(faux Titre No. 355) Apollinaire, Guillaume_ Bohn, Willard_ Apollinaire, Guillaume - Apollinaire On The Edge _ Modern Art, Popular Culture, And The Avant-garde-rodopi (2010)

Apollinaire on the Edge Modern Art, Popular Culture, and the Avant-Garde

FAUX TITRE 355 Etudes de langue et littérature françaises publiées sous la direction de Keith Busby, †M.J. Freeman, Sjef Houppermans et Paul Pelckmans

Apollinaire on the Edge Modern Art, Popular Culture, and the Avant-Garde

Willard Bohn

AMSTERDAM - NEW YORK, NY 2010

Cover illustration: Guillaume Apollinaire in Paris,1914. Cover design:: Pier Post. The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence’. Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions de ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents Prescriptions pour la permanence’. ISBN: 978-90-420-3108-1 E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-3109-8 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010 Printed in The Netherlands

Table of contents List of Illustrations

7

Acknowledgments

9

Introduction

11

1. Contemplating The Bestiary

15

2. In Search of the Whatnots

45

3. Apollinaire and Children’s Rhymes

75

4. The Mammaries of Tiresias

105

Conclusion

127

Bibliography

129

Index

141

List of illustrations Figure 1.1 Raoul Dufy, The Serpent

22

Figure 1.2 Raoul Dufy, The Cat

27

Figure 1.3 Raoul Dufy, The Lion

39

Figure 1.4 Raoul Dufy, The Carp

41

Figure 3.1 Benozzo Gozzoli, The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist

94

Acknowledgments The following study is dedicated to the memory of Michel Décaudin, mentor, colleague, and scholar extraordinaire. Several sections were presented previously as public lectures at Oxford University. I am grateful to Balliol College for inviting me to serve as Oliver Smithies Lecturer. The National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. kindly granted permission to reproduce Benozzo Gozzoli’s painting The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (1461-1462), Samuel H. Kress Collection, Image copyright 2007 Board of Trustees. Portions of Chapters 1 and 3 appeared in the following publications and are reprinted with their authorization: “Contemplating Apollinaire’s Bestiary” in Modern Language Review, Vol. XCIX, No. 1 (January 2004), pp. 47-53, permission granted by the Modern Humanities Research Association; and “Apollinaire, Salomé, and the Dance of Death” in French Studies, Vol. LVII, No. 4 (October 2003), pp. 491-500.

Introduction In contrast to the following pages, which are the result of lengthy investigations, the title of this book came to me only recently. Some years ago, several students told me about a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire they had encountered in English translation. According to one person, it featured a fairy princess who beckoned seductively to a man saying “Come to the edge.” When he cautiously drew near, she gave him a gentle push, and he began to fly! Eager to read the French original, the students asked me to help them find it, which proved to be impossible. Since the poem was not included in Apollinaire’s Oeuvres poétiques, I concluded that it had been written by someone else—but who? And in which language? And on what occasion? Several years elapsed before I discovered the answers to these questions. The poem was composed by the British poet Christopher Logue, I eventually learned, for a festival commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Apollinaire’s death. Instead of a fairy princess, the first speaker turned out to be Apollinaire himself. Come to the Edge Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge. It’s too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came, and he pushed, and they flew ...1

Conceived originally as a historical tribute, the poem contains a powerful inspirational message as well. For this reason, it has been adopted by public speakers everywhere and has become surprisingly popular. Logue’s composition has even entered the realm of folklore, where numerous variants exist side by side. In one version, the speaker—who is identified as Life—admonishes his listeners not to be afraid to take chances. In another version, God invites mankind to approach his celestial throne. Ironically, most people have come to 1

Christopher Logue, New Numbers (New York: Knopf, 1970), p. 81.

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believe the text was composed by Apollinaire. Even the illusionist David Copperfield, who has emblazoned the poem on his stage curtain, attributes it to the French poet. While it is tempting to compare Apollinaire to Copperfield himself, he does not resemble a magician so much as a tightrope walker. Like an aerialist on the high wire, he derived constant enjoyment from living dangerously. Or rather, to borrow a metaphor from Christopher Logue, he enjoyed living on the edge. This metaphor lends itself to two different interpretations, both of which describe Apollinaire perfectly. Since he consistently worked on the cutting edge, I imagine him balancing on a razor-thin vertical plane. Like a tightrope walker performing without a net, he constantly took incredible risks. By contrast, Logue envisions the poet at the edge of a horizontal plane, from which he flings himself into space. Like the first image, the second depicts Apollinaire as an innovator and an explorer. As the poem implies, he inspired generations of poets who came after him. He taught them to dare, and he taught them to fly. The horizontal edge is also an apt image because Apollinaire worked on material that was marginal much of the time. Or rather, he experimented with material that appeared to be marginal but which has since proved to be central to modern aesthetics. Since he was working at the beginning of the tradition, the significance of many of his contributions was not recognized until later. The most obvious example is his visual poems, which were subjected to widespread ridicule when they first appeared. Since then, they have influenced hundreds of poets all over the world, who continue to explore their legacy today.2 The present volume attempts to rehabilitate four additional genres, which have received relatively little critical attention. In retrospect, it is clear why Apollinaire became the leader of the Parisian avant-garde. His experiments with all four paved the way for major aesthetic developments, several of which he clearly foresaw.

2

See for example, Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), and two books by myself: The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, 1914-1928 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993) and Modern Visual Poetry (Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 2000).

Introduction

13

The marginal genre that achieved the greatest success was doubtless the artist’s book, which has attracted numerous artists and writers ever since. The first chapter considers one of the earliest examples, which appeared in 1911. Like L’Enchanteur pourrissant (The Putrescent Enchanter), published two years before, it contains a text by Apollinaire and illustrations by an important artist—in this case, Raoul Dufy. If it simply strikes the casual observer as a charming little volume, the degree of collaboration between the poet and the artist is virtually unprecedented. Part of this chapter examines the book through the eyes of the reader, with special attention to the verbal images. The remainder looks at the volume through the eyes of the viewer. Utilizing insights developed by Roland Barthes, it analyzes the illustrations and the various messages they convey. The following chapter examines a group of poems that were initially entitled Banalités. Published in 1914, these audacious works strike the reader at first glance as completely unimaginative. Or rather, in keeping with their unusual title, they seem commonplace, hackneyed, trite, and/or trivial. Upon closer examination, one discovers this impression is deceiving. Like beauty, banality turns out to lie in the eye of the beholder. The nature of the compositions’ banality, its different functions, and the various forms it assumes are surprisingly interesting. Many of the poems also appropriate elements of everyday reality. Some depict a slice of life, some engage in visual pursuits, and some focus on common objects. Paralleling similar developments in the arts, the genre appealed to a number of poets who came after Apollinaire, especially those associated with Dada and Surrealism. The next chapter considers Apollinaire’s debt to popular culture in more detail, focusing on an area that has previously been neglected. In contrast to the preceding chapter, which illustrates the impact of contemporary reality on his poetry, it is concerned with a traditional branch of folklore. Concentrating on children’s rhymes, it documents their pervasive presence in Apollinaire’s poetry and studies the different roles he assigned to them. Among other things, the chapter sheds new light on several poems, including “La Dame” and “La Blanche Neige,” and presents a new interpretation of “Salomé.” In addition, it discusses several articles in which the poet displays a keen interest in children’s rhymes and an acquaintance with folklore

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scholarship. It argues as well that his fondness for this genre reflects his predilection for unmediated experience. The final chapter examines Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Mammaries of Tiresias), which was destined to play an important role in the evolution of modern French theater. First performed in 1917, this resolutely anti-realistic work shocked and delighted the audience by turns. Insisting that it was more faithful to reality than traditional plays, Apollinaire added the subtitle “drame surréaliste.” While investigating what he meant by that term, which was later appropriated by André Breton and his colleagues, the chapter discusses the role of surprise and relates it to Apollinaire’s fascination with novelty and modernity. After considering several possible sources, it provides a detailed analysis of the play and proposes a new interpretation. In particular, it argues that Les Mamelles de Tirésias is not didactic and that, despite their obvious immediacy, the themes of feminism and repopulation serve a higher purpose.

Chapter 1

Contemplating The Bestiary In 1911, Apollinaire published a collection of poems entitled Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée which, as Anne Hyde Greet and others have shown, was modeled on earlier collections of animal fables and myths.1 Faithful to the principles governing this ancient genre, each text was accompanied by a woodcut by Raoul Dufy. Consisting of thirty poems followed by a series of explanatory footnotes, the book was a stunning accomplishment. Greet calls it “peut-être la plus belle édition publiée en France au XXe siècle” (“perhaps the most beautiful edition published in France during the 20th century”) (p. 151). The slim volume is not only a remarkable verbal achievement but also a visual tour de force. Translated and reprinted repeatedly over the years, it has delighted generations of readers.2 A surprising number of artists, including Graham Sutherland, have succumbed to the temptation to illustrate the volume themselves. Several composers have even set some of the poems to music.3 What distinguishes Le Bestiaire from most illustrated books, including previous bestiaries, is not its attractiveness so much as the 1 Anne Hyde Greet, Apollinaire et le livre de peintre (Paris: Minard, 1977), pp. 57151. Subsequent references to this study will be cited in the text. See also Claude Debon, “Relire et revoir Le Bestiaire ou cortège d’Orphée d’Apollinaire,” Que VloVe?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th ser. No. 1 (January-March 1998), pp. 1-32. Apollinaire had published eighteen of the poems in La Phalange on June 15, 1908: “La Tortue,” “Le Cheval,” “La Chèvre du Thibet,” “Le Chat,” “Le Lion,” “Le Lièvre,” “Le Lapin,” “Le Dromadaire,” “La Chenille,” La Mouche,” “La Puce,” “Le Paon,” “Le Hibou,” “Ibis,” “Le Boeuf,” and three texts that would later be attributed to Orpheus. 2 See the “Petite Bibliographie du Bestiaire” published in Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 1st ser., No. 28 (April 1981), pp. 16-18. 3 A list of artists and composers who have been attracted to Le Bestiaire appears in ibid. Debon discusses some of the former in “Relire et revoir Le Bestiaire ou cortège d’Orphée d’Apollinaire” and provides a list of illustrators on pp. 28-29.

