelle de mon amour J'admirerais mon ouvrage J'observe le repos du dimanche Et je loue la paresse Comment comment reduire L'infiniment petite science Que m'imposent mes sens L'un est pareil aux montagnes au ciel Aux villes a mon amour II ressemble aux saisons II vit decapite sa tete est le soleil Et la lune son cou tranche Je voudrais eprouver une ardeur infinie Monstre de mon ou'ie tu rugis et tu pleures Le tonnerre te sert de chevelure Et tes griffes repetent le chant des oiseaux Le toucher monstrueux m'a peneire m'empoisonne Mes yeux nagent loin de moi Et les astres intacts sont mes maitres sans epreuve La bete des fum^es a la tete fleurie Et le monstre le plus beau Ayant la saveur du laurier se desole A la fin les mensonges ne me font plus peur C'est la lune qui cuit comme un oeuf sur le plat Ce collier de gouttes d'eau va parer la noyee Voici mon bouquet de fleurs de la Passion Qui offrent tendrement deux couronnes d'epines Les rues sont mouillees de la pluie de naguere

107

52

56

60

64

68

72

76

80

io8

Les Fianfallies

Des anges diligents travaillent pour moi a la maison La lune et la tristesse disparaitront pendant Toute la sainte journee Toute la sainte journee j'ai marche en chantant Une dame penchee a sa fenetre m'a regarde longtemps M'eloigner en chantant Au tournant d'une rue je vis des matelots Qui dansaient le cou nu au son d'un accordeon J'ai tout donne au soleil Tout sauf mon ombre Les dragues les ballots les sirenes mi-mortes A 1'horizon brumeux s'enfonc.aient les trois-mats Les vents ont expire couronnes d'anemones O Vierge signe pur du troisieme mois Templiers flamboyants je brule parmi vous Prophetisons ensemble 6 grand maitre je suis Le desirable feu qui pour vous se devoue Et la girande tourne 6 belle 6 belle nuit Liens delies par une libre flamme Ardeur Que mon souffle eteindra O Morts a quarantaine Je mire de ma mort la gloire et le malheur Comme si je visais 1'oiseau de la quintaine Incertitude oiseau feint peint quand vous tombiez Le soleil et 1'amour dansaient dans le village Et tes enfants galants bien ou mal habilles Ont bad ce bucher le nid de mon courage

84

88

92

96

100

104

108

Clair de Lune

109

GLAIR DE LUNE Lune mellifluente aux levres des dements Les vergers et les bourgs cette nuit sont gourmands Les astres assez bien figurent les abeilles De ce miel lumineux qui degoutte des treilles Car void que tout doux et leur tombant du ciel Ghaque rayon de lune est un rayon de miel Or cache je concois la tres douce aventure J'ai peur du dard de feu de cette abeille Arcture Qui posa dans mes mains des rayons decevants Et prit son miel lunaire a la rose des vents

5

10

1909 La dame avait une robe En ottoman violine Et sa tunique brodee d'or fitait composee de deux panneaux S'attachant sur Pepaule Les yeux dansants comme des anges Elle riait elle riait Elle avait un visage aux couleurs de France Les yeux bleus les dents blanches et les levres tres rouges Elle avait un visage aux couleurs de France

5

10

Elle etait decolletee en rond Et coiffee a la Recamier Avec de beaux bras nus N'entendra-t-on jamais sonner minuit La dame en robe d'ottoman violine Et en tunique brodee d'or Decolletee en rond

15

no

1909

Promenait ses boucles Son bandeau d'or Et trainait ses petit souliers a boucles

20

Elle etait si belle Que tu n'aurais pas ose 1'aimer J'aimais les femmes atroces dans les quartiers enormes Ou naissaient chaque jour quelques etres nouveaux Le fer etait leur sang le flamme leur cerveau J'aimais J'aimais le peuple habile des machines Le luxe et la beaute ne sont que son ecume Cette femme etait si belle Qu'elle me faisait peur

25

A LA SANTfi I

Avant d'entrer dans ma cellule II a fallu me mettre nu Et quelle voix sinistre ulule Guillaume qu'es-tu devenu

4

Le Lazare entrant dans la tombe Au lieu d'en sortir comme il fit Adieu adieu chantante ronde O mes annees 6 jeunes filles

8

II

Non je ne me sens plus la Moi-meme Je suis le quinze de la Onzieme

12

A la Sante

in

Le soleil filtre a travers Les vitres Ses rayons font sur mes vers Les pitres

16

Et dansent sur le papier J'ecoute Quelqu'un qui frappe du pied La voute

20

III

Dans une fosse comme un ours Chaque matin je me promene Tournons tournons tournons toujours Le del est bleu comme une chaine Dans une fosse comme un ours Chaque matin je me promene Dans la cellule d'a cote On y fait couler la fontaine Avec les clefs qu'il fait tinter Que le geolier aille et revienne Dans la cellule d'a cote On y fait couler la fontaine

24

28

32

IV

Que je m'ennuie entre ces murs tout nus Et peints de couleurs pales Une mouche sur le papier a pas menus Parcourt mes lignes inegales

36

Que deviendrai-je 6 Dieu qui connais ma douleur Toi qui me 1'as donnee Prends en pitie mes yeux sans larmes ma paleur Le bruit de ma chaise enchainee

40

H2

A la Sante Et tous ces pauvres coeurs battant dans la prison L'Amour qui m'accompagne Prends en pitie surtout ma debile raison Et ce desespoir qui la gagne

44

V

Que lentement passent les heures Comme passe un enterrement Tu pleureras 1'heure ou tu pleures Qui passera trop vitement Comme passent toutes les heures

48

VI

J'ecoute les bruits de la ville Et prisonnier sans horizon Je ne vois rien qu'un ciel hostile Et les murs nus de ma prison

52

Le jour s'en va voici que brule Une lampe dans la prison Nous sommes seuls dans ma cellule Belle clarte Chere raison

56 Septembre 1911

AUTOMNE MALADE Automne malade et adore" Tu mourras quand I'ouragan soufflera dans les roseraies Quand il aura neige Dans les vergers

4

Automne Malade Pauvre automne Meurs en blancheur et en richesse De neige et de fruits murs Au fond du ciel Des eperviers planent Sur les nixes nicettes aux cheveux verts et naines Qui n'ont jamais aime Aux lisieres lointaines Les cerfs ont brame Et que j'aime 6 saison que j'aime tes rumeurs Les fruits tombant sans qu'on les cueille Le vent et la foret qui pleurent Toutes leurs larmes en automne feuille a feuille Les feuilles Qu'on foule Un train Qui roule La vie S'ecoule

113

8

i2

16

20

HOTELS La chambre est veuve Chacun pour soi Presence neuve On paye au mois

4

Le patron doute Payera-t-on Je tourne en route Comme un toton

8

Le bruit des fiacres Mon voisin laid Qui fume un acre Tabac anglais

12

H4

Hdtels O La Valliere Qui boite et rit De mes prieres Table de nuit

16

Et tous ensemble Dans cet hotel Savons la langue Comme a Babel

20

Fermons nos portes A double tour Chacun apporte Son seul amour

24

GORS DE CHASSE Notre histoire est noble et tragique Comme le masque d'un tyran Nul drame hasardeux ou magique Aucun detail indifferent Ne rend notre amour pathetique

5

Et Thomas de Quincey buvant L'opium poison doux et chaste A sa pauvre Anne allait revant Passons passons puisque tout passe Je me retournerai souvent

IO

Les souvenirs sont cors de chasse Dont meurt le bruit parmi le vent

Vendemiaire

115

VENDfiMIAIRE Hommes de 1'avenir souvenez-vous de moi Je vivais a 1'epoque ou finissaient les rois Tour a tour ils mouraient silencieux et tristes Et trois fois courageux devenaient trismegistes Que Paris etait beau a la fin de septembre Chaque nuit devenait une vigne ou les pampres Repandaient leur clarte sur la ville et la-haut Astres murs becquetes par les ivres oiseaux De ma gloire attendaient la vendange de 1'aube Un soir passant le long des quais deserts et sombres En rentrant a Auteuil j'entendis une voix Qui chantait gravement se taisant quelquefois Pour que parvint aussi sur les bords de la Seine Le plainte d'autres voix limpides et lointaines Et j'ecoutai longtemps tous ces chants et ces cris Qu'eveillait dans la nuit la chanson de Paris

4

8

12

16

J'ai soif villes de France et d'Europe et du monde Venez toutes couler dans ma gorge profonde Je vis alors que deja ivre dans la vigne Paris Vendangeait le raisin le plus doux de la terre Ces grains miraculeux qui aux treilles chanterent Et Rennes repondit avec Quimper et Vannes Nous voici 6 Paris Nos maisons nos habitants Ces grappes de nos sens qu'enfanta le soleil Se sacrifient pour te desalterer trop avide merveille Nous t'apportons tous les cerveaux les cimetieres les murailles Ces berceaux pleins de cris que tu n'entendras pas Et d'amont en aval nos pensees 6 rivieres Les oreilles des ecoles et nos mains rapprochees

20

24

28

u6

Vendemiaire Aux doigts allonges nos mains les clochers Et nous t'apportons aussi cette souple raison Que le mystere clot comme une porte la maison Ce mystere courtois de la galanterie Ce mystere fatal fatal d'une autre vie Double raison qui est au dela de la beaute Et que la Grece n'a pas connue ni 1'Orient Double raison de la Bretagne ou lame a lame L'ocean chatre peu a peu 1'ancien continent

32

36

Et les villes du Nord repondirent gaiment O Paris nous voici boissons vivantes Les viriles cites ou degoisent et chantent Les metalliques saints de nos saintes usines Nos cheminees a ciel ouvert engrossent les nuees Comme fit autrefois 1'Ixion mecanique Et nos mains innombrables Usines manufactures fabriques mains Ou les ouvriers nus semblables a nos doigts Fabriquent du reel a tant par heure Nous te donnons tout cela

40

44

48

Et Lyon repondit tandis que les anges de Fourvieres Tissaient un ciel nouveau avec la soie des prieres Desaltere-toi Paris avec les divines paroles Que mes levres le Rhone et la Saone murmurent Toujours le meme culte de sa mort renaissant Divise ici les saints et fait pleuvoir le sang Heureuse pluie 6 gouttes tiedes 6 douleur Un enfant regarde les fenetres s'ouvrir Et des grappes de tetes a d'ivres oiseaux s'offrir

52

56

Les villes du Midi repondirent alors Noble Paris seule raison qui vis encore Qui fixes notre humeur selon ta destinee Et toi qui te retires Mediterranee

60

Vendemiaire Partagez-vous nos corps comme on rompt des hosties Ces tres hautes amours et leur danse orpheline Deviendront 6 Paris le vin pur que tu aimes

117 64

Et un rale infini qui venait de Sicile Signifiait en battement d'ailes ces paroles Les raisins de nos vignes on les a vendanges Et ces grappes de morts dont les grains allonges Ont la saveur du sang de la terre et du sel Les voici pour ta soif 6 Paris sous le ciel Obscurci de nue"es fameliques Que caresse Ixion le createur oblique Et ou naissent sur la mer tous les corbeaux d'Afrique O raisins Et ces yeux ternes et en famille L'avenir et la vie dans ces treilles s'ennuyent

68

72

76

Mais ou est le regard lumineux des sirenes II trompa les marins qu'aimaient ces oiseaux-la II ne tournera plus sur 1'ecueil de Scylla Ou chantaient les trois voix suaves et sereines

80

Le detroit tout a coup avait change de face Visages de la chair de I'onde de tout Ce que Ton peut imaginer Vous n'etes que des masques sur des faces masquees

84

II souriait jeune nageur entre les rives Et les noyes flottant sur son onde nouvelle Fuyaient en le suivant les chanteuses plaintives Elles dirent adieu au gouffre et a 1'ecueil A leurs pales epoux couches sur les terrasses Puis ayant pris leur vol vers le brulant soleil Les suivirent dans I'onde ou s'enfoncent les astres Lorsque la nuit revint couverte d'yeux ouverts Errer au site ou 1'hydre a siffle cet hiver

88

92

118

Vendemiaire Et j'entendis soudain ta voix imperieuse O Rome Maudire d'un seul coup mes anciennes pensees Et le ciel ou 1'amour guide les destinees Les feuillards repousses sur 1'arbre de la croix Et meme la fleur de lys qui meurt au Vatican Macerent dans le vin que je t'offre et qui a La saveur du sang pur de celui qui connait Une autre liberte vegetale dont tu Ne sais pas que c'est elle la supreme vertu Une couronne du triregne est tombee sur les dalles Les hierarques la foulent sous leurs sandales O splendeur democratique qui palit Vienne la nuit royale ou Ton tuera les betes La louve avec 1'agneau 1'aigle avec la colombe Une foule de rois ennemis et cruels Ayant soif comme toi dans la vigne eternelle Sortiront de la terre et viendront dans les airs Pour boire de mon vin par deux fois millenaire La Moselle et le Rhin se joignent en silence C'est 1'Europe qui prie nuit et jour a Coblence Et moi qui m'attardais sur le quai a Auteuil Quand les heures tombaient parfois comme les feuilles Du cep lorsqu'il est temps j'entendis la priere Qui joignait la limpidite de ces rivieres O Paris le vin de ton pays est meilleur que celui Qui pousse sur nos bords mais aux pampres du nord Tous les grains ont muri pour cette soif terrible Mes grappes d'hommes forts saignent dans le pressoir Tu boiras a longs traits tout le sang de 1'Europe Parce que tu es beau et que seul tu es noble Parce que c'est dans toi que Dieu peut devenir Et tous mes vignerons dans ces belles maisons Qui refletent le soir leurs feux dans nos deux eaux Dans ces belles maisons nettement blanches et noires

96

100

104

108

112

116

120

124

128

Vendemiaire Sans savoir que tu es la realite chantent ta gloire Mais nous liquides mains jointes pour la priere Nous menons vers le sel les eaux aventurieres Et la ville entre nous comme entre des ciseaux Ne reflete en dormant nul feu dans ses deux eaux Dont quelque sifflement lointain parfois s'elance Troublant dans leur sommeil les filles de Coblence Les villes repondaient maintenant par centaines Je ne distinguais plus leurs paroles lointaines Et Treves la ville ancienne A leur voix melait la sienne L'univers tout entier concentre dans ce vin Qui contenait les mers les animaux les plantes Les cites les destins et les astres qui chantent Les hommes a genoux sur la rive du ciel Et le docile fer notre bon compagnon Le feu qu'il faut aimer comme on s'aime soi-meme Tous les fiers trepasses qui sont un sous mon front L'eclair qui luit ainsi qu'une pensee naissante Tous les noms six par six les nombres un a un Des kilos de papier tordus comme des flammes Et ceux-la qui sauront blanchir nos ossements Les bons vers immortels qui s'ennuient patiemment Des armees rangees en bataille Des forets de crucifix et mes demeures lacustres Au bord des yeux de celle que j'aime tant Les fleurs qui s'ecrient hors de bouches Et tout ce que je ne sais pas dire Tout ce que je ne connaitrai jamais Tout cela tout cela change en ce vin pur Dont Paris avait soif Me fut alors presente Actions belles journees sommeils terribles Vegetation Accouplements musiques eternelles Mouvements Adorations douleur divine Mondes qui vous ressemblez et qui nous ressemblez Je vous ai bus et ne fus pas desaltere 5—A *

*

119

13 2

136

140

144

148

15 2

156

160

164

120

Vendemiaire Mais je connus des lors quelle saveur a 1'univers Je suis ivre d'avoir bu tout 1'univers Sur le quai d'ou je voyais I'onde couler et dormir les belandres

168

ficoutez-rnoi je suis le gosier de Paris Et je boirai encore s'il me plait 1'univers ficoutez mes chants d'universelle ivrognerie Et la nuit de septembre s'achevait lentement Les feux rouges des ponts s'eteignaient dans la Seine Les etoiles mouraient le jour naissait a peine

172

C O M M E N T A R I E S A N D NOTES ZONE The poem was first published in 1912. Apollinaire wrote of ^jane in a letter dated 30 July 1915: Je vous expliquerai la genese de ce poeme de fin d'amour . . . En 1907 j'ai eu pour une jeune fille qui etait peintre un gout esthetique qui confinait a Padmiration et participe encore de ce sentiment. Elle m'aimait ou le croyait et je crus ou plutot m'efforcai de 1'aimer, car je ne 1'aimais pas alors. Nous n'etions connus en ce temps-la ni 1'un ni 1'autre et je commensais mes meditations et ecrits esthetiques qui devaient avoir une influence en Europe et meme ailleurs. Je puis dire que je fis mon possible pour faire partager mon admiration a 1'univers. Elle voulait que nous nous mariions ce que je ne voulus jamais, cela dura jusqu'en 1913 ou elle ne m'aima plus. C'etait fini, mais tant de temps passe ensemble, tant de souvenirs communs, tout cela s'en allant j'en eus une angoisse que je pris pr (sic) de 1'amour et je souffris jusqu'au moment de la guerre (T.S., p. 68). This account of the poem as a 'poeme de fin d'amour' belies the wider spread of its themes in which the lament for love is overshadowed by a nostalgia for lost youth, for a dead faith and by a deep sense of alienation. From the beginning on a sunny morning when a contemporary Paris breathes a confident optimism in the future, the climate and atmosphere of the poem darken into a growing depression where lost love, death, youth and a wasted life are mirrored in the other face of the urban present: its avarice, sordidness and misery. The alarms occasioned by Apollinaire's arrest on suspicion of the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 followed by the end of his love-affair with Marie Laurencin, the woman referred to in the letter quoted above, were twin crises which brought about the revaluation of his situation. The poem is a kind of balance sheet in which the poet takes a hard, disabused look at his life and his art. If'La Chanson du mal-aime' has hope concealed in its epigraph and in the conclusion that, if suffering is the lifeblood of art, then art has the power to transcend it, there are no such consolations in 'Zone'. The poem ranges widely in space over the scenes of Apollinaire's life and, in time, from his early youth to the present when, as a man of 32, he looks back on his life. An early version of the poem, entitled 'Cri', is published by M. Decaudin (Doss., pp. 77-81); compared with the discreet, veiled meditation of the final version, it is a much

122

Commentaries (p. 39)

simpler and angrier lament for love. Gabrielle Picabia has described in an article ('Apollinaire', Transition, 6, 50) how she was joined in the autumn of 1912 by Apollinaire, Picabia and Marcel Duchamp in a big farmhouse in the Jura where she was staying. Apollinaire, with his customary avid curiosity, fell in love with the region and its customs; 'Its borderland, known as "the Zone", had obtained, thanks to Voltaire, a certain relaxation of customs restrictions which still obtained', wrote Gabrielle Picabia and it was here, when reading an extract to his friends, that Apollinaire decided to call the poem 'Zone'. Zjone is also the name given to that indeterminate area lying outside the former walls of Paris which is neither town nor country. Andre Breton referred to 'la singuliere puissance de "Zone" ' (Les Pas perdus, Nouvelle Revue frangaise, 1924, p. 38) and preferred it to all the poems of Apollinaire. Its discontinuity in time, space and thematic emphasis is marked; the range of images is vast and the registers of style vary considerably. As in James Joyce's Ulysses there is a formal unity of time since the poem covers a span from morning to the following dawn, unity of place as the poem 'happens' in Paris, and a certain unity of action since the poem concerns one man's investigation of himself. But time is overridden, the poet's mind covers Europe, the themes multiply. The search for identity is central, the constant centrality of the poet is the strong thread that binds the poem together. There is also an overall dramatic tension caused by the original use of the pronouns je and tu. These two voices are absent in the original version which is written in the first person. The careful elaboration of an interior dialogue with the attribution of a series of comments and questions to a voice using the pronoun tu and responses by a voice using je heightens dramatically the inner meaning of the poem and makes more searching the quest. Of course, both are the voices of the poet but they are subtly distinguished one from the other: the voice using tu is Apollinaire's alter ego, his familiar and inquisitor; the other, using je, is the repentant sinner, acknowledging the sad truth of the accusations. The dialogue cuts into single lines as in 11. 119-20: Tu n'oses plus rega"rder tes mains / et a tous moments je voudrais sangloter / Sur toi / sur celle que j'aime / sur tout ce qui t'a

epouvants /The formal unity of the poem is further strengthened by the metrical system. Written in free verse which well translates the nervous movement of thought, emotion and description, the lines are paired for the most part in rhyming couplets, although the rhymes are often extremely pauvres and sometimes no more than a distant echo of assonance, like christianisme / Pie X, industrielle / Ternes, cachette / college.

