I. Life (1880 - 1918)
Guillaume Albert Wladimir Alexandre Apollinaire was born in Rome in 1880
of an Italian father and a Polish mother. He grew up and received his
education in France and, apart from a year in Germany in 1901-2, spent
most of his adult life trying to make a living for himself as a writer in
Paris. He was among the first to properly appreciate artists such as
Picasso, Braque, Matisse and Derain who, in the early years of the
twentieth century, were innovating in modern painting. He became their
enthusiastic champion and his essay Picasso, peintre appeared as
early as 1905. In 1914, at the outbreak of war, he enlisted, serving first
in the artillery and later in the infantry. In May 1916 he received a head
injury during combat for which he had to be trepanned. When he returned
to Paris in 1917 he arranged the first performance of his `surrealist
drama' - Les Mamelles de Tirésias. In November 1918, only a few
months after his marriage to Jacqueline Kolb, he died of Spanish
influenza.
Apollinaire was the author of a variety of different texts: prose fiction,
drama, librettos etc., yet it could be argued that he published only two
significant works during his lifetime: Alcools: Poèmes 1898-1913
(1913) and Calligrammes: Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre 1913-
1916 (1918).
More than any other artist or writer, Apollinaire was the man who best
represented the intense artistic ferment that was taking place in Europe
at the beginning of the twentieth century. He wrote a number of works of
criticism on modern art, notably Méditations esthétiques: Les Peintres
cubistes (1913); he gave lectures, in particular `L'Esprit nouveau et
les poètes' (1917); and he actively contributed to a number of
`avant-garde' periodicals like Pierre Albert- Birot's Sic,
Picabia's 391 and Reverdy's Nord-Sud. An indefatigable
champion of all that was new and challenging, Apollinaire occupies a
central position in the history of the modernist and `avant-garde'
movements of the early twentieth century.
As well as having a keen interest in the visual arts, the visual dimension
of writing was extremely important to Apollinaire. Apollinaire took great
care over the typographical layout of his work. Technical developments
such as the phonograph, the telephone, radio and cinema had provided new
ways of storing and diffusing language without recourse to the written
word. For Apollinaire, writing no longer had the same role, its status had
changed and Apollinaire was one of the first to interrogate this. I say
`one of the first', since the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé published
his Un Coup de dès jamais n'abolira le hasard (1897) sixteen years
before Alcools which included typography carefully orchestrated into a
symbolic pattern with different sized words twisted into strange shapes
performing a ballet-like movement within the monochrome limits of the
printed page. For Apollinaire, as for Mallarmé before him, language was
something to be experienced for its concrete and graphic shapes, for its
potential to convey meanings in other ways. Apollinaire insists on the
`materiality' of language, that is to say, its existence as visual marks
of white on black or as patterns of sound. Michel Butor claims that
Apollinaire's significance as a poet resides in:
i) Vocabulary:
Apollinaire continues the extension of poetic vocabulary undertaken in the
nineteenth century by Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine,
Arthur Rimbaud, Jules Laforgue and Tristan Corbière. He uses vocabulary
that is traditionally poetic as well as familiar or vulgar terms.
Erudition rubs shoulders with banality, the exotic with the everyday, the
refined and the obscene. As with Rimbaud, Apollinaire exploits language
from diverse semantic fields as part of a search for a new language to
express a new sensibility.
ii) Imagery:
Apollinaire's poems tend not to be constructed around a single monolithic
image. Rather, they tend to include a variety of images in surprise
juxtaposition. The Surrealist poet Tristan Tzara called them `images de
choc' whose force is precisely that of their ability to shock or surprise
the reader.
Soleil cou coupé
L'amour lourd comme un ours privé
iii) Punctuation:
The last chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) was written
entirely without punctuation and Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto
(1909) declared its demise. Like Marinetti, modern, urban life had created
a new sensibility for which new means of expression were necessary. The
struggle to find a syntax of poetry to accomodate modern experience. The
ommission of punctuation was one of the the new means for expressing the
twists and turns and simultaneous paradoxes of this new sensibility as
directly as possible without the interference of traditional syntax and
rhetoric.
iv) Clash of register and tone:
In the majority of Apollinaire's poems no single tone or register tends to
dominate. His poems are characterized by the conflict of disparate tones
and registers. Fantasy mingles with reality, past with present, and
biblical and oriental myths jostle with coded autobiographical references.
Apollinaire often subverts lyric traditions through a casual or `flippant'
treatment of a serious theme, through this mixing:
v) Exploitation of cultural bric à brac of modern life:
Les viriles cités où dégoisent et chantent
vi) Versification:
II. Works
III. Reputation
IV. Apollinaire and the Visual Arts
... la conscience aiguë qu'il a toujours gardée de la réalité physique du
langage; on peut dire qu'il a fait retomber la poésie sur la terre dans
son admirable incapacité d'oublier que les mots c'est d'abord quelque
chose que l'on entend, et que l'on voit.
In his later collection of poems, Calligrammes, Apollinaire
incorporated words, letters and phrases into complex visual collages. The
black on white of the printed page became a new field of experimentation.
He experimented with a poetry in which a simple reading along the familiar
linear axes (left to right, top to bottom) was no longer possible. The
page became a sort of canvas for experimentation with different spatial
relationships and with the possibility of multiple readings along
different axes.