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way in which it evolved. Whereas authors traditionally exert little control over their illustrations, which are chosen by the publisher, Apollinaire collaborated closely with Dufy as the woodcuts progressed. Together they experimented with a number of different designs until they both were satisfied. From the beginning, the volume was conceived as a livre d’artiste (“artist’s book”) whose poems and pictures would continually interact with each other. In every instance, the text and its corresponding woodcut function as a single unit—a fact that the poet and the painter exploit to great advantage. Unlike traditional illustrations, which simply accompany the words on the page, Dufy’s pictures possess a critical function. Rejecting a purely passive role, they complement the verbal text and interpret it in a variety of ways. As such, they represent not only a brand new approach to the illustrated book but also a radically new view of the artist’s mission. Although Le Bestiaire continues to grow in popularity, it has received surprisingly little critical attention. Apollinaire is partly to blame for this neglect himself, since he adopted the neo-Symbolist mode with its cult of implicit meaning. While the poems’ syntax is relatively straightforward, they are filled with personal allusions and hermetic references. This difficulty is partially offset by Dufy’s illustrations which, despite their intense primitivism, are immediately intelligible. The volume itself is divided into four sections, each of which is presided over by Orpheus (the archetypal poet), who is celebrated on four different occasions. According to legend, Apollinaire notes, his music was so powerful that “les animaux sauvages eux-mêmes venaient écouter son cantique” (“the wild animals themselves came to listen to his song”). The remaining woodcuts depict twenty-six animals, four of which are associated with myths of one kind or another. In addition to the Horse, the Serpent, and the Ox, these include the legendary Sirens—who are absent from traditional bestiaries. The first section, which is twice as long as the others, is reserved for land-dwelling animals. The second section is devoted to insects, the third to creatures that live in the water, and the fourth to animals that fly.

Contemplating The Bestiary

17

The Verbal Images Each of Apollinaire’s poems consists of a single stanza comprising four or five lines. Although a few alexandrines intrude from time to time, the vast majority of the texts employ octosyllabic verse. Some poems utilize rhymed couplets, others alternating rhymes, and still others a combination of the two. “La Méduse” (“The Jellyfish”) and “Le Hibou” (“The Owl”) contain rhymes that look slightly different but sound exactly the same. Although the poet uses definite and indefinite articles indiscriminately to describe the animals, alternating between singular and plural constructions, these references are consistently generic. It makes no difference whether he says “comme le lièvre” (“like the hare”) or “comme un lièvre” (“like a hare”). Even when Apollinaire employs demonstrative adjectives or addresses the animal directly, he manages to maintain a broader focus. “Cet oiseau” (“This bird”) does not really refer to a specific peacock but to peacocks in general. And the Serpent, whom he calls “tu,” represents all serpents rather than a particular individual. While Apollinaire’s poetry is consistently witty and amusing, it is also surprisingly evasive. “En dépit d’un titre alléchant,” Claude Debon observes, “les quatrains et quintils du Bestiaire n’abordent pratiquement jamais l’animal de front” (“Despite their alluring titles, the quatrains and quintains in Le Bestiaire almost never confront the animal directly”).4 In contrast to traditional bestiaries, which adopt a presentational mode, Apollinaire alludes to the creature in passing. Debon cites the example of the Tibetan Goat, among others: Les poils de cette chèvre et même Ceux d’or pour qui prit tant de peine Jason, ne valent rien au prix Des cheveux dont je suis épris. (The hair of this goat, and even Those golden strands sought by Jason, are worthless compared To the hair that I adore.)

4

Ibid., p. 19.

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Apollinaire on the Edge

In a study published in 1966, Marc Poupon wondered what prompted Apollinaire to choose a goat from such an exotic locale.5 Why pick Tibet, he queried, when goats exist all over France? The answer is that the Tibetan variety possesses wool that is unusually fine and soft. Marketed commercially as “cashmere,” it is expensive and highly sought after. While the Goat makes a brief appearance at the beginning of the poem, its presence is basically misleading. Instead of the protagonist, it turns out to be a sacrificial victim. Leaving the hapless beast dangling at the end of a prepositional phrase, Apollinaire focuses on its valuable wool which, to make things worse, he hastens to disparage. The actual subject does not appear until the final line, which celebrates Marie Laurencin’s hair. A number of animals undergo a similar fate in other poems, including the Cat, which is engulfed by domestic scenery, and the Ibis, which is displaced by a bilingual pun. Others are relegated to similes, like the Elephant whose gleaming tusks resemble the poet’s words, or serve as convenient metaphors. “Belles journées, souris du temps,” the poet laments at one point, “vous rongez peu à peu ma vie” (“Lovely days, temporal mice, / You are slowly nibbling my life away”). As Debon points out, only six poems treat the animal as an actual subject. Several texts fail to identify the beast at all. Like Mallarmé, Apollinaire strives to “peindre, non la chose, mais l’effet qu’elle produit” (“depict, not the thing, but the effect that it produces”).6 What interests him is not the animals so much as what they can tell us about ourselves. Since the volume is supposed to be a bestiary, Apollinaire’s situation is rather ironic. Although he attaches little importance to the animals, he must magnify their role somehow in order to be convincing. This function is reserved for Dufy’s woodcuts which, like their generic titles, maintain the fiction that the book is concerned with natural history. With one exception (“Les Sirènes”), each of the illustrations depicts a single animal. Since the Sirens always appear together in Classical myth, Dufy (and Apollinaire) decided to portray two of them. Similarly, each title consists of a singular noun preceded 5

Marc Poupon, “Quelques énigmes du Bestiaire,” La Revue des Lettres Modernes, nos. 146-149 (1966), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 5, p. 87. 6 Stéphane Mallarmé, letter to Henri Cazalis written in October or November 1864, Correspondance, ed. Henri Mondor and Jean-Pierre Richard (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), Vol. I, p. 137.

Contemplating The Bestiary

19

by a singular article. The only exceptions are “Les Sirènes,” discussed above, and “Ibis,” which violate the general rule for different reasons. Since ibis is the second person future of “to go” in Latin, as the poet reminds us in the first line, the second title represents a bilingual pun. The gratuitous pairing of the Egyptian bird with the Latin verb leads Apollinaire in turn to envisage a voyage to the underworld. Oui, j’irai dans l’ombre terreuse O mort certaine, ainsi soit-il! Latin mortel, parole affreuse, Ibis, oiseau des bords du Nil. (Yes, I will go into the dark earth O certain death, so be it! Fatal Latin, horrible word, Ibis, bird from the Nile’s shores).

On the one hand, as Greet observes, the composition announces Apollinaire’s impending death (p. 140). Reminding him of his inescapable mortality, the ibis serves essentially as a memento mori. On the other hand, since the ibis symbolized the immortal soul in ancient Egypt, the poem looks forward to Apollinaire’s resurrection. Viewed in this perspective, it anticipates the final text, entitled “Le Boeuf” (“The Ox”), which reserves a place for the poet in heaven. Suspended between the poems and the illustrations, the titles in Le Bestiaire occupy a precarious position. Compelled to do double duty, they not only introduce the text and the picture simultaneously but provide a transition between them. On a number of occasions, the relationship between the various components proves to be problematic. Sometimes, the title contradicts the poem, sometimes it contradicts the illustration, and sometimes it contradicts them both. Whereas the title of “L’Ecrevisse” evokes a single Crayfish, for example, the text speaks of multiple crustaceans. And while a tortoise figures in the poem entitled “La Tortue,” the woodcut depicts a lyre (belonging to Orpheus) constructed from the creature’s shell. Unlike the rest of the illustrations, which portray living animals, the Tortoise is dead! Similar conflicts occur in “Le Boeuf,” where all three components appear to contradict each other simultaneously. The Ox specified in the title appears neither in the woodcut, which seems to portray a winged bull, nor in the poem, which identifies the creature as an angel.

20

Apollinaire on the Edge Ce chérubin dit la louange Du paradis, où, près des anges, Nous revivrons, mes chers amis, Quand le bon Dieu l’aura permis. (This cherub sings the praises Of paradise, where, near the angels, We will be reborn, my friends, When God in his wisdom decides.)

Since the volume is modeled on earlier bestiaries, many of which explore the animals’ religious significance, Apollinaire imitates this practice from time to time in Le Bestiaire. In the case of “Le Boeuf,” he appended a note explaining that cherubs are actually winged oxen.7 Although a grim spectre haunts the final section of Le Bestiaire, as noted previously, the volume manages to conclude on an optimistic note. Through God’s grace, “Le Boeuf” assures us, mankind will eventually triumph over death. In 1910, the couturier Paul Poiret commissioned Dufy to create textile designs from carved wood blocks. In contrast to those designs, which were printed in bright colors, the illustrations in Le Bestiaire are in black and white. Despite this restriction, which proves to be no handicap, they are clearly Fauvist in inspiration. Like similar works by Matisse, Braque, and Derain, they employ simplified forms surrounded by elaborate patterns. Like the latter works, they present a unified surface that is essentially two-dimensional. As one would expect, most of the animal portraits are generic—like Apollinaire’s poems. Five woodcuts depict specific individuals, who can be identified either from their visual attributes or from the context in which they appear. Since the Tortoise forms part of an ancient Greek lyre, for example, it clearly belongs to Orpheus. The fact that the Horse possesses wings allows us to recognize it as Pegasus. And since the Serpent is flanked by Adam and Eve, it must be the original Tempter. Similarly, the way in which the Dove is depicted reveals that it represents the Holy Ghost. We will discover that “Le Lion” portrays a specific individual as well.