Commentaries (p. 39}

I2

3

Much has been written of Apollinaire's debt to the poem 'Les Paques a New York' by Blaise Cendrars dated 'New York, avril 1912'. There is certainly a similarity of content—the errance, the cast of prostitutes, Jews, Poles, the quest for a faith, the ending in bleak despair. The differences are more important: 'Zone' is written in a freer verse form, the registers of style are more varied, the themes more complex, and above all, the dialoguing voices give an added richness to the texture. On the relationships between the two poets, see M. Poupon, Apollinaire et Cendrars (Archives des Lettres modernes, 2, 103, 1969). Samuel Beckett has done a magnificent translation of the poem; published without signature in Transition, 50, 6, 1950 it has now been issued separately (Dublin, Dolmen Press; London, Calder and Boyars, 1972). See: R. GoufHgnal, '£one' d'Apollinaire (Archives des Lettres modernes, 4, 118, 1970). 1-24. celebrate the contemporary industrial city with an insistence on its grace, excitement and bustle in the bright morning sunshine. 1. Apollinaire reduced the tone of some of the lines originally composed for the poem. An earlier version of the first line read: Je suis ecoeur£ de vivre dans ce monde ancien L'Europe laide et fardde comme une vieille putain (Doss., p. 77) 2. The image is a surprising and pleasing combination of the traditional pastoral scene reinterpreted in modern terms. Cf. /. 72. 6. Port-Aviation was the airfield near Paris. Its functional architecture is contrasted with that of Tantiquit6 grecque et romaine'. 8. In May 1911, at the Vatican, Pope Pius X blessed the pilot Beaumont who had won the Paris-Rome air race. 9-10. An earlier version read: Mais j'ai perdu 1'habitude de croire et la honte me retient. Note the change of person. 11—13. An allusion to the growing interest in poster art which had been given a considerable impetus by Toulouse-Lautrec. In 1913, in an article entitled 'La peinture moderne' Apollinaire noted that 'dans une ville moderne, 1'inscription, 1'enseigne, la publicite jouent un role artistique tres important' (O.C., iv, p. 282). Apollinaire's art was open to the chance encounters of everyday life and, in this respect, was an important influence on Surrealism. 16. The image well conveys the harsh brilliance of the sun and is to be contrasted with the 'soleil cou coup£' of the ending.

124

Commentaries (pp 39-40}

23. An earlier version of this line read: Et je ne puis guere aimer a Paris que cette rue industrielle [Les folies de ma vie et ces fum^es] but the process of revision considerably reduced the directness of autobiographical confession. 25-41. The brightness and freshness of the street recall nostalgically the past. The passage recounting previous religious experience has been considerably extended (11. 42-70 are not to be found in the earlier version), and the past tense is changed to the sharper present. 26. Blue and white are the traditional colours of the Virgin Mary. 27. Rene Dalize, to whom Calligrammes was dedicated ('A la memoire du plus ancien de mes camarades R E N E DALIZE mort au Champ d'Honneur le 7 mai 1917'), was the pen name of Rene Dupuy, a school friend at the College Saint-Charles in Monte Carlo. 30. The Chapel of the College Saint-Charles where Apollinaire made his first communion in 1892. 31. Scott Bates points out in the glossary to his Guillaume Apollinaire that the amethyst was the 'symbol of divinity, of crucifixion, in medieval lapidaries, cabbalistic works'. 37. The double potence is the Cross. 38. The Star of David is six-pointed. 42-70. These lines bring to an end the first part of the poem which, with its inter-linked themes of regret for a youthful acceptance of religious faith now lost and an admiration for the brash vigour of twentieth-century life in a sunlit industrial scene, marks a movement of ascent, culminating in the fantastic volley of images of flight and transcendance. 42-3. These lines are obscure. R. Pouilliart (G.A. 4, p. 92) suggests that Apollinaire is here remembering the invocation 'Custodi nos, Domine, ut pupillam oculi' which he would have recited many times in the evening service of Compline. The 'il' of 'il sait y faire'—an unexpected colloquial phrase—refers to 'siecle'. 46. Simon Mage: Simon Magus is, by legend, gifted with the power of flight. He attempted to purchase from St Peter the power of working miracles; hence the pun on the tv/o meanings of voler, 'to fly' and 'to steal' in the following line. 49. The catalogue of legendary fliers continues. Icare is Icarus, the son of Daedalus, the Athenian craftsman of enormous skill who fashioned with wax and feathers, wings for himself and Icarus to enable them to escape from exile in Crete. Icarus flew too near the sun so that the wax melted and he fell to his death in the sea. Icarus is a figure who carries much symbolic weight for Apollinaire since he represents the human urge to confront the impossible, as well as (being a creature of man's

Commentaries (pp. 40-2}

125

imagination) demonstrating how the writer can foretell the future. In a letter Apollinaire wrote: Je me demande pourquoi dans cette terminologie de 1'aviation si incertaine encore, on n'a pas songe a rendre un hommage verbal a Icare. De son nom on aurait pu tirer des mots. II le me'ritait cet ancetre incontestable des aviateurs Elie, Elysee, Simon le Magicien aussi! (11 October 1915 T.S., p. 202) Enoch, son of Jared, and Elie (Elijah) the prophet were both elevated in heavenly chariots. Apollonius of Tyana, Pythagorean philospher, was believed to have the power of making miracles. 57. L'oiseau Roc is the fabled bird of the Thousand and One Nights. 61. pihis: a fabulous Chinese bird with one eye and one wing which flew in couples. M. De"caudin (Doss., p. 87) notes that Apollinaire had come across pihis in his youth and that the probable source is to be found in an article in the Journal asiatique of 1896. 63. The dove is a symbol of the Holy Ghost. 71. The movement of descent begins here with Apollinaire's memories crowding in on him. The city takes on a different aspect of sordid horror and the poet, instead of being one with the crowded, sunny streets, plunges into a darker reality in which he feels totally isolated. The darkness of the picture is fitfully lit by flames. 73. Far from being entirely a poem 'de fin d'amour', this is the first mention of Tangoisse de 1'amour' in the poem. 81. The more violent lines of the earlier version continued : Leurs menstrues coulent dans les ruisseaux, 1'air est infecte L'haleine des femmes est f^tide et leur voix est menteuse. 84. The Church of the Sacre-Cceur is on the butte at Montmartre. 86. The nature of this love is made unambigously clear in the draft for the line is followed by: G'est une enflure ignoble dont je souhaite etre gueri Elie me tient eVeille" jusqu'au matin dans mon lit Elie me fait mourir d'un (sic) voluptueuse angoisse. There is no Baudelairean guilt to be found in Apollinaire's frank celebrations of carnal love but if these lines are to be taken in conjunction with the following 'Si tu vivais dans 1'ancien temps tu entrerais dans un monastere' it could reflect Apollinaire's temporary rejection of love combined with a regret for past happiness which dates from before puberty. 89. Memories of his past flood in on him, some treated solemnly, some with humour, all with a sense of understanding compassion. 92. Natives of Nice, Menton and La Turbie. 94. The fish is an early symbol of Christ.

126

Commentaries (pp. 42-4}

98. The rose-beetle in the heart of the rose prefigures the flaws in Apollinaire's experience of love. 99. During a visit to the church of Saint-Vit in Prague, Apollinaire thought he discerned in the flaws of a precious stone, the delineation of a mad face which resembled his own. His superstitious nature never forgot this. 102. The hands of the clock in the Jewish quarter of Prague travelled anti-clockwise. 104. The Hradcany, a royal palace in Prague. 113-14. Reference to his arrest on suspicion of the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. 117. A veiled reference to his love affairs with Annie Playden and Marie Laurencin. 118. After this line the original version had the couplet: Je me sens abandonne sur terre depuis mon plus jeune age Je n'ose pas me confier a 1'dtoile comme les rois mages and 1. 119 read: Je n'ose plus regarder la croix. These explicit regrets for a lost faith are merged into a less direct lamentation. The sense of isolation is apparent and the chronicle of wandering becomes an errance having as its aim the realisation of identity. The lines lead naturally into a description of the emigrant Jews for whose life-style Apollinaire had an enduring interest and sympathy. The original version was considerably longer and contained a section on expatriate Poles: Et moi en qui se mele le sang slave et le sang latin Je regarde ces pauvres Polonais qui revent aux jours lointains Aux jours ou la Pologne e"tait un grand royaume On y cultivait les lettres, on y formait des hommes but once again Apollinaire covered his tracks by omission. 127. Apollinaire owned a red eiderdown which his mother had given him and which he transported into his various habitations. 135. Before this line a list of social outcasts and misfits is omitted in order to give a tighter construction revolving around the central figure of the poet. 144. The horror of the night figures vanishes as the dawn comes but the poet is left alone having passed through hope and defeat into final resignation. Lines 144-5 do not appear in the brouillon. 146. metive: archaic form of 'me"tisse'. 147. Although Pascal Pia suggests that the name Ferdine comes from a licentious novel Une Nuit d'orgies a Saint-Pierre-Martinique Pilkington plausibly argues that the names Ferdine and Le"a are employed for their alliterative values.

Commentaries (p. 44}

127

150. Apollinaire moved to Auteuil in October 1909. 151-5. An exhibition of Iberian or pre-Spanish sculpture held in the Louvre in 1906 (and which was said to have a great influence on Picasso and the Cubists), is a proof of the interest in the Paris of that time in primitive art forms. Apollinaire, in common with other writers and painters of his time had collected such objets d'art. In this context however they are seen as symbols of religions which have decayed and died. The sad exclusion contained in 'Adieu Adieu' prepares for the despair of the decapitated sun. The sun is a generalised symbol of hope and rebirth in Alcools and its death, implying the denial of both, closes the poem on a note of unadulterated gloom.

LE PONT MIRABEAU First published in 1912, the poem was composed shortly before. M. De"caudin has discovered the refrain in a manuscript dating from Apollinaire's imprisonment in September 1911: Dans une fosse comme un ours Chaque matin je me promene Tournons, tournons, tournons toujours Quand done finira la semaine Quand done finiront les amours Vienne la nuit sonne 1'heure Les jours s'en vont et je demeure (Doss., p. 90)

He has pointed out the resemblance of the last line to Villon's ' Alle s'en est, et je demeure' in Le Testament, although here it is not a refrain. Mario Roques has found similarities of rhyme and rhythm with a thirteenth-century spinning song—'Gaite et Oriour.' Whatever the literary inspiration that lies behind the poem, it is a poignant record of the end of Apollinaire's long love affair with Marie Laurencin, as he confessed in a letter to Madeleine Pages on 30 July 1915: 'Le Pont Mirabeau' e s t . . . la chanson triste de cette longue liaison brise"e avec celle qui ayant inspire" 'Zone' dessina pour la couverture de la traduction allemande du poeme, mon portrait a cheval. . .(T.S., 69-70) The familiar lyrical themes of the passing of time and the end of love are linked symbolically with the flow of the river in a poem of confession where self-revelation is masked by a hint of irony and philosophical generalisation. The inexorable movement of events passing by the man fixed in unhappiness is brilliantly conveyed by the refrain and the structure of the poem whose first line is also its last.

128

Commentaries (pp. 44-5}

The development in the presentation of the poem between its appearance in Les Soirees de Paris and in the volume Alcools, throws an interesting light on Apollinaire's interest in typography. Lines 2 (four syllables) and 3 (six syllables) formed one decasyllabic line in the original printed version giving a stanza of three decasyllabics on one feminine rhyme. The dismembering of the single line into two lines of unequal length displays a more interesting visual pattern and, with the suppression of punctuation, gives a more fluid and ambiguous movement to the poem. This was one of the poems chosen by Apollinaire for his recording made at the Archives de la parole in 1913. See: Robert Champigny, 'Analyse du "Pont Mirabeau"', P.M.L.A., Sept., 1964. Mario Roques, 'Aspects de Guillaume Apollinaire', Neophilologus, xxxi, 1947. Andre" Rouveyre, Amour et Poesie
LA CHANSON DU MAL-AIMfi First published in 1909, the poem is dated 1903 as witness the epigraph. It was much worked over and M. D6caudin has described it as 'une marquetterie de pieces ou d'ensembles'. Different states of the manuscript are examined in M. De"caudin, Doss., pp. 100 ff. After an interval of twelve years Apollinaire wrote of this poem, in a calmer, more balanced mood: 'Aubade' n'est pas un poeme a part mais un intermede intercald dans 'La Chanson dumal-aim£'qui datantde 1903 comm&nore mon premier amour a vingt ans, une Anglaise rencontre"e en Allemagne, $a dura un an, nous dumes retourner chacun chez nous, puis nous ne nous ecrivimes plus. Et bien des expressions de ce poeme sont trop seVeres et injurieuses pour une fille qui ne comprenait rien a moi et qui m'aima

Commentaries (p. 45)

129

puis fut deconcertee d'aimer un poete, etre fantasque; je 1'aimai charnellement mais nos esprits etaient loin 1'un de 1'autre. Elle etait fine et gaie cependant. J'en fus jaloux sans raison et par 1'absence vivement ressentie, ma poesie qui peint bien cependant mon etat d'ame d'alors, poete inconnu au milieu d'autres poetes inconnus, elle loin et ne pouvant venir a Paris. Je fus la voir deux fois a Londres, mais le mariage etait impossible et tout s'arrangea pour son depart a 1'Amerique, mais j'en souffris beaucoup, temoin ce poeme ou je me croyais mal-aime tandis que c'etait moi qui aimais mal . . . (30 July

1915, r.s.,p. 70)

Paul Leautaud, to whom the poem is dedicated, has described the circumstance of its acceptance for publication in the Mercure de France. He had met Apollinaire one evening by chance and talked with him for an hour : A un moment je lui demandai pourquoi il n'envoyait pas de vers au Mercure. II me r6pondit qu'il y avait pas mal de temps qu'il en avait envoye et qu'il n'en avait aucune nouvelle. Le lendemain matin, en arrivant au Mercure, monte chez Vallette [then editor of the Mercure de France] pour prendre les papiers de mon service, je cherchai tout de suite dans le carton des manuscrits. Je trouvai celui d' Apollinaire: 'La Chanson du mal-aime'. Je lus, je lus deux fois, trois fois, je fus transport^, emerveille, ravi, touche. Cette melancolie, ce ton evocatoire, ce boh^mianisme, cette errance d'esprit, ce cote un peu tzigane et 1'absence de cette abomination de la poesie habituelle: la rime riche. Je dis de loin a Vallette, assis a son bureau, a 1'autre bout de la grande piece: 'Vous savez qu'il y a la des vers d'Apollinaire remarquables'. II me repondit sans plus: 'Mettez-les dans la case des manuscrits accepted!' ('La Chanson du mal-aime', F.D.R., March 1954) 'La Chanson du mal-aime' is one of the best known of Apollinaire's poems. In it the poet dominates time; the past merges with the present and both combine to affect the future. Legendary and historical figures are evoked to illustrate the plight of the mal-aime as well as to generalize it and so to retain a certain aesthetic distance between the poet and a too-overt confession of his private experience. Between the two poles of London and Paris, between the seasons of winter and summer, the poem covers a wide sweep in space. Yet it has a skeletal chronology in that what narrative there is corresponds to the movement of his love affair with Annie Playden in Germany in 1901-2, from its tentative beginnings, hampered by a lack of a common language, to fulfilment and ultimate separation. The love affair between the strictly raised, puritanical English girl and the violently jealous Apollinaire was doomed to failure. It is this evolving curve which helps to give a solid structure to

130

Commentaries (p. 45}

the poem for in other respects it is an angry, irrational, discontinuous account of a deeply-felt emotion. The poem is racked between the human desire to forget suffering and humiliation and the intrusive force of memory, the essential tool of the poet. It holds in delicate equilibrium the contradictory tensions of love; love idealised and love experienced, fidelity and revolt, hope and despair, clarity and insanity, love and hate, regret and vengeance, tenderness and obscenity, the permanent and the transient. Treachery and exile from happiness are deeply felt. Yet finally, the poet—'Moi qui sais des lais pour les reines'—is triumphant. Although the poet's task is to crystallise experience in art, ironically this gift does not set him above other men for he, too, can fall victim to the passions of which he will write. For Apollinaire, catharsis is to be found in the act of writing. The form of the poem is vital for the effect of poetic coherence which Apollinaire obtains. It is written throughout in five-lined stanzas (quintils] of octosyllabic lines, each stanza rhyming a b a b a. Although the verse is loose with enjambements and many rhymes which do not obey classical canons, it remains a fixed pattern which gives a strong unity. The seven parts of the poem are disposed symmetrically for each of the parts 2, 4 and 6, printed in roman, are, in Apollinaire's own words, an intermede, that is, at once a commentary on what has happened, a generalised account of the poet's state of mind and a transition. Five stanzas set in London in winter at the beginning of the poem, balance five set in Paris in the summer, at the end. The Kings happy in fidelity at the beginning of the poem balance the mad Kings at the end. The deepest despair of the poem and its rawest confession are set in its mathematical centre (11. 146-50). See: LeRoy C. Breunig, 'Le Roman du mal-aime', La Table ronde, Sept. 1952. J. R. Lawler, 'Apollinaire et 'La Chanson du mal-aime'', Australian Journal of French Studies, Sept. 1964. G. Morhange-Begue, 'La Chanson du mal-aime' d'Apollinaire, Minard, Lettre modernes, 1970. Epigraph Apollinaire originally thought of entitling this poem 'Le Roman du mal-aime' but the final choice of 'La Chanson du mal-aime' more accurately reflects the lyrical, musical structure of the work with its recurring interlinked themes. This musical impression is strengthened by the epigraph which was added in 1912. The precise dating of the poem situates it firmly but the strange opening with its curious use of the conjunction et, seems to indicate that the poem should be regarded as a fragment of a continuing autobiography. This is strengthened by the ambiguous reference to the Phoenix-like quality of'mon amour' which is both the continuing nature of Apollinaire's love for Annie and his

Commentaries (pp. 45-7}

131

experience that, after the end of one love affair, another is born, in an endless cycle of hope and disillusion. If one returns to the epigraph after rereading the poem, the black impression is lightened and the work is put into its true perspective as a brilliant record, albeit chilling and violent, of a bleak moment in Apollinaire's life. 1-5. The poem begins on a sombre note with dark ambiguities. The mauvais garfon and the prostitute of 11. 20-5 are personifications of the faithless Annie but these sordid characters met in a dark London street also exemplify the guilt in Apollinaire's mind concerning his own conduct as described in the letter quoted above. His erotic sadism and jealousy must have shocked Annie with her strict Edwardian upbringing. Apollinaire's tendency to examine his own personality leads him often enough to a questioning dialogue with himself. 14. It was customary for a Pharaoh to marry his sister. 18. The insistence on fog begun in the first line of the poem heightens the horror and unreality of the setting as well as facilitating the transition which elevates it from the level of narration to the evocation of a wide range of myths. 25. La faussete de Vamour meme immediately brings to the poet's mind, by a kind of logic of contradiction, examples of faithfulness in love. Ulysses, on his return from Troy, found his wife Penelope faithfully waiting for him. L'epoux royal de Sacontale (1. 31) is a reference to Sakountala, heroine of a fifth-century Indian drama in seven acts, who, abandoned by her husband Dushmanta, recaptured his love by virtue of her fidelity. The play was known in translation and had been admired by Theophile Gautier and Theodore de Banville. 39. heurtant: the incongruity of a physical shock between ombres is an example of Apollinaire's technique of surprise. It also emphasises the reality of his reflective experience. 41-2. The theme of memory which plays a major role in the poem appears here with its dubious gifts of regret for the past—regrets, hiver. 44. les pauvres fameux: the colloquial tone of the phrase abruptly reduces the emotional tensions and humanises the catalogue of solemn names. 47. The theme of the renaissance of love which is also to be found in the epigraph. 49. les quarante de Sebaste: a reference to the forty Christian soldiers garrisoned in the Armenian town of Sebastus who were subjected to martyrdom by being exposed, naked, on a frozen lake. 51-5. The periodic evocation of the memory draws to the surface of the poet's mind a curious mixture of happiness, deep regret, recurrent love and hate. It is one of the structures which holds the poem together. 59. One of the rare direct autobiographical references in the poem.

