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.
II. WorksApollinaire 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).
III. ReputationMore 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.
IV. Apollinaire and the Visual ArtsAs 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:
... 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 SurrealismSURRÉALISME, 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 TraditionJe sais d'ancien et de nouveau autant qu'un homme seul pourrait des deux savoirThe 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'inventionDe l'Ordre et de l'Aventure
Apollinaire, `La Jolie rousse'
VII. Formal and Stylistic Featuresi) 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.
O bouches l'homme est à la recherche d'un nouveau langageii) Imagery:
Apollinaire, `La Victoire'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.
Bergère ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matiniii) Punctuation:
Apollinaire, `Zone'Soleil cou coupé
Apollinaire, `Zone'L'amour lourd comme un ours privé
Apollinaire, `La Tzigane'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:
Et moi j'ai le coeur aussi grosv) Exploitation of cultural bric à brac of modern life:
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 hautLike 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 ginvi) Versification:
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 viriles cités où dégoisent et chantent
Les métalliques saints de nos saintes usines
Apollinaire, `Vendémaire'Pardonnez-moi mon ignoranceDespite 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'
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Text: Tony McNeill
Last Updated 01/05/2001
The University of Sunderland, GB