7

For additional information about this tradition, see Pol-P. Gossiaux, “Sur les chérubins du Bestiaire”" Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 249-253 (1970), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 9, pp. 169-70.

Contemplating The Bestiary

21

In contrast to Apollinaire, whose poems are deliberately evasive, Dufy approaches each of the animals directly, developing and expanding the verbal reference within a decorative framework. Nearly half the portraits reproduce verbal images that are largely unremarkable. Refusing to engage in rhetorical or semantic exercises, the original references merely evoke the creature in question. Most of the poems’ titles are redundant, simply repeating the animal’s name, but several prove to be indispensable. Although neither the Serpent nor the Tibetan Goat is named in the text, the former can be identified from various clues. That the latter comes from Tibet, however, is only indicated by the title. If the Goat is only mentioned in passing, the portrait of the Serpent that emerges is more complex. Tu t’acharnes sur la beauté. Et quelles femmes ont été Victimes de ta cruauté! Eve, Eurydice, Cléopâtre; J’en connais encor trois ou quatre. (You eagerly pursue beauty. And how many women have fallen Victim to your cruelty! Eve, Eurydice, Cleopatra; I know three or four myself.)

The poem begins with a startling assertion: that serpents are attracted to beautiful women. Unfortunately, instead of worshipping their idols from afar, they have a distressing tendency to attack them. Apollinaire cites three examples taken from the Bible, Classical mythology, and ancient history respectively. Unlike Eurydice, who succumbed to an accidental snakebite (and who was rescued by Orpheus), Cleopatra died from a self-administered wound. And although Eve was duped rather than bitten by Satan’s emissary, her sin condemned the entire human race to death. Apollinaire confides that he knows three or four women himself who have been bitten by serpents. This statement (which is highly unlikely) encourages us to review the poem and to discover the phallic symbolism lurking just beneath its surface. Sooner or later, one perceives that the poet is referring to his amorous conquests. Instead of confirming the previous comments, the statement turns out to be a ribald interjection. Uttered with Apollinaire’s tongue planted firmly in his cheek, it is meant to be amusing.

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Apollinaire on the Edge

Focusing on expressions such as “cruauté” and “Tu t’acharnes,” Greet claims that the poem exposes “l’aspect sadique des amours du poète” (“the sadistic aspect of the poet’s loves”) (p. 91). However, the poem’s ironic dimension undercuts any attempt to apply these terms literally. For the women who have succumbed to Apollinaire’s “serpent” have all been willing victims. Whatever cries they may have uttered were associated with pleasure rather than pain.

Figure 1.1 Raoul Dufy, The Serpent

Contemplating The Bestiary

23

Miraculously, Dufy’s woodcut manages to reproduce both the verbal image and the implicit verbal metaphor. Depicted in an upright position, the phallic Serpent looms above two naked human beings, who gaze serenely at the viewer. Its huge proportions symbolize the enormous influence that sexuality exerts on human behavior—a common theme in Apollinaire’s work. Despite W. J. Strachan’s reservations, the woodcut obviously depicts Adam and Eve.8 Although Strachan believes the figure on the right represents Cleopatra, the short hair and the prominent abdominal muscles indicate that it is male. In contrast to Eve, whose long hair partially hides her graceful curves, Adam is strong and muscular. At this point several questions arise. Why do Adam and Eve seem so calm standing beside the agent of their eternal damnation? And why does Eve cover her mouth with her hands? If this gesture signals her despair, as Greet suggests, then why isn’t Adam upset as well? The answer seems to be that Dufy depicts Eden just before the Fall, before Adam and Eve realize they have sinned (and that the Serpent has betrayed them). This explains why they are not wearing fig leaves, for example, and why the Serpent is still able to walk upright. It also explains why Eve places her hands over her mouth—not because she is ashamed, one finally realizes, but because she is eating the fatal apple. Although the Serpent proves to be surprisingly complex, the rest of the animals in this group are unremarkable at the linguistic level. The Tibetan Goat, the Cat, the Rabbit, the Dromedary, the Fly, the Dolphin, the Jellyfish, the Carp, the Sirens, and the Ox all eschew verbal gymnastics. By contrast, the remaining illustrations portray animals that are associated with rhetorical tropes of one persuasion or another. As noted previously, the Ibis is constructed around a bilingual pun. And since the Tortoise is represented by its shell, it qualifies as a verbal metonym. In addition, the Hare, the Elephant, the Locust, and the Crayfish all participate in similes. In contrast to its three companions, the first poem contains a negative comparison. Apollinaire advises artists and writers not to imitate the Hare, which is “lascif et peureux” (“lascivious and afraid”), but to be extremely creative. The next two works are concerned with Apollinaire’s poetic voice. Like the Elephant with its valuable tusks, he declares, he possesses “un bien 8

W. J. Strachan, The Artist and the Book in France (London: Owen, 1969), pp. 4849.

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precieux” (“a precious substance”) in his mouth. And like the Locust, which nourished John the Baptist in the desert, his poetry will hopefully appeal to superior individuals. The last text portrays the poet backing away, like the Crayfish, from a delicate situation. Since Greet reports that “l’écrevisse s’éloigne traditionnellement de l’objet des ses désirs” “the crayfish traditionally retreats from the object of its desires”) (p. 118), one suspects that Apollinaire’s ambivalence concerns his love life. In a similar manner, four of the woodcuts depict verbal metaphors: the Mouse, the Flea, the Octopus, and the Owl. As we saw earlier, the Mouse represents the passage of time, nibbling away relentlessly at the poet’s life. Dufy’s illustration portrays a cute little animal, no bigger than the strawberry beside it. By contrast, the Flea is magnified a hundredfold or more until it resembles a terrible monster. One of the few unpleasant beasts in Le Bestiaire, it is less threatening than the Serpent but more irritating than the Fly. Not surprisingly, since fleas have tormented mankind for ages, Apollinaire casts the insect in a sadistic role. Puces, amis, amantes même, Qu’ils sont cruels ceux qui nous aiment! Tout notre sang coule pour eux. Les bien-aimés sont malheureux. (Fleas, friends, lovers even, How cruel are those who love us! Our blood flows ceaselessly for them. Well-loved people are unfortunate.)

Another poet would have selected an evil character to represent the Flea (Count Dracula comes to mind). However, Apollinaire chooses to compare the bloodsucking insect to our friends and lovers. Ironically, he seems to have concluded, those who are closest to us are in a position to do the greatest harm. The problem with friends, Apollinaire insinuates in the third line, is that they overwhelm you with excessive demands. The problem with lovers, as he knew from his own experience, is that they abandon you. Proceeding logically from the initial premise, the conclusion is inescapable. Since friends and lovers are cruel, the people they love are miserable (another meaning of “malheureux”). Although Apollinaire complained about being unloved in “La Chanson du Mal-Aimé” (“The Song of the Unrequited

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Lover”), he complains about being loved in the present poem--which could just as well be called “La Chanson du Bien-Aimé.” Friends and lovers are portrayed not only as sadistic parasites but as heartless cannibals. The only solution seems to be to avoid people altogether. For these and other reasons, “La Puce” is a disturbing poem. The portrait of friendship and love that emerges is not only jaundiced but hopelessly pessimistic. The same remarks apply to “Le Poulpe,” which is equally disturbing. Jetant son encre vers les cieux, Suçant le sang de ce qu’il aime Et le trouvant délicieux, Ce monstre inhumain, c’est moi-même. (Spurting its ink toward the heavens, Sucking the blood of what it loves And finding it delicious, This inhuman monster is myself.)

That Apollinaire chose to compare himself to the Octopus is not terribly surprising, since they possess one obvious trait in common. Like the poet writing at his desk, the animal emits occasional spurts of ink. Like the Octopus, moreover, whose ink drifts slowly upward in the water, Apollinaire offers his poetry to the gods above, from whom he received his divine talent.9 However, the second line introduces another image that clashes with the initial portrait. The Octopus is associated not only with writing, one discovers, but also with cannibalism. Wrapping its arms around its hapless victims, it sucks every last drop of blood from their veins—prompting Apollinaire to call it a “monstre inhumain.” Although the poem closely resembles “La Puce,” it differs from it in one important respect: the metaphoric equation has been reversed. This time it is Apollinaire who is the inhuman monster, who subjects his friends and lovers to the same abuse that he received previously. In addition, the second and third lines apparently contain a private joke. At another level, they seem to indicate that the poet used to suck on his pen while he was writing. 9

Debon calls attention to a pun in the first line: “Jetant son ancre vers les cieux” (“Relire et revoir Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée,” p. 7). Antoine Fongaro demonstrates that this image is traditionally associated with hope in “Deux Notes sur le Bestiaire,” Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, Ser. 4, No. 2 (April-June 1998), pp. 42-43.

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Since ink is the lifeblood of poetry, Apollinaire jokes that he is “suçant le sang de ce qu’il aime.”10 Once again, the portrait of intimate relationships that emerges is disconcerting. And since we know the poet treasured such relationships in real life, it is also puzzling. Interestingly, the conflict between lived experience and imaginary experience extends into Le Bestiaire itself. In contrast to “La Puce” and “Le Poulpe,” several other poems present an optimistic view of love and friendship. In “Le Chat” (“The Cat”), for example, Apollinaire celebrates the tranquil joys of domesticity. Je souhaite dans ma maison: Une femme ayant sa raison, Un chat passant parmi les livres, Des amis en toute saison Sans lesquels je ne peux pas vivre. (I wish to have in my house: A woman who is reasonable, A cat passing among the books, Some friends in every season Without which I cannot live).

10

Fongaro suggests a slightly different interpretation: that Apollinaire is evoking his ability to assimilate various texts he has read (Ibid., p. 43).