132

Commentaries (pp. 47-8}

61-5. The importance of this stanza is emphasised by the fact that it is repeated three times in the poem, twice in the key position of opening a new section. A complicated network of images begins with the unattainable Milky Way which leads to the Promised Land of Canaan where, says the Bible, 'ruissellent le lait et le miel'. From here the erotic transition to the milk and honey of the 'amoureuses' is easy. The 'voie lactee' is then demetaphorised, so to speak, in a process which the Surrealists will use with great effect, so that the two elements—voie in its sense of 'route' and lactee as liquid milk—are recombined in a new significance: the river with its nageurs marts. The stanza has an oddly Baudelairean flavour of spleen et ideal because of the awful finality of that failure which lies in wait for man in his pursuit of the unattainable. Aubade chantee a Loetare un an passe The intermede, the first of three, provides a commentary on the preceding stanza, stating positively the triumph of a love now joyously consummated. Its implications are more universal. Written almost as a parody of a sixteenth-century pastoral, it contains archaic forms like viens-Cen (1. 71) as well as mannered inversions like bois joli (1. 73) and roses plis (1. 74). Laetare ('to rejoice') is the office of the Catholic Church celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent when it is the custom.to bless a rose; there are three references to rose in the passage. However, if the Aubade relies on a framework of religious reference, its tone, reinforced by classical allusions, is that of a pagan hymn to carnal love. Dawn and Spring, constant symbols of rebirth in Apollinaire, contrast with the dank fogs of the opening verses, just as the triumphant tone of the passage offsets the deep despair that precedes and follows it. 79. feuillolent: an archaic word meaning 'to fall like a fluttering leaf. 86. The poem abruptly returns to the present reality. The death of the Gods, pagan and Christian, is equated with the death of love. 89. sont bien marts: the colloquial nature of this phrase contrasts with the solemnity of the opening line of the stanza. Its emphasis is in marked contrast with the hope of resurrection promised in the season of Lent referred to in the preceding section. 91-5. The first two lines are taken from a poem to Linda, 'Je vis un soir la zezayante' (O.P., p. 327). Linda Molina da Silva was the daughter of a Jewish family who had befriended the poet in 1900. This stanza also closes the poem. There is a stress on archaic musical forms, lais, complaintes, hymnes, romance, chansons, all of which have in common a marked lyrical element. The hymnes d'esclave and the chansons pour les sirenes hint at the dangers of lyrical song: the poet transmutes the sad experiences of his life into art but may yet be destroyed by these very experiences.

Commentaries (pp. 48-50)

133

93. murenes: M. Piron elucidates this reference to Vedius Pollion 'gastronome romain, qui, pour punir ses serviteurs d'une faute commise, les faisait Jeter dans les viviers ou il dlevait des murenes [Moray eels], poissons dont la particularity est d'etre carnivores' (G.A., 2, p. 97). 99. Mausole: Artemisia, wife of Mausolus, erected a magnificent tomb for him on his death in 353 B.C. 103-15. The Cosaques ^aporogues, a warrior race of the Ukraine, ordered by the Sultan of Constantinople to renounce their Christian faith to adhere to Islam, remained faithful. The Russian painter Repin painted the scene of their response several times (Doss., p. 103). The examples of fidelity in this stanza move to a climax with the extended metaphor of the Cosaques. The episode introduces an exotic note heightened by the curious antithesis 'Ivrognes pieux et larrons'. The style changes too with a statement by the Sultan himself. The absence of punctuation adds to the ambiguity of the passage. Reponse des Cosaques ^aporogues au Sultan de Constantinople Originally this section bore no title and consisted only of the first stanza; Paul Leautaud argued that the additions took something away from the total effect of the poem. The Rabelaisian tone of the second and third stanzas are a further proof of Apollinaire's skill as a parodist and the violence of the stylistic register is in marked contrast to the following passage. The disorientation of the reader adds to the distance Apollinaire wishes to keep between autobiographical truth and the poem itself. The plea for fidelity put into the mouth of the Cosaques represents the voice of the poet venting his rage on Annie by proxy. 116. Barabbas, the notable robber released by Pontius Pilate in place of Jesus. His name became a by-word for an evil-doer. 126. Podolie: Podolia, region of Western Ukraine. 131-5. The repetition of the stanza at this point in the poem emphasises the contrast between idealised love and harsh reality. 141-2. The sinister, magical qualities of the traine d'etoiles is in marked contrast to the purity of the vole lactee of the opening stanza. The clear and unambiguous expression of regret for Annie together with the hope of reconciliation, is placed in the mathematical centre of the poem. 153. The Danaids were condemned for ever to attempt to fill a bottomless jar. 158. marguerite exfoliee: J. R. Lawler quotes the nursery rhyme (called up by the 'petit enfant candide' of 1. 155) Marguerite, Fleur petite, Rouge au bord, Verte autour, dis le secret de mes amours This bears witness to the extraordinary range of reference which Apollinaire uses.

134

Commentaries (pp. 50-2}

159. Desirade: an island in the Antilles so named by Christopher Columbus. 161. pyraustes: Pyrausta, a mythical insect supposed to live in fire. The insect is linked with feu follets as satyres is linked with egypans, another name for satyr. 163. faustes: neologism coined from the latin adjective faustus meaning 'favourable', 'auspicious'. 164. The six Burghers of Calais who, roped together, delivered themselves to Edward III in 1347. They are so depicted in Rodin's sculpture but here they symbolise humiliation in love. 166-70. The sense of this stanza becomes clearer when it is understood that the punctuated version of the poem had 1. 168 isolated in parenthesis with a dash at the beginning and end of the line. 167. licorne: the symbol of purity, or the soul is contrasted with capricorne, symbol of impurity or the body. The line is reminiscent of Baudelaire's view that man is subject to 'deux postulations simultanees', one towards God and the other towards the Devil. 171-5. This stanza, following the confession of 11. 146-50, represents the deepest point of depression in the poem. The hint of an approaching insanity leads to a sense of schizophrenia. 191. argyraspides: name given to the corps d'elite which formed the personal bodyguard of Alexander the Great. Its strength was fixed and, when one soldier was killed, he was replaced immediately; hence the apparent contradiction between mart and immortels. They carried silver shields and here, in a learned pun, represent winter withdrawing in the face of spring, symbolised by the dendrophores. This name was given to those, usually of modest social condition, who carried branches in processions in honour of the Goddess of nature. 196-7. The shock of this gross simile effectively breaks the mood of compassion evoked in 'pauvres gens / Qui resourient les yeux humides'. The deflation also lowers the emotional temperature and makes possible the transition to the next section. Les Sept Epees By far the most obscure part of the poem if not of the whole of Apollinaire's work, this section has given rise to an immense amount of critical speculation where ingenuity sometimes outruns discretion. The mystical number of seven has many antecedents, notably 'Notre Dame des Sept Douleurs' but these throw no light on the essentially secular nature of this passage. There is a general agreement that the swords have a phallic significance and that the intermede reflects the erotic history of his affair with Annie. J. R. Lawler ('Les Sept Epees' in F.D.R., Sept. 1954 and in the article quoted above) was the first to advance the view,

Commentaries (p. 52)

135

in a closely-argued case, that the seven swords recorded a generalised account of the physical side of his relations with Annie. M. Decaudin (Doss., p. 106), whilst accepting the sexual content, believes the section to be 'un envoi de fantaisie et d'inventions'. M. Davies (Apollinaire, pp. 112 ff.) advances a much more precise explanation of the stanzas as specific sexual details which the poet cleverly disguised. P.-P. Gossiaux ('Recherches sur Les Sept Epees\ G.A. 5) sees it as 'une quete existentielle de soi-meme' at the end of which 'il se choisit poete'. Claude MorhangeBdgue" accepting the cryptic obscurity of this section, sees it as revealing a 're"elle torture, celle qui nait d'une separation reconnue inevitable' with underlying themes of treason, suffering and death. What was Apollinaire's intention in making this section so obscure, with the resultant mystification of the reader ? The numerous allusions which punctuate the other sections of the poem are normally easily decipherable and their associations clear enough but in 'Les Sept Epe"es' their meaning is concealed. There are mysterious proper names whose connotations remain enigmatic; some are invented or deformed by association in a very Joycean way. The clue must lie in the erotic substratum. Apollinaire had a considerable interest in pornography and eroticism as witness his pornographic novels, the poemes secrets and the Lettres a Lou published only in 1969. It must however be noticed that the novels were published anonymously and the poemes secrets intended for private consumption. In those poems which appeared under his own name Apollinaire kept an attitude ofpudeur already noted in his constant refusal to go the whole way in an intimate confession. The story of his love affair with Annie had, for the sake of completeness, to include reference to this side of their relationship: Apollinaire has included it, but encoded in a private set of symbols and allusions, full of ambiguity and masked confessions. The reader must pick up what he can. It is not necessary to be able to explain all the allusions, 'bien au contraire', says S. I. Lockerbie, 'si le h^ros doit s'imposer a nous comme un heros occulte, il est n^cessaire que ces images continuent jusqu'a un certain point de nous de'router' ('Alcools et le Symbolisme', G.A., 2, p. 12). 207. Pdline: a coinage from 'pale'. 209. gibeline: adjective from Mont Gibel—Etna, the forge of Vulcan, the fire-god. The stanza suggests a pure virginity, destined to be destroyed. 211. Noubosse: P.-P. Gossiaux interprets this as 'noue-bosses', the girdle around Venus's breasts. Anne Hyde Greet sees it as a formation from two colloquial phrases, 'faire la nouba' and 'se donner une bosse', both of which mean 'to go on the spree'. 214. Be-Rieux: Lawler suggests that the word is a coinage with Walloon

136

Commentaries (pp. 52-4}

echoes, meaning 'beaux-rieurs'. Decaudin thinks it is a deformation of Berruyeurs, a group of quarrelsome medieval knights. 215. Carabosse: evil fairy with the power of conferring sinister gifts. The stanza suggests both joy and pain with the gift of love being inevitably linked with suffering. 217. chibriape: mixture of 'chibre' and 'priape' both meaning 'phallus'. 218. Lul de Faltenin: R. Louis has established that this is the name given by Apollinaire to the phallus. 220. Hermes: God of luck, wealth and, in some parts of Greece, of fertility. Here he is not 'trismegiste' but 'devenu nain'. M. Davies suggests that Ernest is derived from the German ernst, meaning 'serious', 'full of ardour'. Apollinaire may also have been attracted by the similarity of sound in Hermes / Ernest. The stanza appears to celebrate both male virility and its vulnerability. 221. Malourene: name coined by Apollinaire, punned from the elements male, mal or malheur and reine. The peace and gentle movement of the stanza suggest the tenderness of consummated love. 226. Sainte-Fabeau: the name is coined by Apollinaire. The stanza has obvious phallic and sexual symbols. 234. In the punctuated version of the poem, this line was in quotation marks. The stanza suggests the morning glory of love. 236—40. The closing stanza had the last three lines in quotation marks. There is here a note of resignation and the last line suggests that the physical closeness of carnal love was treacherous, for Annie remained distant from him. 246-50. This stanza introduces the theme of madness which becomes important in the last section of the poem. The irrational forces which drive men are symbolised by a kind of 'danse macabre' danced backwards down a blind slope to discordant music. 252. The mad kings are symmetrically opposed to those kings of the opening who are happy with their love. 253. The grelottantes etoiles of reality are contrasted sharply with the idealised peace of the voie lactee in the first stanza. 256. Luitpold was the uncle of the two mad kings of Bavaria, Ludwig II and Otto, who became Regent after their death. 261. un chateau sans chatelaine: an allusion to homosexuality. One of the passions of Ludwig II was to build Gothic castles in which he lived in isolation. He drowned in Lake Starnberg in 1886 (see 11. 266-70). 262. barcarols: 'gondoliers', from the Italian 'barcaruola'. 271-2. The season is now the heat of June, after the beginning in fog.

Commentaries (pp. 54-5}

137

The picture of Paris, composed in brief, discontinuous notations, is to be compared with 'Zone'. C. Bonnefoy (Apollinaire, p. 57) has pointed outhow this description involves all the senses as well as cultural, exotic, sociological and temporal dimensions. The passage has echoes of Laforgue. A brouillon of the end of the poem contains these lines: Monde souffrant de mon orgueil Vous n'avez unc vie qu'en moi and: L'univers pleure par ma voix. These hints at the theme of Vendemiaire reinforce the strength of the closing stanza of the poem. The poet is the voice of human experience but these powers do not, ironically, protect him from his own folly. LES COLCHIQUES First published in 1907 but dated 'Neu-Glvick, 1902'. Published again in 1911, the date is then given as 'Neu-Gliick, septembre 1901' which Decaudin accepts in preference to the later one. Set in the season of autumn, this poem has not yet the bitterness of his love for Annie Playden later displayed in 'La Chanson du mal-aim£'. The basis of the poem is a Baudelairean correspondence and the landscape has something of an etat d'dme. There is however an important difference. Here the closed obsessional circle of poet-emotion-landscape is violently shattered by the irruption of the school-children in lines which, echoing their noisy entrance, break into the slower, sad rhythms of the preceding line. The emotional temperature is lowered and the experience of Apollinaire set against the wider reference of an every-day world in which life goes on. Ultimately, confession is veiled by reticence. Andre Breton considered that 'cette petite piece compte, dans le livre, avec les chefs-d'ceuvres lyriques' (Les Pas perdus, p. 36). 11. Jllles de leursfilles: a reference to the endless cycle of nature. PALAIS First published in 1905 and again in 1912, the poem originally bore the title Dans le Palais de Rosemonde. The poem has aroused a good deal of critical comment. For M. Davies it is a 'disastrous poem' (Apollinaire, p. 130) whilst Philippe Renaud remarks on its clumsy construction in which its two parts have no 'relations organiques' (Lecture d''Apollinaire, p. 69). A. Rouveyre believes the palais to be the sexual organs of a woman and the whole poem to be an account of frustration, 'un abime ou sonne pour lui le glas de toute raison, de toute delicatesse, de toute sensualite, de toute illusion, de toute

138 Commentaries

(pp. 55-6}

dignite"' (p. 190). For Mme Durry 'Palais blague le Symbolisme' (Alcools, ii, p. 27). Scott Bates has discussed the elaborate puns around which the poem is constructed. M. De"caudin has drawn attention to a possible influence of Alfred Jarry and to the dedication of the poem, added on the proofs, to Max Jacob. In both writers a savage fantasy and mocking parody led to some of the gross effects for which Apollinaire was striving in Palais. In his lecture on L'Esprit nouveau et les poetes delivered in 1917, Apollinaire included this significant sentence: 'Nous avons vu . . . depuis Alfred Jarry le rire s'elever des basses regions ou il se tordait et fournir au poete un lyrisme tout neuf' (O.C., iii, p. 905). In the light of this belief the poem may be interpreted in part as a deliberate attempt to shock and to celebrate appetites in a Rabelaisian mode. But the frustration of the end of the poem points to a deeper intention. The representation of the earthbound pull of sexuality could well reflect the continuing effect of his deception with Annie Playden, so that the poem might also be a concealed and non-explicit celebration of this shattering event. It is not a successful poem in literary terms for what S. I. Lockerbie truly calls its 'fantaisie laborieuse' fails to pull the work together, to knit indissolubly in poetic tension its different strands and turns. The poem is dedicated to Max Jacob (1876-1944), author of Le Cornet a des and old friend of Apollinaire. See: L. Follet and M. Poupon, 'Lecture de "Palais" d'Apollinaire', Archives des Lettres modernes, 6, 138, 1972 A. Rouveyre, Amour et Poesie d''Apollinaire, pp. 183-91 Title. Scott Bates draw attention to the double meaning in the title which can mean both 'palace' and 'palate'. I. Rosemonde: Rosamond Clifford, mistress of Henry II of England who had a grand palace at Woodstock. She is also celebrated in a very different tone in the poem Rosemonde. 9-12. Pilkington points out the religious resonances of this passage— the stigmata, the 'agape' or meal taken in commemoration of the Last Supper, the 'agneau blanc' or Pascal lamb. The 'vin de Chypre' is the wine of the Eucharist (Scott Bates).

GHANTRE Added on first proofs of Alcools. M. De"caudin has plausibly written of this, the shortest poem of Alcools consisting of a single alexandrine, that Apollinaire composed it to lighten the beginning of the volume where he had placed two of the longest of his poems, 'Zone' and 'La Chanson du mal-aime'. He argues that 'Chantre' derives from the new aesthetic which appears in certain

Commentaries (p. 57)

139

movements of 'Zone' and will be more fully developed in 'Les Fenetres' of Calligrammes (Doss., p. 113). Surprise is evident in the poem as is a keen sense of the ridiculous for 'trompette marine' is, after all, an unexpected name for a clumsy single-stringed musical instrument. Mme Durry has written of the important role 'le calembour crdateur' plays in Apollinaire's work and reminds us of his statement in 'L'Antitradition futuriste': 'Analogies et calembours tremplin lyrique et seule science des langues' (O.C., iii, following p. 876). Thus cordeau means what it says but has hints of cor d'eau and corps d'eau. The line whose mystery is deepened by the initial Et, is packed with a riotous multiplicity of double and triple meanings. See: A. Rouveyre, 'Le plus court de ses poemes' in Amour et Poesie d'Apollinaire, pp. 67-81.