M. Butor, Monument de rien
pour Apollinaire
V. Apollinaire and Surrealism
"SURRÉALISME, n.m. Automatisme psychique pur par lequel on se propose
d'exprimer, soit verbalement, soit par écrit, soit de toute autre manière,
le fonctionnement réel de la pensée. Dictée de la pensée, en l'absence de
tout contrôle exercé par la raison, en dehors de toute préoccupation
esthétique ou morale.
Surrealism was a wide-ranging artistic movement which encompassed
painting, sculpture, cinema and photography. Although Apollinaire died
before the Surrealist movement was properly constituted (the earliest work
of Surrealism proper was Les Champs magnétiques written in 1919 by
André Breton and Philippe Soupault), he is often considered to be one of
its principal influences. He actually coined the term `surréalisme' in
connection with his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias. He used the term
to designate a non-naturalistic but analogical way of representing
reality. Apollinaire argued that when man wanted to simulate movement he
invented the wheel and not a pair of mechanical legs. This same principal
is applicable to art. Through a rejection of the concept of a mirroring a
familiar and recognisable reality, a naturalistic `slice of life' and by
laying claim to the powers of the imagination new, and better ways of
expressing reality could be found. Apollinaire's relationship to the
movement as it manifested itself in the early 1920's is not altogether
straightforward. Surrealism as a literary movement was composed of such
writers as Louis Aragon, André Breton, Robert Desnos, Paul Eluard and
Philippe Soupault. It attempted to liberate writing from the
straightjacket of convention through a systematic raiding of the
unconscious. Order, clarity and rationality, for centuries the
prerequisites of great art, were abandonned in preference to the
spontaneity of automatic writing, dream logic and anarchic humour. The
preoccupations of Apollinaire's poetry have some similarity with
Surrealism insofar as both attempted to make reality more porous to the
imagination, and both stressed the importance of formal innovation,
exploration and novelty, even for its own sake. Although some of
Apollinaire's poems, like `Les Fenêtres' in Calligrammes come close
to the kind of experimentation with `l'écriture automatique' of the
Surrealists, he ultimately lacks their destructive and anti-art
tendencies. There is in Apollinaire's particular form of modernity a
preoccupation with some kind of tradition.
André Breton, Manifeste du Surréalisme
VI. Apollinaire and Tradition
Je sais d'ancien et de nouveau autant qu'un homme seul pourrait des deux
savoir
The mainspring of Apollinaire's poetry is a dialectic between tradition
and innovaton. A dialogue if you like between the old and the new. Put
another way, Apollinaire's work is the result of a tension, a creative
opposition between two oppposing impulses: the impulse to `make it new'
(to use Ezra Pound's phrase) and the desire to locate his work within
recognisable poetic traditions. Although he claimed in Les Peintres
cubistes that: `Je déteste les artistes qui ne sont pas de leur
époque', and elsewhere claimed that: `le lyrisme doit se renouveler avec
chaque génération', Apollinaire did not advocate a complete break with
tradition. It was his belief that: `la meilleure façon d'être classique et
pondéré est d'être de son temps en ne sacrifiant rien de ce que les
Anciens ont pu nous apprendre'. Apollinaire made clear his poetic ambition
in a letter to a friend: `Je ne cherche qu'un lyrisme neuf et humaniste en
même temps'. If you like, Apollinaire wants to sing old songs in a
different way. He wants to invent a new lyricism without sacrificing the
familiar appeal of the old.
Et sans m'inquiéter aujourd'hui de cette guerre
Entre nous
et pour nous mes amis
Je juge cette longue querelle de la tradition et
de l'invention
Apollinaire, `La
Jolie rousse'
VII. Formal and Stylistic Features
O bouches l'homme est à la recherche d'un nouveau langage
Apollinaire,
`La Victoire'
Bergère ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matin
Apollinaire,
`Zone'
Apollinaire, `Zone'
Apollinaire, `La Tzigane'
Et moi j'ai le coeur aussi gros
Qu'un cul de dame damascène
O mon
amour je t'aimais trop
Apollinaire, `La Chanson du mal-aimé'
Tu lis les prospectus les catalogues les affiches qui chantent tout
haut
Like Picasso and Braque who inserted Pernod and Bass labels and Gillette
razor blades into their paintings, Apollinaire's poetry is marked by the
desire to incorporate into the poems themselves the diverse aspects of
modern, urban existence. Apollinaire's aesthetic is one that values
fragments, curious collections and unexpected juxtapositions - erotic,
exotic, incongruous and unconscious. Much of his poetry can be read as an
enthusiastic affirmation of modernity, of the city and its eclectic,
cosmopolitan diversity, mobility and vitality. The perceptual shocks of
the modern city, its bursts of `information', bizarre juxtapositions and
contrasts provide a rich source of insoiration. From this plurality and
abundance Apollinaire creates a kind of urban fantasia:
Voilà la poésie ce matin ...
Apollinaire, `Zone'
Soirs de Paris ivres du gin
Flambant de l'électricité
Les Tramways
feux verts sur l'échine
Musiquent au long des portées
Des rails
leur folie de machines
Apollinaire, `La Chanson du mal-aimé'
Les métalliques saints de
nos saintes usines
Apollinaire, `Vendémaire'
Pardonnez-moi mon ignorance
Despite the above claim and his experiments with `vers libre,
Apollinaire's poetry is often highly conventional. He often uses
traditional metres, quatrains of alexandrines, `quintils' of octosyllabic
lines.
Pardonnez moi de ne plus connaître l'ancien jeu des vers
Apollinaire, `Les Fiançailles'