Contemplating The Bestiary

Figure 1.2 Raoul Dufy, The Cat

27

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As Greet remarks, the Cat in Dufy’s illustration seems to have walked into a modern still-life (p. 95). Surrounded by a lamp, a vase of flowers, and an open book, it is sitting on a circular table covered with a flowery table cloth. Comfortably ensconced among these familiar objects, the animal gazes serenely at the viewer. Although it is difficult to prove, the scene appears to take place in the poet’s apartment. Lying across the book is a pipe with an extremely long stem, like that affected by Apollinaire during this period.11 While Dufy could have chosen another object to hold the book open, the fact that he chose this one is significant. It not only hints at the poet’s presence but also allows us to identify the animal in the woodcut. According to all indications, the latter portrays Apollinaire’s own cat—whose name was “Pipe.” In contrast to the illustration, the situation depicted in the poem was entirely imaginary. In reality, Apollinaire had considerable difficulty achieving domestic bliss, which partially explains his ambivalence. Although he had a cat and plenty of friends, it took years to find a woman with whom he could build a permanent relationship. That he lumps love and friendship together in “La Puce” and “Le Poulpe” is accordingly rather surprising. While his relationships with men tended to be rewarding, those with women (at least with Annie Playden and Marie Laurencin) were less successful. Apollinaire finally acknowledges this situation, albeit implicitly, in “Le Hibou.” Mon pauvre coeur est un hibou Qu’on cloue, qu’on décloue, qu’on recloue. De sang, d’ardeur, il est à bout. Tous ceux qui m’aiment, je les loue. (My poor heart is an owl Nailed, un-nailed, and nailed again. It is drained of blood and ardor. I praise all those who love me.)

During 1901-1902, when he was employed as a French tutor in the Rhineland, Apollinaire was struck by the peasants’ practice of nailing owls to their doors—presumably to ward off the evil eye. In 11

A photograph of Apollinaire smoking a similar pipe appears in Peter Read, Picasso et Apollinaire: les métamorphoses de la mémoire 1905-1973 (Paris: Place, 1995), p. 62.

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the beginning, he treated the image as a picturesque detail, one of many that he noted during his stay.12 Not until later, when he was searching for animals to include in Le Bestiaire, did he realize how closely the crucified owl’s predicament resembled his own. Although the source of Apollinaire’s anguish is never specified, the fact that it affects his heart points to an amorous etiology. Tired of being tormented by the object of his affection, he portrays himself as a martyr to love. Like the owl, whose plight recalls that of Christ on the cross, he is a victim of gratuitous cruelty. That this experience occurs over and over makes it even more excruciating. No sooner does his heart recover from one wound than it receives another. Since the wording is ambiguous, it is impossible to tell whether Apollinaire is complaining about one woman or several women. An earlier draft is much more explicit. “Mon pauvre coeur est un hibou,” he wrote to Marie Laurencin at the beginning of their relationship, “Que j’ai fixé à votre porte” (“My poor heart is an owl / That I have nailed to your door”).13 Although he is unlucky in love, Apollinaire concludes, he is fortunate to have a number of good friends. Their affection is a constant source of joy and a great consolation. Completing the list of animals associated with rhetorical tropes in Le Bestiaire, the remaining five woodcuts depict verbal symbols. Since the subject of “Le Cheval” is never identified by name, in theory it represents an implicit symbol. Despite this momentary impediment, the reader quickly perceives that the animal is Pegasus. Any lingering doubt is removed by Dufy’s illustration, which depicts a winged horse—the symbol of poetic inspiration—impatiently pawing the ground. Like his winged steed, the poet’s imagination is often said to “take flight.” A similar principle structures the relation between the Dove in “La Colombe” and the Holy Ghost, which spreads its protective wings over the world. In 1908, when Apollinaire wrote “Le Hibou,” he and Marie Laurencin had only recently met. Although he had fallen in love with her, she was apparently unwilling to commit herself. By 1910, when Apollinaire composed “La Colombe,” the two of them had been together for three years. “Comme vous j’aime une Marie,” the poet confided to the Holy Ghost, “Qu’avec elle je me 12

See Guillaume Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Marcel Adéma and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1965), p. 530. 13 Ibid., p. 1038.

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marie” (“Like you I love someone called Marie / And I am going to marry her”). Like the Horse and the Dove, the three remaining animals symbolize abstract principles. Despite this superficial resemblance, they operate in quite a different manner. The first two creatures serve as vehicles for principles that they transmit to other individuals. The Horse and the Dove do not symbolize Apollinaire and the Virgin Mary but are related to them metonymically. By contrast, the Lion, the Caterpillar, and the Peacock not only incarnate the principles themselves but also symbolize specific persons. Since they resemble the individuals in question, they are related to them metaphorically. Like the Lion, which embodies nobility, kings are the most powerful members of their society. Like the Caterpillar, which tirelessly prepares to become a butterfly, successful poets demonstrate perseverance. And like the Peacock, which incessantly struts and preens, the dandy exemplifies vanity. En faisant la roue, cet oiseau, Dont le pennage traîne à terre, Apparaît encore plus beau, Mais se découvre le derrière. (Spreading its tail, this bird, Whose plumage trails on the ground, Appears even more beautiful, But is forced to expose its behind).

Not surprisingly, “Le Paon” is the most popular poem in the collection. Its sly humor and lapidary style, which recall La Fontaine, have made it a favorite of the literate public. Although “Le Serpent” and “Le Lapin” contain amusing observations, these are relatively subtle. Because they refer to taboo subjects, they are necessarily veiled. “Le Paon” is the only poem in Le Bestiaire that is truly funny. The only satirical portrait in the collection as well, it is doubly unique. Faithful to the genre’s expectations, Apollinaire reserves the humorous punch line for the conclusion. Since the dandy himself never makes an appearance, the Peacock represents an implicit symbol. However, there can be little doubt as to the bird’s secret identity. Although the poem’s moral is likewise implicit, it is unmistakable. In Greet’s words, “la vanité entraîne le ridicule” (“vanity exposes one to ridicule”) (p. 137).

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The Visual Images Thus far we have been looking at Le Bestiaire through the eyes of a hypothetical reader who deciphers the poem before examining the illustration. However, what catches one’s eye initially is not the text but the illustration accompanying it. In other words, the process of decipherment is frequently the reverse. This section examines the volume through the eyes of the hypothetical viewer, of the reader who reverses the traditional hierarchy and approaches the poems visually. In fact, as Roland Barthes notes in a seminal essay entitled “Le Message photographique,” this reversal corresponds to modern practice in general. “[Aujourd’hui], et c’est là un renversement historique important,” he remarks, “l’image n’illustre plus la parole; c’est la parole qui, structurellement, est parasite de l’image” (“[Today], and this is an important historical reversal, the image no longer illustrates the words; rather the words, structurally speaking, are parasitic on the image.”)14 Although Barthes is speaking about newspaper photographs, this describes the situation in Le Bestiaire as well. While photography appears to be completely objective, Barthes observes, it conveys a variety of coded messages that possess an aesthetic and/or ideological function. Except for photographs of traumatic events, which are entirely denotative, photographs are manipulated by the individuals who take them, develop them, and print them. “La connotation,” he explains, “c’est-à-dire l’imposition d’un sens second au message photographique proprement dit, s’élabore aux différents niveaux de production de la photographie (choix, traitement tecnique, cadrage, mise en page)” (“Connotation, the imposition of a second meaning on the photographic message proper, is produced at different levels of photographic production {choice, technical treatment, framing, layout}”).15 Since the photograph purports to present a slice of life, these procedures constitute an insidious metalanguage. Barthes distinguishes several photographic devices that help to understand the artistic possibilities available to

14

Roland Barthes, “Le Message photographique,” Communications, No. 1 (1961), p. 134. 15 Ibid., pp. 130-31.

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Dufy, the strategies he chose to employ, and the manner in which the woodcuts comment on the verbal text. One such device is trucage—trick effects that are intended to deceive the viewer. Barthes cites a widely circulated photograph of Senator Millard Tydings talking to a notorious Communist in 1951. Although the photograph was actually a fake, it caused the senator to lose the next election. Conceivably a realistic painting of the two men standing together could have achieved the same effect. Since Dufy’s woodcuts do not pretend to depict reality, they do not employ this procedure, which is better suited to photography. However, the artist makes abundant use of a second device which Barthes, drawing on a study by Edgar Morin, labels “photogenia.” By adjusting technical variables such as lighting, exposure, and printing, photographers can manipulate the physical image (and thus its connoted message). Art possesses a similar set of variables that govern the elaboration of a painting or a drawing (pictogenia). The image may be embellished by modifying various elements such as texture, contrast, line, and color. Like all good artists, Dufy knew how to exploit the technical possibilities of his medium. Unlike some of his colleagues, who liked to emphasize the grain of the wood, he preferred to work on a smooth surface. Although his illustrations possess considerable texture, this was added by Dufy himself as a finishing touch. Since woodcuts are traditionally printed in black ink on white paper, they derive much, if not all, of their effect from contrast. Although black and white are fairly evenly distributed in Le Bestiaire, Dufy adjusts their proportion occasionally in order to achieve certain effects. The best example is the Elephant which, except for its tusks and toenails, is solid black. Comme un éléphant son ivoire, J’ai en bouche un bien précieux. Pourpre mort!... J’achète ma gloire Au prix des mots mélodieux. (Like an elephant with ivory tusks, My mouth contains a precious asset. Crimson death!... I purchase my glory By trading in melodious words.)