CRfiPUSCULE First published in 1909 with 'Saltimbanques'. Lines and variants of both poems formed part of a single untitled manuscript printed by Jeanine Moulin in Textes inedits. Andr£ Rouveyre believes this to be amongst the first poems inspired by Marie Laurencin. However, the dedication was not added until the publication of Alcools and the Verlainian atmosphere of 'Grepuscule', together with the characters who roam through the landscape of 'Rhdnanes', could point to an earlier date of composition. Harlequins haunt the paintings of Picasso at this time ('ils celebrent des rites muets avec une agilit£ difficile' wrote Apollinaire in 'Les Jeunes: Picasso peintre' in La Plume, 15 May 1905). Twilight is a favoured hour in Apollinaire's poems; halfway between the sharp joy and clarity symbolised by the sun and the invading sadness of the ombres of his night, it is a time of ambiguity. The marked absence of colour in the poem (ombres, le jour s'extenue, crepusculaire, le del sans teinte, astres pales, I'arlequin bleme) adds to its unreality and seems to be a description of Marie Laurencin's own discreet pastels. The ritual gestures of the entertainers take on a mysterious meaning and the performing acrobat the Villonesque shape of a hanged man. The gathering darkness magnifies the arlequin and the sadness in which the poem is bathed. Jean Starobinski has recently commented : Dans un des poemes d!'Alcools inspires par les saltimbanques de Picasso et par la peinture de Marie Laurencin, Apollinaire dresse la troupe foraine dans un lieu vague, entre vie et mort, entre jour et nuit, entre le mensonge et la v^ritd, entre terre et ciel; a la fin du poeme, VArlequin trimegiste grandit sous le regard triste d'un nain. Nous sommes, encore une fois, sur un seuil redoutable, mais ou les contraires tendent a se

140

Commentaries (pp. 57-9}

concilier. Au premier vers du 'Crepuscule' passent les ombres des marts, tandis que dans la derniere strophe apparait un bel enfant. (Portrait de rartiste en saltimbanque, Geneva, Skira, 1970, pp. 126-7) The poem is dedicated to Marie Laurencin (1885-1956), the painter with whom Apollinaire was sentimentally linked from 1907 to 1913.

ANNIE First published in 1912 and entitled 'Fanny'. M. De"caudin, linking the poem with the beginning of'L'Emigrant de Landor Road', is inclined to date the composition of this poem from 1905. Written in free verse, the poem has none of the tragic undertones of others remembering Annie's departure for America. 2. Mobile is in Alabama not Texas. 10-11. The pun on boutons, 'button' and 'bud', is effective. The Old Order Amish, a strict, ascetic sect of the Mennonites, substituted hooks for buttons on their clothes.

LA MAISON DES MORTS First published in 1907 in the form of a prose conte entitled 'L'Obituaire'. Reprinted in 1909 in Vers el Prose, 'L'Obituaire' now had the form of a poem in free verse. Further publication in 1913 in the Anthologie des Poetes nouveaux brought about the change of title and certain adjustments in the disposition of some lines. The change in form from prose to verse did not pass unnoticed. Les Trei^e (a name which designated collectively the contributors to the literary and artistic echos of L1 Intransigeant and which occasionally included Apollinaire himself) had gently reproached Apollinaire (without naming him) for printing in the form of a poem, a work which had originally been published as prose. Apollinaire's reply has now been published (O.C., iv, pp. 739-41). After remarking on the 'e"trangete" peu prosaique' of the piece which concerned a subject 'e"minemment po^tique' Apollinaire goes on: Voici la verite; compose a une epoque ou je cultivais le vers libre ce poeme me parut, plus tard, a un moment de crise ou je voulus renoncer a une forme lyrique dont je doutais, constituer au moins un morceau de prose poetique plein d'interet. Je le donnai au Soleil et cela parut si singulier aux directeurs de ce journal qu'ils ne l'ins£rerent point comme nouvelle mais comme varie'te'. Des amis m'engagerent ensuite a le retablir sous la forme dans laquelle il avait e'te' compose". Au demeurant les resolutions de chaque partie (sauf 1'exposition et la

Commentaries (pp. 59-60)

141

conclusion) montrent assez par les rimes qu'il s'agit de poesie et non de prose, meme si la matiere ne le disait pas assez. We know that Apollinaire was in Munich from March 1902 where he saw the dead resting in their glass cells before burial. The rhymes are clear and regular in, for example, 11. 46-9, 106-20, and 159-63. It coul therefore be that a version of 'La Maison des morts' in the form of a poem of mixed metre preceded the conte rather than the other way round and that the final verse form restores the original inspiration. Although Apollinaire refers to the 'inspiration . . . dantesque' of the poem a little further on in the same letter, the theme of the dead returning to life is treated in a light and even humorous vein ('a mourir de rire'). The revenants have nothing of horror or fear although there are recurrent reminders of the impenetrable barrier between the living and the dead: Je vous attendrai Toute votre vie Repondit la morte. A folk-tale element is mingled with the surrealistic vision of the gay procession of the dead and the living. Under the bitter-sweet tone of the poem lies a more serious note. It is memory which triumphs over death for 'le glacier de la memoire' preserves intact against the erosion of time the full savour of the past. The end of the poem is very moving. The poem was dedicated on the proofs to Maurice Raynal, writer and critic whom Apollinaire had known from 1903. See: Sally Nesbit Lawall 'Apollinaire's "La Maison des morts"', Romanic Review, April 1961.

3-6. Decaudin quotes Gerhard Haug on the regulations for Munich cemeteries: Les depouilles mortelles seront placees dans la morgue ouverte au public. Elles ne pourront etre regardees qu'a travers une vitre (Doss., p. 120)

The image develops, by association, to resemble the mannequins of 'L'Emigrant de Landor Road'. 60. chevau-legers: light cavalry. CLOTTLDE First published in 1912 with 'Marizibill' and 'Rosemonde'. LeRoy C. Breunig thinks that the poem could possibly date from Stavelot and refers to 'Les d^ites des eaux vives' which recalls a phrase from the tale Que Vlo-ve? which was inspired by his stay there. Another

142

Commentaries (pp. 66-7)

pointer to an early date of composition is to be found in the names of flowers which were a common mark of some Symbolist verse. 2. Read in the original version 'ont pourri dans le jardin'.

CORTEGE First published in 1912. The strong affirmations contained in this poem link it with 'Vend£miaire' and both seem to continue a train of thought begun in 'Le Brasier' and 'Les Fiancailles', first published in 1908. M. Decaudin reproduces three earlier versions of parts of the poem (Doss., pp. 126-7) including an unfinished version of its beginning bearing the original title, 'Brumaire'. The idea of cortege is earlier to be seen in 'La Maison des morts' which, in spite of its apparently more macabre subject, is considerably gayer in tone. Apollinaire's crisis of alienation drives him to explore his own identity both as a man and as a poet (see 11. 19-24 and 48-9). He adopts the double posture of a bird planing above the world and of a man firmly anchored in the evolutionary process. Some critics have seen in this poem an influence of Unanimisme, a poetic movement begun around 1908 defined by Jules Romains, one of its founders, as the 'expression de la vie unanime et collective'. Philippe Renaud (Lecture d'Apollinaire, p. 85) thinks that the preponderant influence is that of those poets who were admired by the Unanimistes—Verhaeren and Walt Whitman. Renaud also points to a link with the Hugo of 'Vision d'ou est sorti ce poeme' (La Legende des siecles) and 'La Pente de la reverie' (Les Feuilles d'automne). Mme Durry has written on the form and style of the poem: Le laisser-aller est accole au sublime et a la vision, le vocabulaire de la conversation gouailleuse cotoie 1'image surrealiste, le vers libre du lyrisme fait route avec celui de la poesie familiere et avec Palexandrin modele sur les plus solides exemples. (Alcools, iii, p. 183) The poem is dedicated to Leon Bailby, directeur of the newspaper L'Intransigeant to which Apollinaire contributed. 1-2. M. Decaudin has discovered the source of this image in a passage from Jean Mocquet, Voyages (1608-9), (Doss., p. 127). 36-9. Cornelius Agrippa, born in Cologne, wrote a treatise entitled De Nobilitate et Praecellentia foemini sexus in 1509 in which he proclaimed the moral superiority of women. The legend runs that Saint Ursula was murdered, together with eleven thousand virgins, by the Huns in Cologne, which can be construed as strong evidence in support of

Commentaries (pp. 67-9)

143

Agrippa's views. This, from his own experience, Apollinaire dismisses brutally as an 'erreur'.

MARIZIBILL First published in 1912 with 'Clotilde' and 'Rosemonde'. The earthy qualities of Marizibill (spelt Marie-Sybille in the first publication) contrast sharply with the more idealised figures of Clotilde and Rosemonde. Mme Durry has traced other references to the name of Marizibill, traditional in Cologne, in the works of Apollinaire (Alcools, iii, pp. 109-17). The last stanza of the poem broadens the reference. The deliberate ambiguity of 'leurs' (does it refer to Marizibill and her pimp, or to 'gens de toutes sortes', or to both ?) opens the poem to a final reflection on the frustration and unquenchable hope of the human spirit. 15. The image occurs in the cahier composed in 1899 in Stavelot. The linking of two disparate elements in one image is adopted by the Surrealists.

LE VOYAGEUR First published in 1912. In a letter to Madeleine, Apollinaire noted that 'dans Alcools, c'est peut-etre "Vende'miaire" que je prefere, et j'aime aussi "Le Voyageur" ' (30 July 1915, T.S., p. 70). In a long and intelligent analysis of this poem, S.I. Lockerbie notes how, whilst falling into the tradition of Symbolist poems elaborating themes of quest and errance, 'Le Voyageur' is set in the city and postulates as the aim of the search, not some external object but rather 'an inner quest, a meditation on his own anxiety and unease' (see his work quoted below, p. 229). The geographical scene changes with bewildering rapidity but it is brought to life by the power of memory for the poem is punctuated by 'Je m'en souviens', 'Te souviens-tu', 'souvenez-vous-en'. The ambiguity of the first line, which is repeated at the end of the poem, gives the reader the widest possible context in which to interpret the quest and distress with which the poem is concerned. For LeRoy C. Breunig 'the first line has all the dramatic urgency of an anguished cry emerging from nowhere' (Guillaume Apollinaire, pp. 27-8). Robert Couffignal suggests that the mysterious 'porte' is the 'porte de 1'Eden, de 1'enfance pre"servee, de la foi candide dont le pe'che' nous a exclus, fils prodigues qui vagabondons a travers le monde en quete d'absolu'

(L"Inspiration biblique, p. 75). M. Zurowski derives it from a 'vieux chant

144

Commentaries (pp. 6g-ji]

religieux' beginning: 'Je me tiens devant ta porte, Seigneur, et j'attends ta misericorde' (G.A., 8, p. 47). Mme Durry refers to the biblical tale of the door closed in the faces of the foolish virgins and unravels certain literary origins (Alcools, ii, pp. 120 ff.). I am indebted to my colleague, Professor C. E. Pickford, for the suggestion that the porte may be the entry to the orchard of Le Roman de la rose wherein is to be found the rose, symbolising the ideal of woman and the fulfilment of self. Apollinaire's interest in medieval literature was of long standing. The poet himself is le vqyageur, but no single interpretation is sufficient for the poem attracts private explanations and Apollinaire is adept at achieving multiplicity of meaning through suggestion and allusion. The poem has in it something of the seed of 'Zone', in the idea of errance through memory, the decor of the city and veiled autobiographical references. Mme Durry sees a marked influence of Rimbaud, both in the style and content of the poem, linking the 'paquebot orphelin' with 'Le Bateau ivre' (see Alcools, ii, pp. 74 ff.). The poem is dedicated to Fernand Fleuret (1844-1943), an erudite poet, literary and art critic. A friend of Apollinaire from 1909 onwards, they collaborated in the bibliography of the Enfer at the Bibliotheque nationale. See: S. I. Lockerbie, 'Le Voyageur', in The Art of Criticism: Essays in French Literary Analysis, ed. P. H. Nurse. Edinburgh University Press, 1969, pp. 225 ff. 2. The Euripos: narrow strait separating the island of Euboea from continental Greece. The current changes direction from twelve to fourteen times a day at certain times. The poem finishes on the same line. 4. This may be a reference to Annie Playden's departure for America. 13. This idea is developed in 'Zone' into one of the major images of the poem (see 1. 40: 'C'est le Christ qui monte au ciel. . .') 18. Gf. the emigrants in 'Zone' (11. 121 ff.) M. Ddcaudin believes the line to be a reference to the return of Apollinaire and his brother from Stavelot. The train would have passed through the industrial area from Liege to Valenciennes. 29. The surprising image of the bridges is taken up in 'Zone' (1. 2). 48-53. A photograph exists of Apollinaire and his brother both dressed in sailor suits. MARIE First published in 1912. Apollinaire wrote that, of all the poems which express the 'souvenirs de"chirants' of the end of his love affair with Marie Laurencin, this was 'le plus ddchirant de tous' (30 July 1915, T.S., p. 70), but other, more

Commentaries (pp. 71-3}

145

ancient memories intervene. During his stay in Stavelot in 1899, he had fallen in love with Marie (Mareye) Dubois and wrote a number of poems for her which he later destroyed. Memories of the two Maries are mingled in a mood of solitude and real distress. The repetitions in 11. 13-15 add impressively to the note of obsession. See: A. Rouveyre, Amour et Poesie d'Apollinaire, pp. 95-106. 2. mere-grand: the form is used familiarly and particularly in children's tales. It adds to the innocent note of the opening. 3. maclotte: folk-dance very popular in the region around Stavelot. For a note on this word see M. Piron, 'Les Wallonismes de Guillaume Apollinaire' in Melanges de linguistiquefrangaise qfferts a M. Charles Bruneau, Geneva, Droz, 1954, pp. 206-7. 9. This line, the only alexandrine in the octosyllabic structure of the poem, is to be found in the cahier de Stavelot and dates from 1899. 23-4. The idea advanced in these lines is developed in 'Le Pont Mirabeau'.

LA BLANCHE NEIGE First published in Alcools. LeRoy C. Breunig tentatively attributes this poem to Apollinaire's stay in the Rhineland. This view has been reinforced by M. Decaudin who considers it to be a poem belonging to the period of the end of the poet's love affair with Annie Playden and therefore to be dated from 1903 to 1904. These can be no more than conjectures for no manuscript has yet been found. The repetitions of rhymes like del / del, soleil / soleil, of words anges / anges, or phrases Vun est vetu, Tombe neige / tombe produce for Decaudin 'une incantation tendre' and for Pilkington the characteristics of a nursery rhyme. C. M. Bowra describes the poem as a little masterpiece and comrrents on the technique by which the poet can 'say what relation he finds between disparate things and how they really strike him' (The Creative Experiment, p. 72). Apollinaire is never afraid of apparent incongruity. See: M. Decaudin, 'La Blanche Neige', G.A. 3, pp. 125-9. 5. French soldiers wore blue greatcoats until after the 1914-18 War.

POfiME LU AU MARIAGE D'ANDRfi SALMON First published in 1911. The poem, as the title indicates, was read at the wedding of Andr6 Salmon in Paris on 13 July 1909. Apollinaire told Philippe Soupault that he had composed the poem on the top of a double-decker bus whilst

146

Commentaries (pp. 73-4)

actually on the way to the wedding. The contrived syntactical symmetries of the first and third parts of the poem made this very unlikely and a much corrected version of the poem has since come to light (see M. Decaudin, 'Complements au Dossier', G.A. i). The rolling vers libres are written in a simpler and more logically direct style than 'Le Brasier' and 'Les Fiangailles' although the poem, a celebration of 'Souvenir et Avenir' in more ways than one, continues the elaboration of Apollinaire's view that the poet alone can transform the world. The pleasant fantasy that the streets of Paris are bedecked with flags for the wedding rather than for the more official celebrations of the Fourteenth of July allows Apollinaire to set the changes wrought by poetry against those of political change. The theme of the passing of time has no undertones of sadness in this poem where hope and achievement triumph. 12. caveau maudit: Andr6 Salmon confided to Mme Durry: 'Cela signifie que s'y rencontraient des jeunes hommes se vouant a la poesie, ce qui est un engagement dangereux' (cit. M.-J. Durry, Alcools, i, p. 38). L'ADIEU First published in 1903. As in the case of 'La Dame', the history of the variants of this poem throw a considerable light on the development of Apollinaire's poetic ear. It is extracted from a long poem 'La Clef which was first published posthumously in Le Guetteur melancolique in 1952. Here it ran (O.P., P- 554): J'ai cueilli ce brin de bruyere Mets-le sur ton cceur pour longtemps II me faut la clef des paupieres J'ai mis sur mon cceur les bruyeres Et souviens-toi que je t'attends The punctuation was omitted by the editors Bernard Poissonnier and Robert Mallet, for the 1903 version of the poem read: 'J'ai cueilli ce brin de bruyere. Mets-le sur ton cceur plus longtemps Nous ne nous verrons plus sur terre.' —'J'ai mis sur mon cceur la bruyere Et souviens-toi que je t'attends.' The original third line refers too directly to the theme of the original poem and is changed. In 1912 the poem was published in Vers et Prose in its present form except that a space remains between 11. 3 and 4. The dialogue form has dissolved and identities are veiled. The death of

Commentaries (pp. 74-6}

147

autumn confers on the faded 'brin de bruyere' the status of a faded memento of some melancholy love. The trouvaille of 1. 4 with its synaesthesia brings the poem together; a suggestive discretion hints reflectively at death, time, love and the reincarnating powers of memory. SALOMfi First published in 1905. This favourite theme of literature and art in the Symbolist period was also treated by Apollinaire in a conte of L'Heresiarque et Cie, but the poem in no way sets out to recreate the legend. The dance of Salome leads, in a growing surrealistic frenzy, from the court to the homely 'fenouil' and the sophisticated 'quinconces' to end in the whirl of a nonsense rhyme. The anachronisms of H^rodias 'en robe de comtesse', the 'fou du roi' and the 'trabants' add to the formal disorder of the poem. The erotic quality of Salome is well caught and probably conceals one of the imagined faces of Annie Playden. C. M. Bowra interpreted the frenzy of dancing with which the poem ends as a myth of artistic creation: The artist loves his subject and in a sense destroys it when he gives it a permanent form, but the destruction is an occasion for wild delight and triumph. There is something fierce and reckless and insane in all true creation, something which the mad dance of Salom£ expresses. (The Creative Experiment, p. 74).

LA PORTE First published in 1912. The date of composition of this poem is uncertain and has been variously set between 1900 and 1907; the question is discussed at length by Mme Durry. The only manuscript, much worked over, is printed in Doss., p. 142. The dialogue between the poet and his mother certainly evokes the uncertain frustration of Apollinaire's early days in Paris as an 'employ6' with exotic visions of a greater world. For GoufHgnal the open door is a reference to Paradise Lost; for Mme Durry it is the gateway to destiny. The brief discretion of 'La Porte' captures well the vague disquiet of the poet who has not yet achieved or even formulated his ambitions. 4. pi-mus souples: legendary Chinese fish which, having only one eye apiece, swam in couples. See 'Zone', 1. 61. 5. anges: also means angel-fish. This is an example of what Mme Durry referred to as 'le calembour crdateur'.

