I’d not heard the name Apollinaire until the bizarre encounter with Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony a couple of years back. The eleven movements sounded not at all like a symphony; not in structure nor content. I was struck with a sequence of songs delivered in a demeanor deceptively operatic, songs I’d discovered to be of Spanish, French and German origin, songs then adapted into Russian. Six of them, Apollinaire’s lyrics, included the Réponse des Cosaques Zaporogues au Sultan de Constantinople, which, if you read the original, you’ll find to be a hilarious bit of profanation.
Any of my earlier attempts to read even a line of Apollinaire’s short verse often backfired: one, I wasn’t initiated; two, I can’t read poetry online: because I suffer reading anything online or digitally, poetry most of all: because it feels about as engaging as replacing the piano with a mouse pointer operated synthesizer app.
At the Salvador French library last year I finally read a severely abridged edition of Alcools. Fireworks immediately erupted. Frontiers opened. Between sweat and tears, liquid accumulated.
Alcools captures fourteen years of Apollinaire’s poetic oeuvre. I knew Apollinaire to be associated with the Cubism movement like Picasso, Max Jacob, Braque, all those guys. And much of Alcools very much flirts with Cubic principles.
By now I’ve read the collection in its entirety, though still can’t entirely reconcile Cubism, not visually, not poetically.
I do, however, identify commonalities with modernist poets akin T.S. Eliot for the heavily ranging form, prosody and rhythm (Wasteland in particular); Ezra Pound and Arthur Rimbaud more across the free verse sections of the cycle (and the surrealism of the latter); Mayakovski for the unconventional rhymes and heavy assonance. Most of these poets emphasize sonority and compel a strict form of recitation to generate the intended impact.
Subjectivity aside, I could easily conflate the sort of Cubism with the broader Modernism or the Russian Futurism initiatives.
All the while, much of Apollinaire’s oeuvre respects the earlier tradition of Baudelaire and Verlaine (and evidently Mallarmé).
About the punctuation marks. There aren’t any. And I love the verse all the more for it. The artistic liberty
- compels the reader to exert extra effort to identify syntactical units.
- entices a natural-language recitation; the appeal towards intuition.
- leads to ambiguity and subsequently the enticing possibility for multiple interpretations.
But there’s no roundabout. Must invest effort into these poems. And because of the constant shift of dynamic not only throughout but even within a narrow unit, you’re kept alert and guessing.
A sample of the best:
Zone, the 150-line urban rhapsody, a commentary on modernity and industrialization, a tapestry of the different sectors of Paris, and likewise a vision into the past.
La Chanson du mal aimé, the long, 300-line multi-part lyric poem appeals to phantasmagoria, exotic mythology with plentiful historical allusion. The way Apollinaire splices together components inspires unpredictability and counterpoises the otherwise structural monotony. Refrains and repetitions galore.
La Maison des Morts, the satirical, phantasmagorical lay sounds more like prose curated evenly across lines of free verse. Anticipates magic realism.
Poème lu au mariage d'André Salmon - a crafty, sentimental satire, or rather, a wedding speech of sorts.
Salomé - one among a series of Apollinaire’s creative biblical adaptations/interpretations presented with diligent lyricism. Concerns the Salomé/King Herod/John the Baptist episode.
Merlin et la Vieille Femme - an interpretative deconstruction of an encounter between Merlin and Morgan of the Arthurian folklore.
Le Larron - an extravagant assemblage of antiquity pagan conceptions vis-a-vis the contemporary, Christian conservatism.
L'Emigrant de Langdor Road - a surreal, satirical sketch presented through shifting perspective.
Rhénanes - a long cycle composed or inspired by Apollinaire’s German period; particularly remarkable are La Synagogue, Schinderhannes and Les Femmes - the latter much in spirit with Eliot’s intermingling vulgar dialogue with higher poetry, or the mundane with the existential.
Les fiançailles - very Rimbaud-esque (particularly Les Illuminations)
Vendémiaire - a triumphal hymn to the glory of Paris; compare to Verlaine’s Nocturne Parisiene. All sorts of French cities and rivers rise to an allegorical eminence.
To read Alcools in 2024 is not for all tastes. Incredibly worthwhile, but hell demanding. In the auto-biographical property, reminiscent somewhat of Baudelaire’s Fleurs.
As for other parallels, can’t draw any with contemporary poets. Hardly acquainted with them. My intuition suggests some commonality of spirits with Allen Ginsberg, with whom I’ve otherwise next to nil experience.
If you appreciate at least a portion of Ezra Pound’s or Arthur Rimbaud’s (later) poems, odds are in favour of Alcools.
That should do.
Questions, comments? Connect.