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Since ivory is a valuable commodity, the initial simile generates a charming conceit utilizing the language of the marketplace. Unfortunately, the critics disagree about the meaning of “pourpre mort.”16 While Dufy could have outlined the Elephant or included more detail, he chose to depict its silhouette. Occupying two thirds of the picture, the latter emphasizes the creature’s size as well as its weight. Ironically, Dufy treats the smallest animal in the volume in much the same manner. Although its shiny body reflects numerous highlights, the Flea enjoys the same monumental status as the Elephant. The same observation applies to the Serpent and the Dolphin, whose bodies are crisscrossed by white lines. The large expanse of black emphasizes the animals’ bulk. Interestingly, although most of the scenes in Le Bestiaire have white backgrounds, Dufy occasionally reverses the contrast to create negative illustrations. While the Owl and the Ibis are the most obvious examples, the Fly, the Crayfish, the Carp, and the Peacock are all superimposed on black backgrounds. Like the portrait of the Crayfish, which resembles a blue plate special, the first two illustrations are surprisingly elegant. Otherwise, this procedure seems to make little difference. In contrast to the heavy, dark shapes that dominate the previous examples, other illustrations contain outlined forms and a profusion of light. If black connotes solidity, white is generally associated with fragility. The outlined animals are often more delicate than their solid companions. This describes the slender Locust, for example, whom we see basking in the sun. It describes the Octopus and the Jellyfish as well, which are literally swimming in light. Unlike the Dolphin, the Crayfish, and the Carp, which are removed from their element, they are portrayed at the bottom of the sea. Waving its tentacles in every direction, the Jellyfish dazzles the viewer with its shimmering iridescence. Méduses, malheureuses têtes Aux chevelures violettes Vous vous plaisez dans les tempêtes, 16

See, for example, Pol-P. Gossiaux, “Sur l’éléphant du Bestiaire,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 217-222 (1969), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 8, pp. 211-12 and Etienne-Alain Hubert, “Petit Cortège pour le Bestiaire,” Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, Ser. 4, No. 2 (April-June 1998), pp. 36-37.

34

Apollinaire on the Edge Et je m’y plais comme vous faites. Jellyfish, unhappy heads Adorned with violet hair You enjoy the raging tempests, And like you I enjoy them too.)

Since méduse also evokes the Gorgon Medusa, who was decapitated by Perseus in the Greek myth, Apollinaire compares the jellyfish to a flotilla of floating heads with long, dangling hair. Dufy’s drawing is unusually supple for a woodcut which, because the artist uses a chisel instead of a pen, is typically much cruder. Indeed, this is the source of much of the genre’s charm. Elsewhere in Le Bestiaire, for example in “La Chèvre du Thibet” and “Le Serpent,” Dufy utilizes a heavier line that is harder to control. Whereas fine lines are associated with delicateness, thick lines connote sturdy qualities such as strength, vigor, and good health. Surprisingly, although he touches on it in several places, Barthes neglects to discuss another connotative device: composition. Where the various components are placed and how they are related to each other is as important in art as it is in photography. Although Dufy’s illustrations tend to be two-dimensional, the animals themselves possess a certain amount of volume (except for the Elephant). Similarly, half the pictures contain shallow backgrounds that are theoretically distinct from the foreground. “Le Lion” and “Le Lapin” come the closest to employing traditional perspective. In “Le Lièvre,” by contrast, Dufy juxtaposes two separate views to create a composite portrait. A closeup of the Hare in the distance is superimposed on the hunting scene before us, as if the viewer were looking through a telescope. Like the fleet-footed Hare, each of the animals in Le Bestiaire is placed in the foreground in order to signal its importance. Most of them appear to be larger than life for the same reason. While the tiny mouse is dwarfed by the pile of fruits and vegetables surrounding it, a number of other beasts occupy the whole picture. Barthes identifies a related device that furnishes additional information about the animals: their stance. As he points out, a picture derives much of its meaning from a repertoire of stereotyped attitudes. Gestures and poses are cultural artifacts that constitute a kind of grammar. Those that appear in Le Bestiaire convey two types of information: factual or symbolic. Since the Carp is jumping out of the

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water, for example, we know it is a lively animal. The fact that the Hare is portrayed from the rear with its forelegs and hindlegs far apart signals that it is running. Since the Cat is sitting on the table with its tail curled around its feet, one suspects it feels comfortable there. That Pegasus appears with one foreleg raised and his wings spread tells us he is impatient to take flight. Similarly, since the Dove extends its wings in a cruciform pattern, we know it symbolizes the Holy Ghost. Balanced on its hind legs with its forepaws outstretched, the Lion’s heraldic pose reminds us that it is a royal emblem. Occasionally a pose conveys both symbolic and factual information. If the phallic connotations of the Serpent’s pose are unmistakable, as we have seen, the fact that it is standing upright indicates that the scene take place before the Fall. Another connotative procedure is that of aestheticism. Sometimes, Barthes observes, photographs try to transform themselves into works of art. No longer content simply to transmit factual information, they cultivate certain stylistic effects. Since Dufy’s woodcuts already are works of art, this distinction needs to be modified. In general, the illustrations combine a decorative style inherited from the Nabis with a more primitive, Fauvist style. However, some of them depart from this basic model, at least partly, and adopt other styles. The waves in “Le Dauphin,” for example—especially the bow wave preceding the Dolphin—seem to have been influenced by Japanese block prints. The same remark applies to the smoke issuing from the steamship’s funnel, which resembles coils of hair. By contrast, “La Colombe” is heavily indebted to a different model: religious iconography. Colombe, l’amour et l’esprit Qui engendrâtes Jésus-Christ, Comme vous j’aime une Marie. Qu’avec elle je me marie. (Dove, the love and the spirit That engendered Jesus Christ, Like you I love a Mary. And with her wish to marry.)

Although the translation manages to perpetuate the wordplay in the last two lines, the reference to Marie Laurencin is unfortunately lost. Interestingly, the woodcut’s style conveys as much information as the Dove itself. Complementing the triangular background, which

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evokes the Trinity, the burst of light symbolizes divine radiance and power. Although “Le Paon” utilizes the same triangular composition as “La Colombe,” with which it is paired, it exhibits traces of yet another style. As Greet notes, its graceful curves and flowing lines betray the influence of Art Nouveau (p. 138). In addition, Barthes declares, pictorial objects play a significant role, since they generate certain associations in the viewer’s mind. “Ce sont donc les éléments d’un véritable lexique,” he asserts, “stables au point que l’on peut facilement les constituer en syntaxe” (“They are thus elements of a veritable lexicon, stable enough to be easily constituted into syntax”).17 This describes the objects in Dufy’s woodcuts, which not only provide the animal with an appropriate habitat but often tell an interesting story. That the Dromedary is surrounded by date palms, for example, suggests it inhabits an Arabic land. Since two pyramids are depicted in the distance, one deduces that the country is Egypt. The Buddhist temple, the arched bridge, and the towering mountains in “La Chèvre du Thibet” exercize a similar function. One scarcely needs to consult the title to identify the country in question. In “Le Serpent” the objects are replaced by human beings (the only ones in the volume, besides Orpheus), who play an identical role. The fact that the Serpent is flanked by Adam and Eve establishes a crucial interpretive context. Some of the collaborations between Dufy and Apollinaire turn out to be even more successful. In several instances, the woodcut completes the text so profoundly, so intimately, that it is difficult to tell where one begins and the other leaves off. The final synthesis stems not from the image of the animal so much as from the objects surrounding it. Complementing the text and the image simultaneously, they link each to the other while developing their latent meaning. One of the poems that exemplifies this remarkable symbiosis is “Le Cheval.” Mes durs rêves formels sauront te chevaucher, Mon destin au char d’or sera ton beau cocher Qui pour rênes tiendra tendus à frénésie, Mes vers, les parangons de toute poésie. (My polished, formal dreams will straddle you, 17

Barthes, “Le Message photographique,” p. 132.

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My handsome destiny will drive your golden chariot And for taut reins will tightly grip, My verses, paragons of poetry.)

While “Ibis” and “Le Boeuf” anticipate the poet’s death and resurrection, they are firmly anchored in the present. “Le Cheval” is the only poem in Le Bestiaire that is situated entirely in the future. It not only celebrates Apollinaire’s poetic inspiration but looks forward to his eventual triumph. As Greet remarks, Pegasus “est un emblème de la gloire aussi bien que de la poésie” (“is an emblem of glory as well as poetry”) (p. 87). Whether Apollinaire conceives of his verse as a model of excellence or as a visionary instrument, he is determined to dominate modern poetry. Dufy’s woodcut depicts a high-spirited animal that will make a fitting steed for the ambitious poet. From all indications, the scene takes place at the foot of Mt. Helicon, the home of the nine Muses. Issuing from the Hippocrene spring, created when Pegasus stamped on the rock, a stream cascades down the mountain and continues to the Gulf of Corinth. Although Apollinaire boasts that he will tame Pegasus, like Bellerophon in the well-known myth, the moment has not yet come. That the horse is wearing neither a bridle nor a saddle indicates he is completely wild. This conclusion is reinforced by the mysterious trefoil patterns, masquerading as vegetation, that dot the slopes behind Pegasus. A Cabalistic food according to one of Greet’s students, their role has long puzzled critics (p. 88). Additional research reveals that these strange designs possess a doubly symbolic function. In the first place, the clover leaf symbolizes the Trinity (which explains why three-lobed arches were so popular in medieval architecture). “When it is located upon a mountain,” one authority adds, “it comes to signify knowledge of the divine essence gained by hard endeavor, through sacrifice or study.”18 Thus the trefoils in “Le Cheval” echo the theme of poetic inspiration embodied by Pegasus. In the second place, clover is also a plant as well as a symbol. Since it possesses divine properties, it makes an ideal fodder for the winged horse. Although there are many different varieties, one suspects the specimens depicted by Dufy are examples of crimson clover (trifolium pratense). Known in French

18

J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, tr. Jack Sage, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), pp. 50-51.

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as le farouch, they confirm our initial impression that Pegasus is wild and untamed (farouche). “Le Lion” is the site of another marvelous collaboration between Apollinaire and Dufy. In contrast to many of the other texts, which recite the virtues of the animal in question, the poem laments the fate that has befallen this noble beast. Although the objects in the background seem to be purely decorative, we will discover they have important implications. O lion, malheureuse image Des rois chus lamentablement, Tu ne nais maintenant qu’en cage A Hambourg, chez les Allemands. (O lion, the miserable image Of lamentably fallen kings, You are only born in a cage now In Hamburg, among the Germans.)