148

Commentaries (p. 76") MERLIN ET LA VIEILLE FEMME

First published in 1912, this poem, like 'Le Larron' and 'L'Ermite' which it closely resembles in its stanzas of four rhyming alexandrines, is amongst the earliest in Alcools by date of composition. The cahier de Stavelot (a notebook kept by Apollinaire during his stay in the little Ardennes village with his brother from June to October 1899) mentions the title, the characters, Merlin, Morgane and Viviane; it also includes some lines of an ebauche in the same form as the poem, except that the rhyme scheme is a abb, rather than abab (see Doss., pp. 9-10). The personage of Merlin preoccupied Apollinaire. He had been attracted to medieval literature by his reading of Don Quixote and confessed that he read avidly in that field at the age of twenty. This was not an antiquarian interest, nor entirely a fashionable gesture in the direction of Symbolism; indeed he wrote in a letter to Lou on 2 February 1915: 'Nous sommes dans une epoque assez semblable a celle-la [the Middle Ages], c'est aujourd'hui le temps de 1'Angoisse'. It is of course Merlin who is UEnchanteur pounissant (1908), a work which was begun even before his stay in Stavelot. Merlin, who in the legend is the son of a devil and a mortal woman, is endowed with magical powers of prophecy and can foretell the future. He teaches his spells to Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, who turns them on Merlin and entombs him alive beneath a hawthorn tree. Merlin knows his fate in advance yet makes no attempt to escape it, but he earnestly wishes for a son to perpetuate his science. The fairy Morgana who is represented as a vieille femme in later romances appears to answer his desire and the poem ends with Merlin welcoming the 'printemps des nouvelles douleurs' where Viviane awaits him. In an acute commentary on the poem, Mme Durry (Alcools, i, pp. 222-3) describes it as a 'poeme-carrefour': le monde ancien et le monde nouveau s'y croisent, une religion ancienne et une religion nouvelle; un art poetique du passe s'y allie a la poesie de la jeunesse eternelle grace a une resurrection due a des enchantements. The paradoxical figure of Merlin, half-devil and half-man, the enchanter who was baptised, the dead man who speaks, the prophet who does not use his powers to avoid his own death has something of Apollinaire himself. In the poem there also appears the antithesis between death and rebirth (a constant theme in Alcools) and the irresistible pull of love even on the 'etre glac6'. Anthony Stephens sees the poem above all as a commentary on Apollinaire's own historical situation with the figure of Merlin bearing a relationship with the other literary archetypes of Orpheus and Nar-

Commentaries (pp. 76-8}

149

cissus. He points to a stylistic influence of Mallarme, particularly of Herodiade, a work which Apollinaire greatly admired, and notes an identification of Merlin and the poet. The poem has a certain stiffness of movement; it is, as Mme Durry has said 'plus allegorique que vivant'. Yet there is a supple mastery of the alexandrine and a variety of tone which, although clumsy at times, will be one of Apollinaire's greatest resources. The humanising of legendary figures reaches a point at which they almost become Apollinaire's familiars: it would be unwise to press identification further. There is no mention in legend of a son being born to Merlin and this must encourage an allegorical interpretation of the poem. Since the poet firmly identifies 'la vieille femme' with 'Ma Memoire' then her appearance on the scene of Merlin's despair can be held to be an almost Proustian event which triggers off the triumphant awakening of the imagination in the creation of the work of art. This will be the true son of Merlin, ensuring the transmission of his name and of his science: this is the justification for his brave final cry: 'Je m'^terniserai sous 1'aub^pine en fleurs.' See: Anthony Stephens, 'Apollinaire's "Merlin et la vieille femme'", Essays in French Literature, 5 November 1968. 5-6. The pun on 'rose des vents' meaning also 'compass card' is to be found in 'Glair de Lune'. Mme Durry believes that the 'rose . . . sans Spines' refers to a world before Christ when the crown of thorns had no meaning. 12. Rival can be seen as the opposition between the active, creative mind and the aging body—'mon etre glaceT 15. The identification between Memoire and la vieille femme is made clear. Anne Hyde Greet in the notes to her translation of Alcools remarks that: 'Morgana resembles Merlin, because as his memory, she is not only all he has done and been but whatever he is able to do and be, a mirror image of sorts.' 21. Les voies qui viennent de Vouest refer to Merlin's haunts in the forests of Broceliande and in Wales. This symbolises the movement from a dying culture to a new one (cf. 1. 51 'Puis Merlin s'en alia vers 1'est'). 28. laps: Mme Durry points out that this can mean not only a lapse of time but also a relapse into a former heresy. 32. The abrupt change of person in 'point of view' is a device used frequently by Apollinaire. Mont Gibel is the legendary site of Morgana's castle reputed to be in Sicily.

SALTIMBANQUES First published in 1909 (see notes on 'Cr6puscule', p. 139). The nature of the chose vue recalls some of the poems of 'Rh6nanes' as

150

Commentaries (p. 78}

well as the subject matter of certain of Picasso's paintings of the blue and rose periods. The poem is dedicated to Louis Dumur (1863-1933), writer and founder member of the Mercure de France, to which Apollinaire contributed, and whose publishing house launched Alcools. LE LARRON First published in 1903, the poem underwent a number of changes in the version printed here. Notably, the insertion of dramatis personae—chceur, larron, vieillard, acteur and femme—confer on it a markedly allegorical form. With 'Merlin et la vieille femme' and 'L'Ermite' whose form it closely resembles, it is one of the earliest poems in the collection. It is thought that the poem was begun either immediately before or after Apollinaire's stay in Stavelot in 1899. The complex obscurity of the poem has stimulated a number of critical exegeses. Mme Durry was amongst the first critics to attempt a close examination of its enigmas. Noting the wide-ranging fusion of the ancient worlds of Greece and the Middle, East into a 'geographic fabuleuse', to use her own enlightening phrase, she skilfully unravels a number of personal references in the poem. She concludes that 'nous avons affaire a une piece antiparnassienne', that Apollinaire recognises the poet cannot immerse himself in pre-Christian values for the world has been changed irrevocably by the advent of Christianity. The identification of the larron with the poet is, in her eyes, a key to the poem for the poet is condemned to: vivre dans un triste monde chre"tien dont il fait partie quoi qu'il en ait, mais dont il cherche a s'eVader, et auquel il ne retourne que chasse1, diminue et malheureux. (Alcools, i, p. 233) Claudine Gothot-Mersch believes that 'la quete du larron d'Apollinaire s'inscrit exactement dans la ligne des preoccupations symbolistes' but that the poem, at the same time, is a satire on certain Symbolist procedures by its complicated mystification. She argues that the poem, in spite of its formal acceptance of Symbolist techniques, marks an evolution in Apollinaire's poetic skills. M. De"caudin has also described the literary lineage of the central character and, warning against too precise an interpretation, adds that il se rattache plutot a la grande famille des personnages dans lesquels s'incarna le mysticisme esth^tico-anarchiste qui sevit en 1895. (Doss., P- J 52) In his article on 'The Chronology of Apollinaire's Alcools' (P.M.L.A., Dec. 1952), LeRoy C. Breunig detected a strong autobiographical element in 'Le Larron' stating:

Commentaries (p. 78}

151

This work was probably not written before the fall of 1899, when Apollinaire was arrested by the Paris police after his escape from Stavelot. In spite of its obscure, mythical facade the poem seems to have been inspired by the indignity he suffered from his first encounter with the law. Marie-Therese Goosse follows up the autobiographical lead by referring widely to clues to be found in L'Enchanteur pounissant and Le Poete assassins. She states her position in this way: 'Le Larron est Apollinaire, et le sujet principal, profond, de la piece concerne son destin, a la fois d'e'tranger, d'enfant naturel, de poete, d'amoureux' (p. 4). She considers literary, moral and religious issues to be of secondary importance since, in her view, the poem is an examination of Apollinaire's own identity. This view had been earlier expressed by Mechthild Cranston who interpreted the poem as 'un pelerinage aux sources de soi'. Scott Bates interprets the poem as a 'violent attack' on Christ and adds 'I feel reasonably certain that the thief is Jesus and that the poem is an anti-Christian, pro-pagan (primarily pro-Pythagorean) satire' (Guillaume Apollinaire, p. 32). Robert Couffignal reads the poem as the record of a conflict between the world of Orpheus, 'le monde que domine le plaisir des sens' and the world of Christ 'recouvert par Pombre de la Croix'. Apollinaire proposes a 'rejet de la Croix, rejet de la foi chretienne, parce qu'elle est un fardeau dont il faut se debarrasser' (U Inspiration biblique, p. 133). Marc Poupon's analysis accepts Scott Bates's view that the thief is Christ but goes further. For him, the poem 'pose sans le re"soudre de facon definitive le probleme majeur d'Apollinaire depuis qu'il a perdu la foi de 1'enfance: Pe"nigme de la destineV. Finally J.-C. Chevalier devotes a chapter to a detailed linguistic commentary on 'Le Larron' in his linguistic and formal study ofAlcools. A very close textual analysis concentrates on 'le jeu de formes, la syntaxe' rather than on problems of identification. He notes that 'le protagoniste fait l'expe"rience de la re"alite" dans la mesure oil ceux qui 1'entourent le construisent' which is a 'procedure existentielle' (p. 38). He draws attention to the preponderance of imperatives and repetitions in the linguistic structure. In the face of these multiple and sometimes contradictory exegeses each reader will find his own interpretation. Apollinaire might well have claimed, as did Paul Valery later in a somewhat similar circumstance, that: Mes vers ont le sens qu'on leur prete. Celui que je leur donne ne s'ajuste qu'a moi, et n'est opposable a personne. C'est une erreur contraire a la nature de la poe"sie, et qui lui serait meme mortelle, que de pre"tendre qu'a tout poeme correspond un sens veritable, unique, et 6—A

* *

152

Commentaries (pp. 78-9}

conforme ou identique a quelque pensee de 1'auteur. ('Commentaire de Charmes', (Euvres, Pleiade, i, p. 1509) It would be a considerable over-simplification to believe that the obscurity of the poem is due to a certain inexperience on the part of the young Apollinaire, for the decision to include the poem in Alcools was made by the poet in his maturity: the author of 'Zone' approved 'Le Larron' by the very fact that he gave it a place. The obscurity of the poem has a more profound and personal cause. It is undeniable that there are veiled personal references in the poem and that it is, in part at least, a meditation on the crisis of faith so poignantly and finally described in 'Zone'. If'Le Larron' does not commemorate a precise event in Apollinaire's life, at least it can be held to represent well enough the confused state of mind of a young foreigner in Paris, trying to find a personal voice in his poetry, emerging from the shadow of Symbolism, losing his faith but lacking the confidence to put anything else in its place. The tone of the poem with its wide-ranging theological, historical and literary references is not yet the true voice of Apollinaire, but the abundance of allusion is more than an ostentatious display of erudition. Behind it lies concealed the private feeling of Apollinaire who, lyrical poet though he is, paradoxically enough has his own reticences and a tantalising sense of concealment. The strong visual element in the poem probably owes something to the paintings of Gustave Moreau. There is a certain ambiguity of 'point of view' for the attractions of the life led in this fabulous world of paganism are balanced by the gentle figure of the thief, 'beau', 'bon', 'aux yeux lyriques'. He has something in common with Merlin, the exile condemned to errance in a world of transition. There are enough common elements to suggest a possible identification of Apollinaire with the thief: exile, doubt, exclusion, the conflict of the ascetic life and the life of the senses and, above all, the sense of quest. See: Scott Bates, 'The Identity of Apollinaire's Larron', F.R., Oct. 1966. Mecththild Cranston, 'Apprendre "Le Larron" de Guillaume Apollinaire', P.M.L.A., Oct. 1967. Marie-Th^rese Goose, 'Une lecture du "Larron" d'Apollinaire', Archives Guillaume Apollinaire, 3, Archives des Lettres modernes, 1970. Claudine Gothot-Mersch, 'Apollinaire et le Symbolisme: "Le Larron" ', R.H.L.F., July-Sept. 1967. Marc Poupon, "Le Larron", essai d'exe"gese, G.A. 6, 1967. ii. socratiques: Pilkington in his edition of Alcools believes this to mean 'pederastic'. 14-15. Mme Durry sees in these lines and in 11. 19-20 a reference to Apollinaire's illegitimate birth. 18. Ligure: Ligurian, an inhabitant of Northern Italy, or 'musical'

Commentaries (pp. 79-82]

153

(from the Celtic), a sense Apollinaire uses in a letter to Lou, 25 December 1914 (see 'Glossary of Reference' in Scott Bates, Guillaume Apollinaire}. Apollinaire's mother brought him up in Liguria. nenie: a funeral chant or lamentation of Ancient Rome. 19-20. For Scott Bates la pubere could refer not only to Apollinaire's mother but also to the Virgin Mary and Vadulte to Apollinaire's father and to Joseph. If the religious connotation is accepted then the marriage is a 'pretexte' (1. 20) for the Immaculate Conception. 32. dnyre: a Greek harp. 35. Tanagre: Scott Bates notes that Tanagra, a Spartan town, was famous for its fighting cocks and that the 'cock's stone', found in the craw, was an amulet or virility symbol. 37. autan: violent southerly winds blowing from the Pyrenees. The inappropriateness of the adjective langoureux adds to the unreality of the scene. 43. The ascetic Pythagoreans banned the eating of beans. 51. Pythagoras has taught that his soul had been previously incarnated in a peacock. 53. vent scythe: Scythian wind. Scythia was an ancient region extending over a long part of Europe and Russia. 55-6. M. Decaudin draws attention to the change from the original lines: Des conquerants fictifs rues pour la victe Et des bandes souvent qui fuyaient aux eclairs by which the image takes precedence over the clearer statement of the earlier version. 57. homme begue: Moses. 67. gemmipares: gemme can mean both 'bud' and 'gem'. 68. crapauds: see A. Fongaro, 'Le Poete et le crapaud', G.A. 3, 1964. 69. triomphe: 'triumphal procession' as so admired by the Renaissance. 73-6. Mme Durry has explained this stanza in Alcools, i, pp. 223-5. The hymne is a reference to the Song of Songs. The procession of widows appropriately dressed in black 'egrenant des grappes' are telling the beads of the rosary. The mors des chapes contains a pun on chapes. Its most obvious meaning is 'cope', the ecclesiastic garment, but in heraldry it refers to a form of triangle. This draws our attention to Pythagoras but also has an obvious erotic meaning. 78. alancies: round vessels containing ashes, flowers or perfumes used in Spanish festivals in Moorish times. 82. Belphegor: a Moabite god; sometimes Priapus. 87. Larron de gauche: the thief crucified on the left side of Jesus mocked the 'good' thief crucified on the right since he confessed his faith in God. Mme Durry has noted the pun in sinistre (1. 95).

154

Commentaries (pp. 82-3)

100. aseite: a metaphysical term meaning that God exists absolutely in a non-contingent sense, whilst all else depends on Him for its existence. Mme Durry remarks that this stanza is an elaborate denial of the Immaculate Conception. 109. pantaure: according to Scott Bates a magical magnetic stone having the power of attracting gold. 116. roseau: the reed placed in the hand of Christ at his crucifixion. Funebre faix: the cross. 117. roi d'Edesse: according to legend, the king of Edessa had invited Christ to his court. Had He accepted, He might have escaped crucifixion.

122. triade: the Trinity. 123. tact: the sense of touch. Oblongue is used as an adjective in 'Cortege': . . . Ce feu oblong dont 1'intensite va s'augmentant Au point qu'il deviendra un jour 1'unique lumiere (11. 17-18) and in the last line of 'Lul de Faltenin' ('du troupeau d'etoiles oblongues'). The poem ended in its original form, with this last stanza suppressed in Alcools: Vouons le vol a Sparte et 1'inceste a Ninive. Nous rentrerons demain a Pe"cole d'Elee. Qu'on souffle les flambeaux a cause des convives Qui se fiant au Begue ont peur d'etre bru!6s.

LE VENT NOCTURNE First published in 1909, bearing the date 'Neu-Gliick, 1901'. Another manuscript of the poem bears the title 'Nuit rhe"nane'. Annie Playden told LeRoy C. Breunig in an interview that the view Apollinaire had from his windows at Neu-Gliick corresponded to the two aspects of forest and village of the poem ('Apollinaire et Annie Playden', M.F., April 1952) but the poem is no ordinary landscape. Whether because of the atavisms of his Slavonic descent from his mother or not, Apollinaire was particularly fascinated by the sight and restless sound of forests, with their evocation of the enchanted forest of Broceliande, home of Merlin. So the Rhineland forest becomes the home of elfes and of the spirit of the Greek shepherd Attis. The scene is not dehumanised however for the 'villages e" teints' remind us of the presence of men and women: for Apollinaire, le merveilleux always existed side by side with ordinary life.

Commentaries (pp. 83-4}

155

5. Attys: the Greek shepherd loved by Cybele. On his death Zeus allowed his spirit to pass into a pine tree. LUL DE FALTENIN First published in 1907 and probably composed in that year. This enigmatic poem has been the subject of many exegeses. The title is also the name of the third sword in 'Les Sept Epics' of'La Chanson du mal-aim^'. A discussion on the derivation of the name initiated by Ren6 Louis (F.D.R., June and Sept. 1954) produced the generally agreed view that Lul is a Flemish word used locally to mean the male sexual organ and that Faltenin is a compound derived from phallum tenens. By one of those coincidences in which Apollinaire delighted, he learnt of the death of a certain Guillaume Faltenin on 14 July 1915, another example of poetry becoming true in life. The title, once it has been deciphered, encourages an erotic interpretation in which it is easy to find sexual meanings for sirenes, grottes, the whole of the second stanza and many other objects and expressions in the poem. The ttoiles bestiales of the eyes of the women excite his compassion and bring to mind the mixed pity and revulsion he feels towards the prostitute in 'Zone': Ses mains que je n'avais pas vues sont dures et gerce"es J'ai une pitie" immense pour les coutures de son ventre J'humilie maintenant a une pauvre fille au rire horrible ma bouche (11. 141-3) LeRoy C. Breunig in a study of the manuscript (which is dated 5 November 1907) brought to light a number of new points. He believes the poem to contain a number of hidden personal allusions and points out ways in which Apollinaire's poetic expression becomes more elliptic in the working out of the poem. Thus, the lines: Si les bateliers ont rame" Loin des re"cifs a fleur de Ponde become Si les bateliers ont rame" Loin des levres a fleur de 1'onde to achieve a more mysterious sense. Breunig also detects in certain phrases which are not used in the final version, the theme of the setting of the sun, a daily assassination followed by resurrection. The narrator is an amalgam of the sailor, the sun and the poet. M. Davies sees the narrator (Odysseus) as torn between the pull of the sirens and its opposite—the urge to poetry and glory (Apollinaire, p. 132). Philippe Renaud accepts Rouveyre's view that 'Lul de Faltenin' is the first of the poems

156

Commentaries (p. 84)

referring to the poet's growing liaison with Marie Laurencin. The poem is subjected to a structural and linguistic analysis by J.-C. Chevalier in 'Alcools' a" Apollinaire: analyse des formes poetiques. He concludes that the poem represents a conflict between the myths of Icarus and Ixion who, as a punishment for his crimes, was bound on a wheel which revolved for ever. We are still far from solving all the problems posed by this poem. M. Davies reminds us that the poem was composed at a time when Apollinaire began his collaboration with La Phalange 'a review with strong neo-Mallarmean tendencies'. Mallarme's sonnet 'A la nue accablante tu' displays the same syntactical ellipsis and enigmatic imagery to describe a shipwreck which is also the sexual act. There is a marked sense of verbal pudeur in respect of sexual matters in Alcools and Calligrammes which is in striking contrast with the explicitness of the poems addressed privately to Lou. The frustration and deception of 11. 36-7 : Je descends et le firmament S'est change tres vite en meduse could refer to the period of poetic sterility from which he was beginning to emerge. After the particularly fertile years from 1903-5 which saw the production of so many fine poems, he published nothing in 1906 and for the greater part of 1907. Perhaps he had not recovered from the apathy which had enveloped him since the ending of his love affair with Annie Playden. There may also be an aesthetic reason. Apollinaire was now beginning his career as an art critic and had fallen deeply under the spell of Picasso as his two admiring articles of 1905 reveal ('Picasso, peintre et dessinateur' and 'Les Jeunes: Picasso, peintre' in C.A., pp. 28-31). There is enough here to understand the moment of stock-taking when, without denying the past, Apollinaire's poetic art challenged itself. His confession to Toussaint Luca in a letter of 11 May 1908 takes on its full significance in this context: 'Je ne cherche qu'un lyrisme neuf et humaniste a la fois'. 'Lul de Faltenin' is, in part, an account of this search. The poem is dedicated to Louis de Gonzague Frick who had known Apollinaire at the College de Saint-Charles at Monaco. They had met again in Paris and both contributed to La Phalange. See: LeRoy C. Breunig, 'Le Manuscrit de "Lul de Faltenin" ', R.S.H., Oct.-Dec. 1956. Jean-Claude Chevalier, 'Alcools': analyse des formes poetiques, pp. 154-80. 2. The pronoun vous is omitted as in 11. 4 and 41. 13. otelle: heraldic form; weapon (pike or lance). There is also authority for the meaning 'wound' which is applicable here.

Commentaries (pp. 84-6}

157

23-5. The original punctuation clarifies the lines: Qu'importe, ma sagesse egale Celle des constellations, Car, c'est moi seul, nuit, qui t'e"toile. 45. etoiles oblongues: symbols of aspiration.

LA TZIGANE First published in 1907, the poem is dated 'Honnef, 1902'. Apollinaire, like Matthew Arnold, sought the company of gipsies during his stay in Germany but here the predictions of the gipsy lack the wider implications of the prophetesses of the poem 'Sur les prophecies' (Calligrammes]. The poem refers to the poet's love affair with Annie Playden and shows its oscillation between hope and despair. See: M.-J. Durry, 'Sur "La Tzigane" ', G.A. 2, 1963.

L'ERMITE Published in 1902. Mme Durry ascribes its composition to 1899-1902 and points to lines taken from other early poems of Apollinaire (Alcools, i, pp. 192-207). She describes the debt owed by Apollinaire to Anatole France's novel Thais (1890), which has as its subject the conversion of the Egyptian courtesan by Paphnuce, the ascetic, whose motives are revealed as a confused mixture of religious zeal and lust. In the course of his wide and disordered reading, Apollinaire came across a seventeenth-century treatment of this same theme by Gabriel Ranquet which he described in an article 'L'Exil de la volupt£: un roman de Tha'is en 1611' in M.F., June 1904 (reprinted O.C., ii, pp. 293 ff.); the article contains some appreciative tributes to Anatole France's novel—'ce roman lyrique, troublant, qui se termine sur le ricanement atroce d'un saint damnable'. Robert Couffignal and Scott Bates have both pointed out the derision implied in the hermit's reversal of the Passion of Christ. For Couffignal, he is 'un anti-type du Christ, un Christ obscene, qui subit une Passion deYisoire, celle de la concupiscence' (UInspiration biblique, p. 131). Bates argues that: He [the hermit] suffers a new kind of fleshly Passion—in reverse—by not sweating the bloody sweat, the hematidrosis . . .; not perceiving the comforting angel on his Mount of Olives; not having his unleavened bread consecrated (a pun on his enforced sterility). Nor does a transcendent Magdalen, his mysterious Unknown, arrive. (Guillaume Apollinaire, p. 37)

158

Commentaries (pp. 86-7}

J.-B. Barrere discusses Apollinaire's treatment of love, with its highly personal mixture of gentleness and obscenity in an article ('Apollinaire obscene et tendre: e"tude d'imagination', R.S.H., Oct.-Dec. 1956) and quotes a sentence from UHeresiarque (one of the stories in L'Heresiarque et Cie) which throws much light on this problem. 'Le mysticisme touche de pres 1'e'rotisme' Apollinaire had written and this clearly goes close to the heart of 'L'Ermite'. The poem bears the mark of its Symbolist ancestry in more than its form of stanzas of four alexandrines which it shares with its contemporaries 'Merlin et la vieille femme' and 'Le Larron'. Its barely hidden sexual obsessions woven into a parody of the Passion have much in common with aspects of the work of J.-K. Huysmans and Remy de Gourmont who both dabbled in this facile form of Decadentism. The caricatural treatment of the traditional confrontation between hermit and skull has an echo in a poem of Jules Laforgue written in 1880 and entitled 'Excuse macabre'. The first stanza Margaretha, ma bien-aimee, or done voici Ton crane. Quel poli! Ton dirait de 1'ivoire! (Je le savonne assez, chaque jour, Dieu merci, Et me permets d'ailleurs fort rarement d'y boire) Te voila! . . . Dans ces deux trous, deux beaux yeux jadis, Miroirs de ton ame enrhume"e, Revaient. . . Las! ou sont tes belles tresses d'or, dis, Margaretha, ma bien-aimee? (O.C., M.F., ii, p. 203) In this poem, Apollinaire is striving after poetic effects which he will later handle with tremendous ease. The Christian and sexual allusions, parody and serious rejection of Christianity, arcane vocabulary mixed with colloquialisms sit too uneasily together. The dedication A Felix Feneon was added after the original publication. Felix Fe'ne'on (1861-1944), literary critic and supporter of Symbolism, had introduced Apollinaire to La Revue blanche. 13. la mourre: a game for two players in which one person extends quickly a hand showing some fingers extended. His adversary has to guess how many fingers will be raised in this way. Mme Durry has discussed the intricacy of the puns. Note too the repetition of sounds in I'amour, la mourre, enamoure. 32. hematidrose: the bloody sweat of Christ in Gethsemane. 37-40. Mme Durry has seen here a similarity with Rimbaud's poem 'Les premieres communions' in which a nose-bleed is grotesquely linked with hematidrose. 45. riotant: from rioter, 'rire un peu'. 51. ae'meres: saints who have no allotted day in the Calendar. 53. Lilith: first wife of Adam.

Commentaries (pp. 88-90)

159

80. cucuphe: 'espece de bonnet a double fond, contenant entre ses deux fonds un melange de poudres aromatiques' (Littr6). 83. M. D^caudin draws attention to a review written by Apollinaire in 1906 in which he refers to minor novels of the eighteenth century: 'la fantaisie des ecrivains ne s'ingeiiiait qu'a trouver des noms comme Zelotide, Olinde, Damon, Dorval, de facon a situer le moms possible ces productions' (Doss., p. 167). 90. fornarines: neologism coined from La Fornarina, mistress of the painter Raphael (Scott Bates).

AUTOMNE First published in 1905. The indeterminate scene veiled in autumn mists is reminiscent of the landscapes of Verlaine, yet the harsh impact of the adjectives cagneux, pauvres, vergogneux, retain the reality of the human presence and its eternal preoccupation with amour and infidelite. The verbs in the present tense reinforce the vividness of the tableau whilst the past tense of Tautomne a fait mourir Pete' adds to the finality.

IMMIGRANT DE LANDOR ROAD First published in 1905. Annie Playden lived at 75 Landor Road, Clapham in London and, after the break-up of her affair with Apollinaire, had been sent by her father, in May or June 1904, to America. In the poem the roles are reversed for it is Apollinaire, the unloved wanderer, who sets sail. A number of critics have noted an influence of Rimbaud beginning with Georges Duhamel's notorious review of Alcools on its publication; Andre" Breton called 'L'Emigrant de Landor Road' Apollinaire's 'Bateau ivre' (Les Pas perdus, p. 36). There is a full discussion of this influence by C. A. Hackett in 'Rimbaud and Apollinaire' (F.S., July 1965). In some ways, however, it is the vision of the modern city with its tailor's dummies, which is the more striking and surrealistic. It is also this vein which Apollinaire will exploit to the greatest effect in his later poetry. The dedication to Andre Billy (1882-1971) was inserted on the proofs. Billy, critic and author of a number of books on Apollinaire, was a friend from 1903 onwards. 13. M. De"caudin has found here an allusion to Rudyard Kipling's poem 'Mandalay' of which a translation had appeared in Le Festin d'Esope in 1904. Apollinaire was a founder and published some of his work there (see Doss., p. 171).

160

Commentaries (pp. 90-2}

14. crachal: 'medal' (slang). 25-8. these lines are taken from the poem 'Adieux' first published posthumously in // y a (O.P., p. 333). Pilkington notes that 1. 28 is adapted from the popular locution 'le diable bat sa femme et marie sa fille' used of very changeable weather. 50-4. these lines are taken from the poem 'Le Printemps' first published posthumously in Le Guetteur melancolique (O.P., p. 558).

ROSEMONDE First published in 1912 with 'Clotilde' and 'MarizibilP. On the name 'Rosemonde', see notes to 'Palais', p. 137. The poem was dedicated on the proofs to Andre Derain (1880-1954), one of the leaders of the Fauves. Apollinaire met Derain, the first painter with whom he became friendly, in 1904. LE BRASIER First published in 1908 under the title 'Le Pyree'. In a letter to Toussaint Luca (i i May 1908) Apollinaire referred him to an issue of Gil Bias of 4 May in which the poem had first appeared. 'Je ne cherche qu'un lyrisme neuf et humaniste en meme temps' he commented, adding that the new poem bore a close relationship to two other pieces of about the same date: 'Onirocritique' (La Phalange, 15 February 1908, O.P., pp. 371 ff.) and the article on Jean Royere (La Phalange, January 1908; O.C., iii, pp. 780 ff.). In a letter to Madeleine Pages of 30 July 1915 (T.S., p. 74) he had confessed that his favourite poem of Alcools was 'Vendemiaire' but that 'Les Fiancailles', with 'Le Brasier', was the most 'nouveau', 'lyrique' and 'profond'. The article on Jean Royere is highly laudatory and the motives of his admiration throw light on Apollinaire's own aesthetic search now that he has at last emerged from his affair with Annie Playden. Apollinaire particularly stresses the role of the poet as creator, often employing a vocabulary with religious undertones for this purpose. 'Cette langue est claire comme les flammes de la Pentecote et ces poemes sont plus beaux a cause de leur obscurite', he writes, but the obscurity is not coldly voluntary. It stems rather from a poetic recreation of the ordinary, for 'les miracles lyriques sont quotidiens'. The poet, too, is a master of time for '[il] connait le pass6, 1'avenir et transforme le present quand il le veut, paraissant posseder le pouvoir divin'. The whole article breathes a new-found confidence in the joy and mystery of poetry, the fertile nature of its 'faussete' in so far as it refuses to be an imitation of nature couched in traditional rhetorical terms.

Commentaries (pp. 92-3)

161

The movement of the poem is made clear by the three sections which were originally numbered. The first section (11. 1-25), written in quintils of octosyllabic lines, suggests the end of an epoch for the poet; 'Ce Passe" ces tetes de morts' are thrown on the brazier to become a new source of inspiration, almost mystical in its nature and outside the control of the poet (Tlamme je fais ce que tu veux'). The immense power of this vision is seen in the second part (11. 26-42) written, like the last section, in a free metre. It represents the renaissance of the poetic will, purified in the flames and the joy of possession. 'Voici ma vie renouveleV and this rebirth redeems all the martyrdoms of the past. The last section (11. 45-end) is, as Mme Durry has pointed out, 'la plus composite et parfois he'sitante'. The poet is separated from other men: II n'y a plus rien entre moi Et ceux qui craignent les brulures and this separation seems to lead him to a private universe. It is as though the new poetic stance that he has found calls for a revaluation of ideas which has not yet been completed. Margaret Davies has written of 'Le Brasier': 'One of the most constant of his themes from now on is his belief in poetry as a religion, and thence his own dedication to it as a high priest'. (Apollinaire, p. 148) For Philippe Renaud, 'Le Brasier' and 'Les Fiangailles' 'pre"sentent une ambition poe"tique telle qu'on n'en avait plus rencontre" depuis Rimbaud et Mallarme' (Lecture d'Apollinaire, p. 74). The poem is dedicated to Paul-Napoleon Roinard, poet and friend of Apollinaire from about 1903. 11-5. The punctuation of these lines when first published in review form show question marks after 11. 11 and 12, a full stop after 1. 13, an exclamation mark after 1. 14 and a full stop at the end of the stanza. 23. partant is used in the sense of'par consequent'. Amphion: a proper name used as a noun. Amphion, a figure of Greek mythology, was a harpist of such skill that, during the building of Thebes, he was able to move stones into place by his music. 28. intercis'. martyrs whose bodies have been dismembered. 32. forlignent: from, forligner, to become corrupted. 33. Tyndarides: children of Tyndareus, King of Sparta. Helen and Clytemnestra were unfaithful wives. 44. rouant: 'wheeling', a neologism. 48. Desirade: see note to 'La Chanson du mal aime', 1. 159. The line occurs in the cahier de Stavelot. 50. le ver ^amir: Mme Durry has tracked down the significance of this reference (Alcools, in, pp. 160-2). The fabulous worm, Shamir, was used by Solomon in the building of the Temple, in which God had ordained that no iron should be employed. It had the magical power of

162

Commentaries (pp. 93-5)

cutting stone. M. De"caudin quotes a sentence from an article published by Apollinaire in 1908: 'Le ver Zamir qui sans outils pouvait batir le temple de Jerusalem, quelle saisissante image du poete' (Doss., p. 176). 55. orra: future tense of ouir, in old French. 60. pentode: five-pointed star, a magical sign.

RHfiNANES Nuit Rhenane First published in 1911 but dated 'Honnef, mai 1902'. M. De"caudin has discovered a song of the 'Batchers sur le Rhin' in the manuscript of Le Poete assassine which refers to the seven women (Doss., p. 178). The poem has been interpreted in different ways. For Robert Lefevre in his edition of selected poems of Alcools, the shattering of the glass in the last line of the poem represents the triumph of the powers of evil. For Philippe Renaud (Lecture d'Apollinaire, pp. 134-6) it represents rather the victory of the voices of gaiety. The ambiguity of the poem arises from the juxtaposition of life and death, legend and reality, the supernatural and the ordinary, which colours Apollinaire's vision. Mai First published in 1905 but dated 'Leutesdorf, mai 1902'. Philippe Renaud (Lecture d'Apollinaire, p. 106) has made some illuminating remarks on this poem. After commenting on the irreversible movement of time and the river, he draws attention to the 'dames qui regardaient' on the steep banks of the Rhine who merge with 'celle que j'ai tant aimeV in the regard of the poet looking back on the orchards. This, he argues, presents a striking analogy with the legend of Orpheus: tentant de ramener a la vie une Eurydice dont la silhouette 'se fige en arriere' au moment ou Orphe"e se retourne—et la scene se termine par un ^change de regards; Orphee continue a vivre, a descendre le cours de sa vie, et Eurydice devient regret, souvenir dont nait la melancolique complainte. The Spring of the poem is already flawed. 'Le mai, le joli mai' has lost its beauty, for the petals have fallen; its beauties provide only a temporary cover for the ruins. Despite its tone of melancholy disillusion, the poem is a tribute to the power of memory which can recreate that which has irrevocably passed ('les vergers fleuris qui se figeaient en arriere') in the present ('les pdtales tombed ... sont les ongles de celle que j'ai tant aim6e'), thus abolishing time. The miscellaneous characters of

Commentaries (pp. 93-6}

163

the third stanza who pass briefly through the poem en route for their unknown destinations confer on the poem an emotional distance. La Synagogue First published in 1904 but dated 'Unkel, septembre 1901'. LeRoy C. Breunig and Michel Decaudin (Doss., pp. 180-1) have examined the background of Jewish religious observance in this poem. The 'fete des cabanes' is an important date in the Jewish year; taking place in the autumn, it celebrates the harvest and the encampment in the desert after the exodus from Egypt. It involves the construction at home of a 'cabarie' of leaves and a procession with palm leaves (the 'loulabim' of 1. 19) in the synagogue. Both critics point out that the festival fell on a Saturday in 1901 so that its solemnity was heightened by the celebration of the Jewish Sabbath when the Torah or Law is kissed. The chose vue is sharply condensed into a character sketch of some complexity, a good deal of erudition and a gentle, appreciative humour. Apollinaire had an abiding interest in Jewish customs perhaps because, like him, they too were etrangers. His friendship in 1900 with the Jewish family of Ferdinand Molina Da Silva (with whose sister, Linda, he fell in love, a relationship expressed in 'Les Diets d'amour a Linda'), provided him with opportunities to indulge further his insatiable curiosity. The poem begins with two alexandrines but the metre is soon dislocated. The lines then swell to irregular lengths which have been compared to the Claudelian verset and to the Hebraic rhythms of the Psalms. They are therefore particularly appropriate in this description of Jewish ritual. Apollinaire's eye for mystery and surprise is well illustrated by the two faces of the Rhine, smiling at first then transformed by the mysterious power of faith, into a vastness concealing the Leviathan of the Book of Job. See: LeRoy C. Breunig, 'La Synagogue', F.D.R., Dec. 1954. 19. les loulabim: branches of a palm tree. 20. LeRoy C. Breunig and Michel Decaudin have both analysed this line in Hebrew and shown that whilst it is grammatically correct, it is in fact an amalgam of a phrase from the Psalms and another from the Bible, meaning 'He who wields vengeance amongst the nations and punishment amongst the peoples'. The community of religious experience shared by Ottomar and Abraham reminds them of their privilege amongst the Chosen People. Les Cloches First published in 1905, the poem is dated 'Oberpleis, mai 1902'. The poem is simple in structure with its quatrains of octosyllabic lines.