As Greet declares, “le Lion est, dès le début, un être allégorique” (“the Lion is an allegorical figure from the very beginning”) (p. 96). As King of the Beasts, he symbolizes not only historical kings who have disappeared over the years, but also Jesus Christ, a spiritual king, who was martyred by those he was trying to save. Although the Lion’s symbolism is relatively clear, the buildings and boats in the illustration are not immediately identifiable. While the scene evidently portrays a port, one wonders where it is supposed to be. The text seems to imply that it is located in Hamburg. The last two lines refer to Carl Hagenbeck, a famous wild animal trainer, who built the first modern zoo in that city between 1902 and 1907. However, this interpretation is contradicted by the proud Lion in Dufy’s woodcut, who appears to be completely free.

Contemplating The Bestiary

Figure 1.3 Raoul Dufy, The Lion

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Upon reflection, one realizes that the illustration contains the key to the enigma. Since the Lion assumes a rampant pose, as if it were emblazoned on a coat of arms, it constitutes a heraldic emblem. In fact, it symbolizes both an individual and a city. For if the Lion represents Christ and royalty in general, it is also the symbol of Saint Mark. And when the citizens of the former Venetian empire adopted the evangelist as their patron saint, they adopted his symbol as well. In retrospect, one perceives that the illustration’s background represents a Venitian scene. With a little effort, we can make out the piazza San Marco on the left bordered by the Campanile, the Byzantine basilica (two of whose domes are visible), and the Doge’s palace. On the right, Dufy depicts the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, designed by Palladio, and three sailing ships representing the former empire’s maritime power. Like the Lion, that “malheureuse image / Des rois chus lamentablement,” Venice is the symbol of a glorious past. In this role, it is contrasted with modern Hamburg, where the King of the Beasts is simply an object of curiosity. A similar situation exists in “La Carpe,” whose ancient protagonist is also associated with a former era. As in the previous two works, the scenery proves to be an indispensable part of the poem. Dans vos viviers, dans vos étangs, Carpes, que vous vivez longtemps! Est-ce que la mort vous oublie, Poissons de la mélancolie. (In your ponds, in your pools, Carp, how long you live! Has death forgotten you, Fish of melancholy.)

Contemplating The Bestiary

Figure 1.4 Raoul Dufy, The Carp

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The first question that confronts the viewer is the identity of the palace in the background. One wonders where the scene is situated and why the artist has chosen this particular setting. For Gérard Bertrand, the illustration evokes “la grande pièce d’eau de Versailles ou de Chantilly” (“the large ornamental lake at Versailles or Chantilly”).19 On the other hand, Greet suggests it depicts a Roman atrium (p. 122). Exhaustive research reveals that the scene takes place in the gardens at Versailles, near the Orangerie. Although the final illustration is somewhat ambiguous, Greet reproduces an earlier version that is much more specific (p. 121). Despite the picture’s extreme foreshortening, which seriously distorts the perspective, the view is unmistakable. Looking toward the north, toward the royal palace, we see the equestrian statue of Louis XIV by Bernini, the ornamental pond known as the Pièce d’Eau des Suisses, and finally the Escaliers des Cent-Marches whose twin staircases embrace the Orangerie. The facade adorned with friezes and arcades in the background belongs to the Escaliers des Cent-Marches. The palace itself is too large to be included in the picture. Like the hapless Lion, who is associated with the Venetian empire, the Carp evokes France’s glorious past. The sole remaining witness of Louis XIV’s triumphs, it recalls the splendor of the French court as it contemplates the present age. Once again modern civilization suffers by comparison—whence, at least in part, the melancholy that pervades the last line. In addition to the Classical era, the Carp longs for its former friends. Left with nothing but its memories, which are still vivid, it is isolated both in time and in space. Like the Lion, the Carp symbolizes a glorious ideal that has become obsolete. Like the Lion, it has witnessed the decline of royalty and the rise of modern democratic society. The melancholy fate of both animals is emphasized by the objects around them, which facilitate a rich dialogue between the illustration and the text. The final connotative device that Barthes identifies is syntax. As he points out, it makes a considerable difference whether a photograph is printed separately or as part of a series. When several photographs are viewed together—for example in an illustrated magazine—they acquire a broader meaning that encompasses all of them. The whole 19

Gérard Bertrand, L’Illustration de la poésie à l’époque du cubisme 1901-1914: Derain, Dufy, Picasso (Paris: Klincksieck, 1971), p. 54.

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turns out to be larger than the sum of its parts. How the photographs are ordered, moreover, determines the message they will ultimately convey. The same thing is true of works of art, as Apollinaire clearly realized, for the illustrations in Le Bestiaire are carefully orchestrated. Many of the portraits are arranged in pairs, for example. The Cat is juxtaposed with the Lion, the Octopus with the Jellyfish, the Dove with the Peacock, and so forth. Similarly, a number of poems, such as “La Puce” and “Le Poulpe,” are grouped together thematically. In addition, one notes a gradual progression from the Classical world, presided over by the Orphic poet, to the modern world, where he is transformed into a messianic figure. Since the poet is engaged in a divine mission, Apollinaire declares in the notes, he is destined to become immortal. “Ceux qui s’exercent à la poésie,” he concludes, “et n’aiment rien autre que la perfection qui est Dieu lui-même” (“Those who practice poetry and who only love the perfection that is God himself”) will surely be reborn in heaven.

Chapter 2

Apollinaire and the Whatnots Born and raised in Rome, where he spent the first eight years of his life, Apollinaire harbored a permanent affection for Italy. Aided by his ability to speak the language, he also developed extensive relations with a number of Italian artists and writers over the years.1 His involvement with Italy reached its highest point in 1914, when the Italian Futurists visited Paris in the spring. During their stay, they clustered around Apollinaire and his journal Les Soirées de Paris, whose office even housed several of them for a while. During this period Apollinaire discussed artistic matters with his guests on a daily basis. In addition, he published texts by Ardengo Soffici and Giovanni Papini in Les Soirées de Paris and collaborated on their journal Lacerba. Following repeated requests for some poetry, Soffici later recounted, Apollinaire allowed him to look through his papers and choose whatever he liked.2 The twenty-two short texts that he discovered appeared in four issues of Lacerba published between April 1914 and February 1915.3 Although the first batch was entitled “Banalités,” Apollinaire asked Soffici to call the remainder “Quelconqueries” (“Whatnots”) because he found the title more amusing.4 After he returned to Florence, Soffici received another poem entitled “Arrivée du paquebot” (“The Arrival of the Steamship”), which for some reason was never published. Since it concluded with the naked

1

Although the bibliography has become quite lengthy, the basic text is still P. A. Jannini’s La fortuna di Apollinaire in Italia, 2nd ed. (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1965). 2 Letter from Ardengo Soffici to Alfred Vallette, Mercure de France, May 15, 1920. Repr. in Guillaume Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Marcel Adéma and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1965), pp. 1147-48. 3 See Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, pp. 370, 516, 562, 590-92, 594, 656-73. “Arrivé du paquebot” is reprinted on p. 735. 4 Letter from Guillaume Apollinaire to Ardengo Soffici dated April 30, 1914. Repr. in Apollinaire, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Michel Décaudin (Paris: Balland-Lecat, 196566), Vol. IV, p. 762.

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poet sucking a prostitute’s breasts, he may have feared the issue would be confiscated.5 Wishing to defend the dead poet’s reputation in 1920, Soffici insisted that Apollinaire attached no importance to these pieces, which he had simply written to amuse himself. Privately, one suspects that Soffici did not know what to make of the “Quelconqueries,” which as late as 1960 he described as “curiose bizzarrie inedite” (“curious unpublished oddities”).6 To be sure, many critics would doubtless agree with him today. Others would probably agree with Antoine Fongaro that the texts are completely worthless.7 By contrast, the “Quelconqueries” elicited vociferous support from the Dadaists and the Surrealists, who admired their persistent iconoclasm. Citing the Whatnots and the conversation poems in the Second Surrealist Manifesto, André Breton declared that Apollinaire deserved to be ranked with Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and the Comte de Lautréamont. In contrast to all the other writers, he explained, “ils ont voulu vraiment dire quelque chose” (“they really tried to say something”).8 By 1914, the Belle Epoque was drawing to a close and with it the Symbolist mode that had dominated French letters for so many years. Although it was a time of intense intellectual ferment, readers were not prepared for the “Quelconqueries,” whose audacity caught them by surprise. As a result, the texts were greeted largely with silence. Since then, the world has witnessed numerous literary and artistic movements, which have become increasingly radical over the years. Readers and viewers have been affected by this aesthetic revolution as much as artists and writers. We have become more accustomed to works that challenge the intellect in new and unforeseen ways. The time has come to rehabilitate the “Quelconqueries,” therefore, many of which were written with publication in mind. One of the things that make them so remarkable is their incredible diversity, which is unprecedented in a single collection by a single author. Four texts 5

The original version was even bawdier. See Michel Décaudin, “Autour de Stavelot: deux cahiers et un agenda,” Que vlo-ve?: Bulletin International des Etudes sur Apollinaire, 3rd ser., No. 21 (January-March 1996), p. 19. 6 Ardengo Soffici, “Apollinaire poeta e amico,” Omaggio ad Apollinaire, ed. Giovanni Sangiorgi and Jacopo Recupero (Rome: Ente Premi Roma, 1960), p. 26. 7 Antoine Fongaro, “Un Poème retrouvé d’Apollinaire,” Studi Francesi, Vol. I, No. 2 (May-August 1957), p. 252. 8 André Breton, Second Manifeste du surréalisme in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Marguerite Bonnet et al. (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1988), Vol. I, p. 815.