164

Commentaries (pp. 96-8}

Light in tone up to the last stanza, the poem ends with a reversal of the situation in which Apollinaire was to find himself, abandoned by Annie Playden. 'Les Cloches' has something of the humorous pathos of a folksong. La Loreley First published in 1904, the poem is dated 'Bacharach, mai 1902'. The poem provides a good example of the multiple sources of Apollinaire's inspiration. There is firstly the physical presence of the Rhine with all its dramatic beauty enshrined in folk-lore and legend. Then there are the literary celebrations of these legends in poetry (C. M. Wolf has shown what Apollinaire's poem owes to Brentano in 'Apollinaire et la Lore Lay de Brentano', R.L.C., Oct.-Dec. 1951). Finally there is the intrusion into these externals of Apollinaire's own situation. The Loreley is both Annie Playden with her fatal attraction for the poet and Apollinaire himself because of the Loreley's equally fatal abandonment by the man she loved. The fascination of the eyes of the Loreley has a curious echo in Annie's own past. In a conversation with LeRoy C. Breunig ('Apollinaire et Annie Playden', M.F., April 1952) she confessed that her very strict Anglican family (her father, an architect, was nicknamed by his neighbours 'the Archbishop of Canterbury') had instilled in this beautiful child a sense of shame in her own beauty and in her 'yeux pervers'. The poem is dedicated to Jean Seve, an old friend from Apollinaire's schooldays in Cannes. A wealthy young man, Seve had helped Apollinaire in his early literary contacts. 4. absolvit: Apollinaire has invented this past tense of absoudre. The Judge would speak in Latin. 26. In the original publication this line read: 'La Loreley au milieu trainait la savate'. Apollinaire's later taste incited him to remove this facile effect which could damage the mood of the poem. Schinderhannes First published in 1904. Schinderhannes and his bandits Benzel, Jacob Born, Julia Blaesius and Schulz were executed in 1803. Apollinaire was familiar with the Rhineland legend and this violent episode, breaking as it does the melancholy, reflective mood of the 'Rhd-nanes', testifies to Apollinaire's wide-ranging curiosity. The regular structure of octosyllabic quatrains is not varied, so that the story is presented in the simplest form. The original version of the poem had the following stanza after 1. 16:

Commentaries (pp. ,98-3)

165

Mes compagnons, ma chere troupe D'ivrognes rauques, mes bandits Voici notre divine soupe, Le vin beni pour nous maudits. It was probably omitted because the guilty self-consciousness of maudits strikes a false note in the poem, especially in relation to the last two lines. The poem is dedicated to Marius-Ary Leblond, two brothers who were amongst the founders of La Grande France, a review which published some of Apollinaire's earliest poems. 28. florin: derived from fare, 'flower'. A Florentine coin bearing a lily on one side. Rhenane d'Automne First published in 1909 without the dedication, the poem is dated 'Honnef, novembre 1901'. An earlier version in manuscript form is printed in O.P. and Doss. (pp. 188-9). Bearing the title 'Le Jour des morts', it is slightly longer, more explicit and lacks the poetic tension of the final. In the earlier version the inhabitants of the cemetery include 'la vierge sage et la putain' and 'les beaux gars morts a la guerre' whose presence might seem inappropriately intrusive in this obscure rural setting. Robert Champigny draws attention to the subtle change in 'point de vue' in the poem. Beginning with the third person plural, it moves (1. 21) to the second person plural, then to the first and second person singular (1. 38), and finally to the 'nous' of identification (1. 43) which engulfs the observer who had begun by standing outside the scene. The descriptions of All Souls' Day in the little country cemetery begins with the alert and sympathetic eye of Apollinaire curiously observing the crowd; by the end of the poem the melancholy sense of loss and inevitability reflected in the autumn setting (Apollinaire's obsessional season) is completely shared. There are no moralisings, no reflections on death but simply the juxtaposition of the living and the dead in the most matter-offact and even humorous fashion. The identification of 'nous' at the end of the poem is all the more moving because of the lighter and uninvolved tone of the beginning. Annie Playden had never forgotten this occasion and told LeRoy C. Breunig, with a very English disapproval: 'Le cimetiere se changea en pique-nique ce jour-la' (see 'Apollinaire et Annie Playden', M.F., April 1952) The poem is dedicated to Toussaint Luca, the lifelong friend of Apollinaire whom he had first met when they were both pupils at the lycee of Nice in 1897. Toussaint Luca has published his memories of Apollinaire together with some of the earliest poems in Souvenirs d'un ami (1954)-

166

Commentaries (pp. 99-102}

See: Robert Champigny, 'Analyse de "Rhe"nane d'automne" ', F.R., Dec. 1959. 4. The crowing of the cock symbolises awakening life. It is silent on 'le jour des morts' which is appropriately sunless. Les Sapins First published in 1909, but dated 'Neu-Gliick, 1901'. This is one of the few purely descriptive poems ofAlcools. Seen through the changing seasons, the pine trees are represented by a series of visual associations in the general context of their benevolent magical powers. Apollinaire has chosen one of his preferred regular verse-forms, the quintil or stanza of five lines. Les Femmes First published in 1904 and dated 'Honnef, decembre 1901'. The date 'septembre igoi-mai 1902' in the version printed in Alcools refers to the composition of the group of poems entitled 'Rhenanes'. The form of the poeme-conversation has attracted a good deal of attention. M. Decaudin (Doss., p. 195) sees echoes of the poesie familiere of the Parnassians and Mme Durry notes the aesthetic place of the poem, at one and the same time anchored firmly in a classical mould of quatrains of alexandrines and yet looking forward to the simultaneisme of that other conversation piece 'Lundi rue Christine' in Calligrammes. Helene Auffret in a comparison of 'Les Femmes' with T. S. Eliot's 'A Game of Chess' (The Waste Land] shows how the banal conversation, without action, ends by transcending the dimension of triviality: 'II y a done dans le poemeconversation toute une presence de Pinvisible'. The overtaking of the trivial by the dominating presence of death is reminiscent of the movement of 'Rhdnane d'automne'. The cosy interior of the farm house in the first stanza is set against the forest, foreign and threatening as manifested in the screech of the owl and the solemn note of the wind. Even the dance of the pines in the wind (1. 27) turns out to be a danse macabre as night confers on the snow-covered vines sinister funereal shapes. Domestic details predominate in the conversation of the women but there is a broadening of perspective in the unexpected literary tone of some of the images like the 'pape en voyage' (11. 8-9) and the description of the wind (1. 20). The presence of impending death intrudes ; the telling of beads, the compressed folk-philosophy of the line: 'Lotte 1'amour rend triste—Use la vie est douce' widens the range of the human situation. The unexpected adjective of last line 'la nuit indecise' reinforces the strictly controlled counterpoint of life and death, triviality and solemnity, enacted in what seems to be a brightly lit interior

Commentaries (pp. 102-4}

l

^l

menaced by the shadows of death and night, but, as always in Apollinaire, the human has its own comforts and defences. See: Helene Auffret, 'Etude comparee de deux poemes-conversations: Apollinaire, LesFemmes', Eliot, A Game of Chess, R.L.C., July-Sept. 15. A reference to the title of a poem by Heine according to Mme Durry. Apollinaire translated the first German word 'Le songe Herr Traum' but not the second 'Frau Sorge' (literally 'Madame Souci'). SIGNE First published in 1911, the poem was variously entitled 'Stances' and 'Signe de 1'automne'. LeRoy G. Breunig ascribes its composition to 1904 but Mme Durry's view that it may be contemporary with 'L'Ermite' seems more likely. The poem consists of the first two stanzas of a longer poem 'L'Automne et Pecho' first published in the posthumous volume Le Guetteur melancolique (O.P., p. 588). In this version the fourth line is a rather weak construction heavily influenced by Symbolism: 'Et je vis anxieux dans un concert d'odeurs'; the seventh line: 'Les fleurs ne laissent plus tomber aucun petale' is replaced by a stronger and more dramatic line. Autumn is indeed the 'saison mentale' of Apollinaire. The Index des mots ^'Alcools' prepared by Pierre Guiraud shows that, of the four seasons of the year, printemps occurs nine times in the volume, ete and hiver five times each whilst automne is used on no fewer than twenty-two occasions. Apollinaire finds irresistible its juxtaposition of death with the promise of rebirth. As Philippe Renaud has commented (Lecture d'Apollinaire, p. 104): 'L'automne n'est pas etat de mort, mais agonie, changement, passage'. 2. Cf. 'Rhenane d'automne': L'automne est plein de mains coupees Non non ce sont des feuilles mortes 6. This line is partially explained by 11. 31-2 of'L'Automne et Pecho': Je d£teste les fleurs parce qu'elles sont femmes Et je souffre de voir partout leur nudite". UN SOIR First published in Alcools, the manuscript is written on paper headed Austin's Bar, 28, rue d'Amsterdam, a bar which Apollinaire frequented from 1904 onwards. The poem is obscure. Both Scott Bates and Robert Couffignal have drawn attention to the frequent biblical references: the aigle and archanges of the Book of Revelations, the star of Bethlehem in the blue eyes, and Holy Week with Judas, the entry into Jerusalem, the Roman soldiers

168

Commentaries (pp. 104-5}

gambling for Christ's tunic. Indeed, for Couffignal the poem is a 'veritable condense de la Semaine-Sainte, du dimanche des Rameaux au Vendredi-Saint' (L'Inspiration biblique, p. 116). Both critics stress the interpenetration of this framework with a more hidden confession of a love affair that has just ended. The title was changed at the proof stage from 'Le Soir' to 'Un Soir' and the movement from the definite to the indefinite article is symptomatic of the refusal to be explicit. A final stanza of the manuscript has been omitted and its last line: 'II faudrait dans ta voix mettre 1'enfer et 1'impurete' makes clearer the personal suffering which lies behind the poem. Apollinaire feels at times that the loss of faith can be equated with the loss of love and this poem with its evocation of Christ (but note the appellation histrion), the city linked with the star, birth juxtaposed with death, seems to be a sketch for 'Zone' in which the same themes will be elaborated with more masterful profundity and at much greater length. The style is firm and the surrealistic image of 11. 7-8 looks forward to a more urban poetry. 11. fausse oronge: a reddish, poisonous mushroom. LA DAME First published in 1903, the poem undergoes many changes before its subsequent publication in Vers et Prose in 1912. Originally entitled 'Le Retour', it is extracted (like 'L'Adieu') from the long poem 'La Clef published posthumously in ''Le Guetteur melancolique (1952): Toe, toe . . . 'II a ferine" sa porte. Les lys du jardin sont ne"tris . . . Quel est done ce mort qu'on emporte ?' —'Tu viens de toquer a sa porte.' —'Et je suis veuve aux pieds meurtris.' The suppression of punctuation obscures the dialogue form and removes any hint of narration. The last line which explained the poem is changed to a piece of nonsense verse. The title, 'La Petite Souris' on the first proofs, was replaced by 'La Souris' before the choice of 'La Dame' was finally made.

LES FIANCAILLES First published in 1908, the poem contains fragments dating from different periods. The first three stanzas (11. i-i i) are taken with minor variants from 'Le Printemps' (written in 1902 and first published in Le Guetteur melancolique, 1952; O.P., p. 556). The third, fourth and fifth parts (11. 28-36, 37-48, 49-57) are in a manuscript poem entitled 'Les

Commentaries (p. 705)

169

Paroles etoiles' in the Bibliotheque litteraire Jacques Doucet (Doss., pp. 204-6), with the further addition in the fourth part of an extract from 'Les Villes sont pleines d'amour et de douleur' (O.P., pp. 563-4), another poem first published in Le Guetteur melancolique. Lines in the eighth part are taken from 'Le Pyree' (Doss., pp. 206-7). The technique of composition which involves extracting lines from earlier works, often with few variants only, and embedding them in a poem of very different emphasis and importance is frequently practised by Apollinaire. The different states of the evolution of this poem have been studied by LeRoy C. Breunig. With 'Le Brasier', the poem provides a statement of Apollinaire's new-found poetic faith. In a letter to Madeleine Pages, 30 July 1915, Apollinaire wrote: Je vous ai dit que 'Vendemiaire' £tait mon poeme preTere d'Alcools. J 'y songe, le plus nouveau et le plus lyrique, le plus profond ce sont ces 'Fiancailles' d&iiees a Picasso dont j'admire 1'art sublime . . . nul doute qu'avec le 'Brasier' il ne soit mon meilleur poeme sinon le plus imm^diatement accessible. (T.S., p. 74) The fact that it is this particular poem which Apollinaire chooses, at the proof stage, to dedicate to Picasso bears witness to the importance he attaches to it. The death of the past and the rebirth in the purifying flames of poetic creation confer on the poet-hero the gift of prophecy. The apocalyptic visions owe something to Rimbaud but the images and vocabulary have a strong religious content. S. 1. Lockerbie has remarked acutely that in this poem for the first time Apollinaire uses images of contemporary life to achieve the expression of his own aspirations. Its discontinuity in space and time reflects Apollinaire's own quest and feelings of isolation. The poem is dedicated to Picasso (1881-1973) with whom Apollinaire had been on terms of friendly admiration from 1904. See: LeRoy C. Breunig, 'Apollinaire's "Les Fiangailles" ', Essays in French Literature, Nov. 1966. S. I. Lockerbie, 'Alcools et le Symbolisme', G.A. 2, pp. 5-40. i-n. The first line gives the title of the poem which, Breunig suggests, means 'the union of the many opposites which it is the very purpose of the poem to fuse'. The adjective parjures is unexpected and refers perhaps both to the deceptions of art and of life from which the poet strives to emerge. Pilkington sees these lines, precious and mannered as they undoubtedly are, as 'very much an example of what [Apollinaire] later derides as Tancien jeu des vers" '. The innocence of happiness in love is flawed, as is the spring in 'Mai', for love is no longer adequate as the inspiration for poetry. 2. feuilloler: see 'La Chanson du mal aime', 1. 79.

170

Commentaries (pp. 105-6")

12-27. The slightly off-key pastoral scene is now abruptly changed for the nightmare of the poet's mock crucifixion in the sordid, haunted city which is so different from the smiling streets of the beginning of 'Zone'. It is a glimpse of life bereft of friendship, love or beauty! Lines in the draft of 'Les Paroles e"toiles' (Doss., p. 205) but omitted in the final version, throw a considerable light on this section. Accepting the challenge of his friends in 1. 12, the poet responds: J'ai 1'orgueil de me souvenir de mes souhaits glorieux [J'ai reve"] des poemes si grandioses que j'ai du les laisser inacheves Moi-meme j'ai tente" de rythmer Parce que mon souci de perfection Depassait mon gout meme et les forces d'un seul homme. In the face of this discouragement 'je me suis endormi': Puis apres la fuite et la mort de mes verites poetiques Je m'e"veillai au bout de cinq ans [et suivit] une nuit citadine. The Apollinairian process is clear. Any autobiographical reference to his misfortunes in love, his loss of faith and the power to write is hinted at by the images used rather than by any form of direct statement; the compression of the style foretells the style telegraphique he will later admire; the shock of the image in 1. 19 reinforces the hell into which he has descended. M. Decaudin believes that the five years of sleep to which Apollinaire refers are the years 1901-6 when his poetry was obsessed by his experiences with Annie Playden. 13. etoiles: symbolise glimpses of poetic beauty. Cf. Mallarme's use of azur in a similar context. 14—6. A reference to Apollinaire's deceptions in religion recounted at length in Zjone. The faux centurions refer to the story of the Crucifixion. 25. dulie: cult of honour and respect for the saints; an ironical reference to the prostitutes' sharp knowledge of the pull of sexuality. 28-36. The title of the poem of which this was originally the first section is 'Les Paroles etoiles' and this image dominates, however ambiguously. The tourment de silence in which the poet now finds himself does not exclude the memory of past poetic triumphs Cl. 31) but the stars appear to be burned out. The pride in past achievement was reflected more strongly in a line in the original placed between 11. 34 and 35 : Car ma vie avait le pouvoir de faire renaitre tout 1'univers. The apocalyptic end of the section sees the poet as a martyr. 37-48. In spite of the bold statement of 1. 37 a note of self-pity colours this section. The rapid review of the poet's life contains a fusion of pastoral and urban elements. 46. Anne Hyde Greet identifies the mulatto girl as Marie Laurencin who may have been of Creole origin but the reference could equally plausibly be to Jeanne Duval, mistress of Baudelaire. Although Apollin-

Commentaries (pp. 106-8}

171

aire's attitude to him is ambivalent, he wrote in 1917 that Baudelaire 'a £t6 le premier a souffler 1'esprit moderne en Europe' (O.C., ii, p. 287). 49-57. Lines in 'Les Paroles £toiles' expand the ideas in a more explicit fashion: Pardonnez-moi d'avoir reconquis mon ignorance. Pardonnez-moi de ne plus connaitre le jeu de vers. autrefois J'ai fait des poemes selon des regies que j'ai oubliees Aujourd'hui je ne sais plus rien [faire]. Purified of his past which he still does not entirely renounce, the poet awaits a new experience. He feels himself to be on the verge of new discoveries and like the God of Genesis (the image is continued in 1. 58), he experiences the joy of future creation. 58-77. This section envisages the poet as did Rimbaud in the famous sentence 'JE est un autre'. The poet's contact with the world is through the five senses described here in the order hearing, touch, sight, smell and taste. The description of the senses is preceded by the obscure lines 63-7. 'Cortege' (1. 24) refers to 'les cinq sens et quelques autres'. Mme Durry and Scott Bates believe the sixth sense to be here the power of love and sex. It could also represent more generally the power of poetic intuition attempting to break out of the limitations imposed by the senses. 59. Cf. 'La Chevelure', one of the poems ofLesFleurs du mat inspired by Jeanne Duval. In this poem Baudelaire refers to 'la f£conde paresse'. 77. laurier: Scott Bates and Anne Hyde Greet believe this to be a pun on Laurencin. 78-89. There is here a mood of serene confidence. The mensonges recall the statement in Apollinaire's article on Jean Royere, dating from 1908: 'La fausset6 est une mere f^conde' (O.C., iii, p. 783). LeRoy C. Breunig argues that the poem arrives, in its search for a new aesthetic, at the conclusion that the poet should neither try to copy nature nor to escape from it: Since [art] no longer claims to be a true representation of nature it can admit quite frankly that it is a lie and proceed from there to the revelation of spiritual truth (p. 22). So Apollinaire is freed from rhetorical precedents and doubts. The angels are on his side and on the holy day, he accepts the contentment of the fulfilment of his powers. The image of the crucifixion now takes on a sense of hope and promise. 90-7. The joyful progress continues. 96. anemones: a pun on the Greek word anemos, meaning wind. The anemone is also known as the windflower. 97. Virgo is the third sign of the Zodiac. It is also Apollinaire's own birth sign.

172

Commentaries (pp. 108-9)

98-109. The poem ends in a blaze of triumph in spite of the warning presence of incertitude in 1. 106. The dominant image is that of the martyrdom by fire of the Templars. Light and flame illuminate the poet in his divine task of prophecy but flames and fire represent for Apollinaire not only inspiration and the poetic imagination but also purification by death (cf. 'la flamme a la puretd qui ne souffre rien d'etranger et transforme en elle-meme ce qu'elle atteint' (Les Peintres cubistes, O.C., iv, p. 15). 98. The Templars Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charnay were burned at the stake in 1314. Scott Bates points out the aptness of the image; the Templars represent purity and masculine abnegation for they swore to serve only one mistress, the Virgin Mary; further, according to legend, Jacques de Molay prophesied correctly, in his dying moments, the death of the Pope. The idea of martyrdom in defence of the idea of purity (the first of the vertus plastiques according to Apollinaire in Les Peintres cubistes} could represent obliquely the ambition of Picasso and the Cubists who were the subject of harsh critical attacks. It is possible to see here a continuation of the nineteenth-century idea of the persecution of the artist. 99- o grand maitre: written in the plural in the printed version of 1908, it becomes singular in Alcools. This change is almost certainly to be linked with the insertion of the dedication to Picasso. 103. a quarantaine: variously interpreted as 'died at forty years of age', 'forty died', or (Scott Bates) 'died during the forty days of Lent'. 105. quintaine: literally an iron ring suspended as a target for the lance or spear in jousting tournaments. The sexual image is clear. 106. oiseau feint: the original version has a comma after incertitude, feint, peint, tombiez and a full stop after village. The same train of thought is continued, for the oiseau peint is another form of target. The joy of success when the target is hit stands for other joys, in love and in poetic creation. But in this celebration, incertitude remains intact. 108. tes enfants: Anne Hyde Greet suggests that tes refers to Picasso, although it existed in the first version when maitres was in the plural and the dedication to the painter had not been made. This may well be a good guess and, if true, would further indicate the extent of Apollinaire's ambition to achieve in poetry what Picasso was achieving in painting. CLAIR DE LUNE First published in 1901 and signed Wilhelm Kostrowitzky, this is the earliest of Apollinaire's poems to be included in Alcools; it appears in a group of three poems, the first he had published. Originally entitled 'Lunaire', it became 'Nocturne' on the first proofs before achieving its final, more factual title. The decor of his poem is unmistakably Symbolist

Commentaries (pp. iog-16]

173

with the extended, rather precious image of the rays of the moon dripping as honey on country and town, worked out with intricate alliteration and repetitions. As Mme Durry and others have pointed out, the deflating effect of'figurent assez bien' (1. 3) injects a suspicion of mockery of certain Symbolist techniques verging on parody. An interesting light on Apollinaire's changing aims in poetry is shown by two variants. The original publication, divided into stanzas of 6 and 4 lines, with an eleventh line standing alone, had a comma after 'Or' in line 7, thus conferring a single unambiguous meaning on the line. The suppression of all punctuation now permits an additional reading in which 'Or cache' could also be read as 'hidden gold'. The omission of the last (eleventh) line from the original, 'O rose a peine rose en des livres savants', makes the pun 'rose des vents' (1. 10), meaning also 'compass card', more difficult to see. This pun also occurs in 'Merlin et la vieille femme', a poem of roughly the same date.