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were borrowed from an opérette-bouffe Apollinaire had written earlier, several appear to be jokes, one consists of a series of anagrams, and another is a rough draft of a page from his novel Le Poète assassiné (1916). Some of the compositions rhyme, some are in free verse, and others are in prose. Some of them are recent, others were written ten or fifteen years before. Indeed, half the texts were taken (many verbatim) from a notebook known as the “cahier de Stavelot,” which the poet used from 1897 to 1901.9 Michel Décaudin describes the “Quelconqueries” as “fonds de tiroir qu’Apollinaire s’est manifestement amusé à rassembler” (“odds and ends that Apollinaire obviously enjoyed assembling”).10 While the poet may have viewed the “Quelconqueries” as trifles initially, his opinion underwent a dramatic reversal when Soffici rediscovered the texts and proposed to publish them. This project prompted Apollinaire to re-examine the manuscripts and to make a number of changes. The fact that the revisions are fairly minimal suggests they were made at the last minute. In addition, the project forced Apollinaire to consider the works as a group for the first time. Seeking a critical framework in which to place them, he chose the title “Banalités” and then “Quelconqueries.” If Apollinaire’s decision to publish the texts had far-reaching implications, their appearance in Lacerba decisively altered their fate. It not only changed the way in which they were perceived but established them as bonafide (if experimental) literary works. Viewed from this angle, their role as aesthetic objects recalls that of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. Like Duchamp, Apollinaire managed to transform a series of banal objects into works of art simply by treating them as works of art. Like the latter artist, he singled each one out for attention, gave it a title, and exhibited it in an artistic (literary) setting. If poetry strives to “[liberate] the word from the constraints which discursive order imposes on it,” as Jonathan Culler notes, the “Quelconqueries” seek to liberate the word from the constraints associated

9

For a detailed description, see Décaudin, “Autour de Stavelot: deux cahiers et un agenda,” pp. 4-25. The notebook includes manuscript versions of “Arrivée du paquebot,” “Té,” “Le Repas,” “La Chaste Lise,” “Un Dernier Chapître,” “0,50,” “Le Tabac à priser,” “Le Matin,” “Acousmate,”, “Etoile,”, “A Linda,” and “Fagnes de Wallonie." 10 Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, p. 1146.

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with traditional poetry.11 While poetry is a subversive genre by definition, the “Quelconqueries” are doubly subversive, since they reject any attempt to codify their anti-discursive procedures. The only principle that links them together is their refusal to be bound by a common principle. Besides the great diversity of these texts, one is impressed by their tremendous freedom, which is unparalleled in the literature of the period. Not only do the “Quelconqueries” subvert literary principles, Georges Longrée observes, but they expose the inherent limitations of literature itself. [Elles mettent] en cause les valeurs d’unité, d’homogénéité, d’hiérarchie, de classes d’objets littéraires et non littéraires pour qu’apparaissent avec un relief beaucoup plus marqué … les interdits qui sont ceux du champ littéraire. ([They] question values such as unity, homogeneity, and hierarchy, as well as literary and non-literary classification, in order to call attention to … taboos associated with the literary enterprise.)12

In view of their defiant posture and libertarian values, the “Quelconqueries” are best understood—best appreciated—when they are examined in the context of the Dada movement. Although Dada was not officially baptized until 1916, its anarchic spirit was prevalent a good deal earlier.13 Numerous examples abound in Paris, including two works that Apollinaire composed in 1914: Le Poète assassiné and a performance piece entitled A quelle heure un train partira-t-il pour Paris? (What Time Does a Train Leave for Paris?). Apollinaire appears to have given the “Quelconqueries” to Soffici in much the same vein. Indeed, the Dadaists themselves believed they exemplified the Dada spirit. Soon after André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Philippe Soupault founded Paris Dada in 1919, they reprinted thirteen “Quelconqueries” in the October and November issues of Littérature. When Breton published his Anthologie de l’humour noir twenty years later, 11

Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 183. 12 Georges H. F. Longrée, “Apollinaire parallèle: le cas des ‘Quelconqueries’ et de ‘La Fin de Babylone,’” Les Cahiers des Paralittératures, Vol. I (l989), pp. 108-09. 13 See in particular Michel Sanouillet, Dada à Paris (Paris: Pauvert, 1965) and Elmer Peterson and Stephen C. Foster, Paris Dada: The Barbarians at the Gates (New York: Hall, 2001).

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he included two of these texts plus two equally outrageous passages from Le Poète assassiné.

A Slice of Life Apart from two or three traditional poems, the bulk of the “Quelconqueries” are experimental and break with convention in a number of important ways. Apollinaire was attempting an exploratory operation in an effort to expand (and revitalize) the concept of poetry. One of his more significant innovations was to choose a trivial subject and to describe it in a flat, matter-of-fact style--whence the initial title “Banalités.” As Marguerite Bonnet states, “il a cru à l’existence d’une matière poétique dans la vie” (“he discovered poetic subject matter in life itself”).14 In other words, he believed that ordinary existence possessed a beauty of its own. Apollinaire not only extended the realm of poetry into the everyday world, moreover, but made it available to the man in the street. For the fact that something is “ordinary” simply means it is important to the average person. At the same time, Apollinaire redefined his own function in keeping with the radical new poetry that he envisioned. In particular, he rejected the lofty role traditionally accorded the poet. Instead of drawing his inspiration from the Muses or from his own genius, Longrée observes, he reveled in “son rôle de bricoleur, de fournisseur de restes, d’accomodeur de rebuts” (“his role as handyman, as purveyor of scraps, as adapter of left-overs”).15 In contrast to the conversation poems, which record what Apollinaire hears, the “slice of life” poems record what he sees. He is present not so much as a participant but as a neutral observer. While some of them contain humorous touches, the texts in this category tend to be descriptive, objective, and factual. “By maximizing discursive simplicity and directness,” Susan Harrow explains, “Apollinaire challenges the arbitrary separation of poetic lyricism and lived language, and the absolute separation of language and its

14

Marguerite Bonnet, “Aux sources du surréalisme: place d’Apollinaire,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 104-107 (1964), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 3, p. 70. 15 Longrée, “Apollinaire parallèle: le cas des ‘Quelconqueries’ et de ‘La Fin de Babylone,’” p.110.

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material object.”16 Resembling a still-life painting more than a conventional poem, “Le Repas” (“The Meal”) is an excellent example. Apollinaire describes a complete meal from beginning to end, the surroundings in which it takes place, and the people who are present at the table. In its simplicity (one is tempted to say purity) of line and in the formal organization of its elements, the poem is indistinguishable from, say, Cézanne’s Card-Players: Il n’y a que la mère et les deux fils Tout est ensoleillé La table est ronde Derrière la chaise où s’assied la mère Il y a la fenêtre D’où on voit la mer Briller sous le soleil ... (There are only the mother and her two sons Everything is sunny The table is round Behind the chair where the mother is sitting There is the window From which one glimpses the sea Glistening beneath the sun …)

While “Le Repas” does not sound like a poem, it manages to look like one—as do the majority of the “Quelconqueries.” Despite the lack of a formal rhyme scheme, it possesses other properties that have come to be associated with the genre. Since each line begins with a capital letter, the reader recognizes that it is a poem immediately. This impression is confirmed by the white borders and by the way in which the lines are arranged on the page. Although the text is written in free verse, its rhythm is surprisingly regular. The poem opens with three decasyllables, for example, one of which is dislocated to form the second and third lines. The use of definite articles where one would expect indefinite articles—as in “Il y a la fenêtre”—reinforces the presentational mode adopted by Apollinaire. Again one is tempted to compare the text to a painting. The mention of capes studded with olive trees in the following line situates the poem on the Côte d’Azur, 16

Susan Harrow, The Material, the Real, and the Fractured Self: Subjectivity and Representation from Rimbaud to Réda (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 73.

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as do the lemon trees in line 23. Amazingly, in view of its ultramodern style, “Le Repas” seems to have been composed in 1897 or 1898—while Apollinaire was living on the Côte d’Azur himself.17 Conceived as a family portrait, it depicts the poet, his mother, and his brother enjoying a typical midday meal. A more recent portrait of the poet emerges from a text entitled “Table,” which is cast in the form of a prose poem. Composed in 1914, it reflects Apollinaire’s experiments with literary cubism during the period preceding the First World War. Like “Zone” or “Les Fenêtres,” it juxtaposes the poet’s visual perceptions with various thoughts and memories that flash through his mind. At the same time, it differs from the two earlier poems in one crucial respect. Whereas Apollinaire suppresses the logical connections that structure “Zone” and “Les Fenêtres” in order to create a verbal collage, he continues to respect them in “Table.” Despite one or two abrupt transitions, the narrative flows smoothly with no interruptions. The orderly progression not only adds to the work’s banality but contributes to its anecdotal style. As Mary Ann Caws notes, “Table” is a meditation upon the conditions of writing.18 It is a poem about the difficulty of writing a poem. What makes this autobiographical sketch so fascinating is that it provides an intimate glimpse of Apollinaire’s habits and working conditions. It is precisely the banality of the portrait that interests us. The poem begins with the poet seated at his work table waiting for inspiration to strike on a perfectly ordinary day: Ma table est rectangulaire, ses angles sont arrondis. Je fume la pipe bien que le tabac me dégoûte mais son amertume et sa brûlure me plaisent. J’aurais voulu travailler ce matin mais je n’ai fait que fouiller de vieux brouillons à moi. (My table is rectangular, its corners are round. I am smoking a pipe, although the tobacco disgusts me, but its bitterness and its burning please me. I planned to work this morning, but all I have done is to rummage through some old rough drafts.)