1909

First printed in Alcools. The poem has a simple construction. The first part (11. 1-20) describes the woman of fashion who remains inaccessible: Elle etait si belle Que tu n'aurais pas ose 1'aimer. The second part (11. 23-7) describes the 'femmes atroces' of the industrialised city, more approachable and more real. This represents a further stage in Apollinaire's progression towards a preoccupation with the presence of the city which is clearly described in 'Vendemiaire': Les viriles cites ou degoisent et chantent Les metalliques saints de nos saintes usines (11. 41-3) 12. Mme Recamier (1777—1849), famous for her wit and beauty, presided over a distinguished literary salon in Paris. The famous portrait by David shows the 'bandeau d'or' (1. 19).

A LA SANTE First published in Alcools but dated September 1911. The theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in August 1911 involved Apollinaire in a story which he described as 'singuliere, incroyable, tragique et plaisante qui fait que j'ai etc" la seule personne arretee en France a propos du vol de la Joconde' (T.S., 30 July 1915, pp. 71-3).

174

Commentaries (p. no]

Apollinaire had befriended a certain Gery Pieret, a Belgian of good family who lived by his wits. In 1907 Pieret had stolen two sculpted heads from the Louvre and sold them to Picasso without telling him of their provenance. Picasso still owned these two pieces in 1911 and, since Pieret had returned to Paris, both Picasso and Apollinaire suspected him of the theft, unjustly as it transpired. Apollinaire's relationship with Pieret was known and the poet was arrested on 7 September 1911 on suspicion of complicity in the theft. He was released a few days later from La Sante prison, but the affair left an indelible mark on him. His account of these happenings is contained in a letter to Madeleine Pages dated 30 July 1915 (T.S.} and in an article entitled 'Mes Prisons' (ParisJournal, 14 September 1911, O.C., ii, p. 682). This event had very serious implications for Apollinaire; stateless, he might have been deported and thus permanently exiled from his pays d'adoption with his career and reputation in ruins. The scandal was considerable. Andrd Billy, an intimate companion of Apollinaire at this time, has written: De son sejour en prison, Apollinaire garda longtemps une impression de terreur que nous redoublames d'amitid pour effacer . . . Pour la vie, Apollinaire e"tait marque', et la guerre meme et sa bravoure et sa blessure n'ont pu vaincre les inimiti^s de 1'ignorance, de la jalousie, de la betise, de I'inte'rSt, ligue"es contre sa personne, son esprit, son g6nie, sa vie. II en a souffert jusqu'au bout, trop fier toutefois pour s'en plaindre. (Apollinaire vivant, pp. 39-40) Philippe Renaud believes that the event ushered in for Apollinaire a period of 'depression morale et sentimentale'. Whatever may be the truth, it sharpened greatly his crisis of identity. A number of drafts of the poems inspired by this period of imprisonment were published by F. Ambriere in M.F., 15 February 1934 and are reprinted in O.P. The poems reflect his distress and fear; the problem of his identity is raised in an acute form: Je suis Guillaume Apollinaire Dit d'un nom slave pour vrai nom Ma vie est triste tout entiere Un echo re"pond toujours non Lorsque je dis une priere. The appeal to his family: Pauvre maman Mon pauvre frere Pardonnez-moi Pardonnez-moi is extended to his friends and to Marie [Laurencin]. There is also the appeal to a faith now temporarily recovered:

Commentaries (pp. 110-13}

175

Je viens de retrouver la foi Comme aux beaux jours de mon enfance Seigneur agr£ez mes hommages Je crois en vous je crois je crois. The final version omits these too-direct confessions although 'A la Sante' must still be counted amongst the less reticent of the poems of Alcools. Literary reminiscences of Verlaine who had likewise been sent to prison, an experience reflected in certain poems of Sagesse (an early title 'Chanson' has a distinct Verlainian flavour) echo in the poem, but C. M. Bowra ('Order and Adventure in Apollinaire' in The Creative Experiment] points to a marked contrast between the two poets. Where Verlaine seeks expiation in prayer, Apollinaire calls for help. Apollinaire too is much more aware of the prison surroundings. The appeal to 'clarte' and 'raison' in the last line of the poem undermines the religious tone of earlier passages. The first and last poems are composed of two quatrains of octosyllabic lines, rhyming a b a b, but the intervening poems vary in length and disposition of lines. ii-i2. Apollinaire's cell was 'la quinzieme de la onzieme division'.

AUTOMNE MALADE First published in Alcools. M. D6caudin believes the poem to belong to the 'Rh^nanes' cycle but the date of composition is in doubt. A first draft of the Verlainian ending has: Le Rhin Qui coule. 10. nixes: mythological, 'water sprites', nicette: feminine of nicet, archaic adjective derived from nice, 'simple', 'uneducated'. HOTELS First published in Alcools. The poem is difficult to date. Mme Durry (Alcools, iii, p. 63) reports that Marie Laurencin told her of this poem: 'Celui-la est de mon 6poque. G'est un des seuls qu'il m'ait lus'. LeRoy C. Breunig thinks that the first two stanzas of the poem refer to Apollinaire's stay in Stavelot in 1899 but M. Decaudin, more plausibly, judges the poem to be a 'kaleidoscope d'images'. From the beginning, the poem builds up to an impression of isolation and non-communication. The loneliness of countless anonymous hotel rooms is evoked in brief notations and culminates in the biblical image of the Tower of Babel. Robert Couffignal (UInspiration biblique, p. 77) has

176

Commentaries (pp. 113-14}

pointed out that the last-but-one stanza hints at a kind of Paradise Lost when, before the destruction of the Tower, all men spoke the same language but Apollinaire's reference is surely intended ironically. Couffignal concludes that 'le dernier quatrain du poeme illustre parfaitement la le§on de l'6pisode biblique; le p6chd centre Dieu est en meme temps un manque d'amour entre les hommes'. 13. The Duchess de la Valliere (1644-1710), mistress of Louis XIV. She was slightly lame and the unexpected comparison between this illustrious lady and the shaky bed table is a good example of Apollinaire's love of verbal surprise. 19. The line originally read: 'Parlons nos langues', and this stresses the lack of communication between men.

CORS DE GHASSE First published in 1912. Apollinaire confessed in a letter dated 30 July 1915 (T.S., p. 40) that 'Cors de Ghasse' '. . . comme'more les memes souvenirs de"chirants que "Zone", "Le Pont Mirabeau" et "Marie" le plus d6chirant de tous que je crois'. By date and inspiration this poem forms part of the discreet record of the end of his love affair with Marie Laurencin in June 1912. Mme Durry has drawn our attention to the continuite affective of the poem which nevertheless reveals a marked discontinuity of time and logic. The first stanza develops the theme of fate, the reference to masque recalling Greek tragedy with its clean tragic line and absence of hope. Apollinaire hints at his own destiny which, once more, appears to be that of a man condemned to be perpetually deceived in love. The theme runs through 'La Chanson du mal-aim^' and this may well explain why Apollinaire's mind was thrown back to the composition of this poem, for 11. 6-7 of'Cors de chasse' originally appeared in a draft of 11. 26-40 of the earlier poem. The reference to Thomas de Quincey enhances the experience of Apollinaire and, at the same time, provides a certain aesthetic distance between the emotion and its expression. The themes of the passing of time and the persistence of memory are to be found in 'Le Pont Mirabeau' and 'Marie', both deriving from the same emotional shock. Apollinaire uses his favourite octosyllabic quintil for the first two stanzas. The dominance of nasal masculine rhymes tightens the poetic structure very considerably. The poem ends with a well-known literary image given a personal twist; the parentage of the image is traced by Mme Durry. See: M.-J. Durry, 'Cors de chasse' in R.S.H., Oct.-Dec. 1956, reprinted in Alcools, ii, pp. 156 ff.

Commentaries (pp. 114-15}

177

5. M. Decaudin suggests (G.A. 5, p. 114) that the verb rend here means 'to express' rather than 'to make'. 6-8. Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) met and befriended the young girl he described as 'poor Ann the Outcast', 'the poor friendless girl', 'my poor Orphan companion' in the winter of 1802-3. He never saw her again but she recurred obsessively in his dreams and he never forgot her.

VENDfiMIAIRE Originally published in 1912, 'Vende'miaire' was the first poem to be printed without punctuation at its publication. M. Decaudin (Doss., p. 224) argues that the poem dates from 1909. Its lyrical affirmations are in sharp disaccord with the mood of moral depression which had set in after Apollinaire's brief imprisonment in La Sant6 prison in 1911 and was reinforced by the ending of his love affair with Marie Laurencin the following year. Internal dating also points to 1909 for 1. 93 could refer to the Sicilian earthquake of 28 December 1908. The manuscript is much worked over in different inks. Apollinaire wrote of this poem on 30 July 1915: 'Mais, dans Alcools, c'est peut-etre 'Vend£miaire' que je preTere' (T.S., p. 70) and, in an article, described it, with L'Enchanteur pourrissant and the poem 'Les Fenetres' (Calligrammes), as an attempt to 'habituer 1'esprit a concevoir un poeme simultane"ment comme une scene de la vie' ('SimultanismeLibrettisme', O.C., iii, p. 890). The poem is a sustained paean of praise to the universe rather than a private celebration of the moi. The poet is here placed in the centre of the world, like Paris, to which the towns bring their homage. As in the Rimbaud formulation 'JE est un autre', the poet reflects the intoxications of living: Je suis ivre d'avoir bu tout 1'univers. (1. 167) Philippe Renaud points out the theme of rebirth after death in the poems and insists on the mingling of the Dionysian myth with the celebration of the Christian Eucharist; indeed, the whole poem abounds in religious references. Like 'Zone' the poem ends with the growing light of dawn but 'Vend^miaire', with its joyous affirmations, is violently different in tone. 2. An allusion to the assassination of the King of Italy in 1900 and of the King of Portugal in 1908. 4. trismlgistes: literally three times great. 22 ff. Rennes, with Quimper and Vannes, stand for Brittany and the long-standing Apollinarian admiration for the literature of the cycle breton. The concept of courtly love and the search for the Holy Grail, twin allegiances to woman and to religion, are the double raison of 1. 37

178

Commentaries (pp. 115-18}

represented as being superior to any Greek or Eastern explanation of man. 39 ff. The Northern cities are celebrated for their vigour in lines reminiscent of Verhaeren. The vision of modern industrial life is contained in a classical reference, so underlining the sense of human continuity and relevance. 44. Ixion tried to win the love of Hera, wife of Zeus, who created a cloud bearing her image. From this curious union, Ixion fathered the centaurs as the factory chimneys belching smoke create strange mechanical products. 50 ff. Lyons stands at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone, with its pilgrim church of Notre-Dame de Fourvieres. It is famous for its silk industry (cf. 'tissaient', 1. 51) and has a turbulent religious and political history. 54. Reference to the mystery of the Eucharist. 57. Apollinaire had stayed in Lyons when he was young. 59 ff. The religious imagery of the poem unfolds. The Mediterranean cities, once the centre of civilisation and culture, now hand this role to Paris. 64. danse orpheline: this obscure reference provides a good example of Apollinaire's use of his disparate erudition in the creation of images. 'Orphelins' was the name bestowed on themselves by the Hussite armies of Bohemia, disciples of John Huss (1369-1415) the pre-Reformation preacher, after the death of John Zizka, their leader in 1424. I am indebted to Dr J. J. N. Palmer for the information that the Adamites, a sect of the Hussites, were given to naked ritual dances. Apollinaire has taken certain liberties for the Adamites were, in historical fact, at the opposite end of the religious spectrum to Zizka, who was responsible for their persecution and eventual extermination. There is a reference to Huss in 'Le Passant de Prague' (V' Heresiarque etde, O.C., i, p. 109). 66 ff. Sicily suffered a severe earthquake on 28 December 1908. This, with the bloody battles of Sicilian history, is the harvest of death referred to in 1. 69. 79. Scylla is the daughter of Phorcys and Hecate in Greek mythology. Turned into a monster by her rival, she devoured sailors who passed her cave opposite the whirlpool Charybdis in the Straits of Messina. 95 ff. Rome was the birthplace of Apollinaire and an earlier version of 1. 65 read: 'Moi qui t'adore 6 Rome 6 Rome ou je suis n6'. 99. Pilkington believes this line may refer to the separation of Church and State in France in 1905. 100. The wine here is the wine of the Eucharist. 104. The three-tiered crown worn by the Pope. 113 ff. Coblence, at the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine,

Commentaries (p. 118]

179

brings Germany into the chorus of praise. An earlier version of the poem contained these lines: Et d'Allemagne vint la voix de Comblence (sic) La Moselle et le Rhin se joignent en silence Et ma memoire Etreignant enserrant au confluent Serrant mes souvenirs comme entre des ciseaux but these too direct references were eliminated.

SELECT B I B L I O G R A P H Y EDITIONS

Guillaume Apollinaire, CEuvres completes (4 vols.), edition etablie sous la direction de Michel Decaudin, Balland et Lecat, 1965-6. Guillaume Apollinaire, CEuvres poetiques, avant-propos, chronologic, etablissement du texte, bibliographic et notes par Marcel Ad£ma et Michel Decaudin, preface d'Andre' Billy, Gallimard, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 1956. Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, suivi de reproductions inedites des premieres e"preuves corrigees de la main d'Apollinaire, commentees et anno tees par Tristan Tzara, Club du meilleur livre, 1953. Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, choix de poemes, edition critique par Roger Lefevre, Larousse, 1965. Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, edited with an introduction by A. E. Pilkington, Oxford, Blackwell, 1970. Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, translated with notes by Anne Hyde Greet, foreword by Warren Ramsey, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1965. Guillaume Apollinaire, Tendre comme le souvenir (letters to Madeleine Pages, 1915-16), Gallimard, 1952. Guillaume Apollinaire, Lettres a Lou (letters to Louise de ColignyChatillon, 1914-16), preface de Michel Decaudin, Gallimard, 1969.

CRITICISM

Marcel Ade"ma, Guillaume Apollinaire le mal-aime, Plon, 1952 and Guillaume Apollinaire, La Table ronde, 1968. Scott Bates, Guillaume Apollinaire, New York, Twayne, 1967. Claude Bonnefoy, Apollinaire, Classiques du XX e siecle, 1969. C. M. Bowra. The Creative Experiment, Macmillan, 1949. LeRoy C. Breunig, Guillaume Apollinaire, New York, Columbia University Press, 1969. Jean-Claude Chevalier, 'Alcools' d'Apollinaire: essai d'analyse des formes poetiques, Minard, Lettres modernes, 1970. Robert Couffignal, U Inspiration biblique dans Voeuvre de Guillaume Apollinaire, Minard, Lettres modernes, 1966 and Apollinaire, Desclee de Brouwer, 1966.

Select Bib liography

181

Margaret Davies, Apollinaire, Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1964. Michel Decaudin, Le Dossier d' 'Alcools', edition annote"e des pre"originales avec une introduction et des documents, nouvelle edition revue, Geneva, Droz and Paris, Minard, 1965. Marie-Jeanne Durry, Guillaume Apollinaire, 'Alcools', Societe d'Edition d'Enseignement Superieur, vol. i, 1956, vols. ii and iii, 1964. P. Guiraud, Index du vocabulaire du Symbolisme, i, Index des mots d"Alcools' de Guillaume Apollinaire, Klincksieck, 1953. Roger Little, Apollinaire (Athlone French Poets), London, The Athlone Press, 1976. Jeanine Moulin, Guillaume Apollinaire, Textes inedits, Geneva, Droz and Lille, Giard, 1952. Philippe Renaud, Lecture d'Apollinaire, Lausanne, Edition de 1'Age d'homme, 1969. Andre" Rouveyre, Amour et poesie d'Apollinaire, Pierres vives, 1955. Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Tears, Cape, 1969. Since 1962, a periodical appearing annually under the title Guillaume Apollinaire, devoted to Apollinairian studies with articles, reviews and bibliographies, has been edited by Michel Decaudin, published by Minard, Revue des Lettres modernes. The following numbers have appeared: Guillaume Apollinaire: Etudes et Informations reunies 1. Le Cubisme et Vesprit nouveau, 1962 2. Cinquantenaire d' "Alcools", 1963 3. Apollinaire et les Surrealistes, 1964 4. 'Les Mamelles de Tiresias', 'Heresiarque et Cie\ 1965 5. Echos de Stavelot, 1966 6. Images d'un des tin, 1967 7. 1918-1968, 1968 8. Collogue de Varsovie, 1969 9. Autour de Vinspiration allemande et du lied, 1970 10. Methodes et approches critiques (i), 1971 11. Methodes et approches critiques (2), 1972 Works referring to specific topics and poems are noted in the text.

This page intentionally left blank

Athlone French Poets For undergraduates and sixth-form. Biographical and critical studies linked with annotated editions of one or more of the poet's collections. Introduction, notes, commentary and bibliography as well as French text, 'excellent texts and textual commentary' Cyril Connolly, Sunday Times Charmes ou Poemes Guillaume Apollinaire PAUL VALERY ROGER LITTLE Charles Whiting, ed. 1976 0485 12208 i (pb) 1973 048514701 7 (pb) Theophile Gautie r Verlaine P. E. TENNANT : C. CHADWICK 975 0485 12204 9 (pb) 1973 0485 122030 (pb) Poesies (1830) Sagesses THEOPHILE GAUTIER PAUL VERLAINE H. Cockerham, ed. r C. Chadwick, ed. 973 0485 12705 9 (pb) 1973 0485 127040 (pb) Heredia Gerard de Nerval W. N. INCE NORMA RINSLER '979 0485 12207 3 (pb) '973 0485 12201 4 (pb) Les Trophees Les Chimeres JOSE-MARIA DE HEREDIA GERARD DE NERVAL W. N. Ince, ed. Norma Rinsler, ed. '979 0485147092 '973 0485 14702 5 (rib) Al cools 0485 127024 (pb) GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE Saint-John Perse Garnet Rees, ed. ROGER LITTLE '975 0485 12708 3 (pb) 1973 0485 12202 2 (pb) Illuminations Exil ARTHUR RIMBAUD SAINT-JOHN PERSE Nick Osmond, ed. Roger Little, ed. 1976 0485 12710 5 (pb) '973 0485 127067 (pb) Chatiments Francis Ponge VICTOR HUGO IAN HIGGINS P. J. Yarrow, ed. 1979 O 485 I 2 2 I 2 X (pb ) '975 0485 12707 5 (pb) Le Parti pris des choses Jules Laforgue FRANCIS PONGE MICHAEL COLLIE Ian Higgins, ed. 1977 0485 122065 (pb) 1979 0485 14714 9 (hb) Les Complaintes 0485 127148 (pb) JULES LAFORGUE Rimbaud Michael Collie, ed. C. CHADWICK 1977 0 4 8 5 i 2 7 i 3 x ( p b ) 1979 0485 122103 (pb) Au Pays de la Magi e Paul Valery HENRI MICHAUX CHARLES WHITING Peter Broome, ed. 1978 o 485 12209 x 1977 0485147114 Contes d'Espagne et d'ltalie ALFRED DE MUSSET Margaret Rees, ed. '973 0485 12703 2 (pb)