17

Décaudin, “Autour de Stavelot: deux cahiers et un agenda,” p. 24. Mary Ann Caws, A Metapoetics of the Passage (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1981), p. 85. 18

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Since the table is featured in the title, one would expect it to play a prominent role in the poem.19 Following its initial appearance, however, it vanishes without a trace. The first line merely serves as a point of departure. “‘Table’ met à la fois l’accent sur l’indétermination des événéments quotidiens,” Longrée declares, “et sur les actes du scripteur engagé dans la production de son texte” (“‘Table’ emphasizes both the randomness of daily events and the actions of the writer engaged in the production of his text”).20 Or rather, it reveals how the two themes are intertwined, how ordinary objects trigger thoughts and memories that interfere with Apollinaire’s plans. For the poem is not really about working but about wanting to work and not being able to. Following this frustrated admission, the poet discourses on blotting paper, introduces a fleeting metaphor, and describes several objects lying on the table. Les machins où l’on adapte du papier buvard sont des trucs idiots, il vaut mieux sécher ce qu’on écrit avec du papier buvard non monté, c’est ce qu’il y a de mieux. Il est rose comme un visage fardé, peu à peu il noircit au centre rectangulairement. Maintenant je ne fais rien, j’écris ce que je vois, mon mouchoir est près de moi froissé. Il y a aussi une boîte d’allumettes suédoises à l’envers, elle est vieux rose avec un cercle rouge où il y a un A un M et un C avec une torche allumée. (The gadgets that hold blotting paper are idiotic gimmicks, it is better to dry what one is writing with unmounted blotting paper, that’s what is best. It is pink, like rouge on a woman’s cheeks, it gradually becomes black in the center rectangularly. I am not doing anything now, I am noting what I see, my crumpled handkerchief is nearby. There is also a box of Swedish matches lying upside-down, it is dusty pink with a red circle containing an A an M and a C with a lighted torch.)

As this excerpt demonstrates, Apollinaire was experimenting with the stream of consciousness technique a good eight years before James Joyce published Ulysses. Without attempting to regulate the mental flow, he records each sight or thought that impinges on his awareness. Although “Table” observes certain grammatical conventions, it violates a number of others in order to preserve its narrative fluidity. 19 A photograph of the table in question is reproduced in Pierre Cailler, Guillaume Apollinaire: documents iconographiques (Geneva: Cailler, 1965), plate 16. 20 Longrée, “Apollinaire parallèle: le cas des ‘Quelconqueries’ et de ‘La Fin de Babylone,’” p. 110.

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Periods are frequently replaced by commas, for example, and commas are eliminated when nouns occur in a series. Among other things, the passage reminds us what a nuisance it was to write with a steel-tipped pen—or even a fountain pen. While they represented a significant advance over earlier implements, they required the constant use of a blotter. The final reference is especially interesting in the light of subsequent remarks by Apollinaire. The Swedish matchbox reappeared unexpectedly the following year in a letter he wrote to Georgette Catelain. During a lengthy discussion of modern aesthetics, in which he defended the artistic value of ordinary objects, Apollinaire remarked : C’est justement l’art que je voudrais bannir des arts ou sinon l’art surtout l’artiste et celui qui fait tout en artiste, qui attache plus de prix à un diamant qu’à une boîte d’allumettes, à une rose qu’à un hareng saur …[Il y a] trop de goût et trop de dévotion aux conventions de beauté. (It is precisely art that I would like to banish from the arts or if not art, specially the artist and those who imitate artists, who attach more worth to a diamond than to a box of matches, to a rose than to a smoked herring … There is too much taste and too much devotion to conventional beauty.)21

Most everyday objects, Paola Antonelli observes, “speak of the timeless role of craftsmanship… Some of these things are true masterpieces of the art of design and deserve our unconditional admiration.”22 As worthy of our admiration as a diamond ring, the matchbox in “Table” reminds Apollinaire of several advertisements he encountered during a recent train trip. These remind him in turn of the electric poles running along side the tracks. Not only was their mysterious humming delightful, he confides, but their terse inscriptions were strangely moving. This statement is accompanied by the following example:

21

Letter from Guillaume Apollinaire to Georgette Catelain dated November 7, 1915. Repr. in “Des lettres inédites du mal-aimé à une amie,” Le Figaro Littéraire, No. 1174 (November 4-10, 1968), p. 9. 22 Paola Antonelli, Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design (New York: Regan, 2005), p. 1.

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Arranged so as to imitate a warning sign near high-tension wires, the four words are set off from the text and isolated on the page. The earliest example of expressive typography in Apollinaire’s work, they precede his first visual poem (“Lettre-Océan”) by at least two months. The poet seems to have borrowed the original idea from the Italian Futurists, who had been experimenting with similar devices since the beginning of 1914. Appearing in Lacerba, their poetry utilized a wide variety of typographical effects to depict signs and other objects. The presence of a similar device in “Table” suggests that the poem was composed for publication in the same journal. Like the discovery of electricity, signs like this were another product of the modern age. As Apollinaire intimates, they must have seemed rather startling at first. The very symbol of progress was accompanied by the possibility of imminent death. Reminding himself to discard several pipes that had acquired a foul taste, Apollinaire concludes on a trivial domestic note: he decides to trim his cuticles. “Et si je saigne,” he adds, “je me sucerai le doigt jusqu’à ce que l’obscurité étant complète je me lèverai pour allumer une lampe” (“And if I start to bleed I will suck my finger until it is completely dark outside and I must get up to light a lamp”). In contrast to the poet, who grows more and more bored as the poem progresses, the reader is intrigued by this glimpse of Apollinaire’s private life. The banal subject matter and the relaxed style generate a closeness, a warmth, that is impossible to achieve in more formal works. Prose turns out to be the perfect medium for this kind of poetry. Ironically, Apollinaire’s efforts have been successful after all, since they produced the text we have just finished reading. Smoking plays a significant role in another, much briefer work entitled “Hôtel.” Consisting of only five lines, it combines banality with whimsicality to create a charming portrait of Apollinaire, who once again finds himself at loose ends. Although the lines vary in length from eight to twelve syllables, the poem is not written in free verse. The fact that the first four lines rhyme prevents it from being

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completely emancipated. In addition, each of these lines contains a striking metaphor. Ma chambre a la forme d’une cage Le soleil passe son bras par la fenêtre Mais moi qui veux fumer pour faire des mirages J’allume au feu du jour ma cigarette Je ne veux pas travailler je veux fumer. (My room has the shape of a cage The sun passes its arm through the window But I who want to create smoky mirages I light my cigarette with the sunbeam’s fire I don’t want to work I want to smoke.)

At first glance, the poem seems to be a condensed version of “Table.” Although the setting is a hotel room rather than Apollinaire’s apartment, although he is smoking a cigarette instead of a pipe, we find him scribbling away desultorily as before. Despite these and other similarities, the compositions differ in one crucial respect. Whereas Apollinaire complains about being unable to work in “Table,” he admits he doesn’t want to work in “Hôtel.” Instead of writing, he would rather smoke cigarettes all day. The final line counterbalances the whimsical metaphors of the preceding lines with its unexpected directness. It not only deflates the preceding rhetoric but provides a feeling of closure. In addition, since it performs the thought that it expresses, it turns out to be auto-illustrative. It carries out the author’s wishes by bringing the poem to a close. One is left with the nagging suspicion that the conflict between working and smoking is more apparent than real. Since Apollinaire describes art as a mirage elsewhere in his works, perhaps he simply wants to smoke and dream of future projects.

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Trivial Pursuits Mention should also be made of “Le Tabac à priser” (“Snuff”), another whimsical poem in which tobacco plays a prominent role. Like “Le Repas,” it is set in Provence and was composed while Apollinaire was living on the Côte d’Azur. Comprising four unrhymed stanzas, the text includes bits and pieces of earlier poems arranged to form a kind of mosaic. As Décaudin observes, this construction anticipates that of many of Apollinaire’s mature poems, which skillfully exploit “la technique discontinue de découpage et de collage” (“the discontinuous technique of cutting and pasting”).23 Not only is each stanza a different length, but the lines themselves vary in length from one stanza to the next. Although the poem is rhymed initially, Apollinaire abandons this idea after the third line. The first stanza sketches an idyllic portrait of the Provençal countryside. Tabaquin tabaquin ma tabatière est vide Mets-y pour deux sous de tabac mais du fin Il fait si beau qu’en leurs bastides Les messieurs de la ville s’en sont venus dîner Les olives sont mûres et partout l’on entend Les chants des oliveuses sous les oliviers (Tobacconist, tobacconist my snuff-box is empty Give me two cents worth of your best snuff The weather is so nice that gentlemen from the city Have come to dine in their country houses The olives are ripe and everywhere one hears Olive-pickers singing beneath the olive trees).

As these lines demonstrate, the poem is essentially a monologue. Written in the first person like “Table” and “Hôtel,” it describes the scene through the speaker’s eyes and includes several autobiographical remarks. Instead of Apollinaire, however, the narrator turns out to be an inhabitant of a rural village. “Mais je suis si vieux,” he 23

Décaudin, “Autour de Stavelot: deux cahiers et un agenda,” p. 9. Reprinted on pp.9-10, the original version contained two more stanzas, one of which was concerned with the Dreyfus affair. James Lawler believes the latter remarks are uttered by Apollinaire, while Décaudin attributes them to a gendarme mentioned in the poem. However, they actually seem to be pronounced by an old man who appears in the following stanza.

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confides in the second stanza, “que je me demande / Si je verrai le temps des lucioles” (“But I am so old I wonder / If I will live to see the fireflies again”). Since the olive harvest takes place in the late fall and fireflies appear in early summer, he has approximately seven months to live. Perhaps that explains why he insists on treating himself to the best snuff, which he receives in the third stanza. Having paid for his purchase, the old man leaves singing the words to a popular song: J’ai du bon tabac Dans ma tabatière J’ai du bon tabac Tu n’en auras pas. (I’ve got some fine snuff In my snuff-box I’ve got some fine snuff You can’t have any)24

As befits an event recounted by a country dweller, the poem’s vocabulary is uncomplicated and down to earth. The trivial commercial exchange at the bureau de tabac is counterbalanced by the final stanza, which praises one of the simple joys of life. The fact that snuff is the subject of a popular song indicates its widespread appeal. Like the works of Jean Giono, which also celebrate the pleasure of tobacco, Apollinaire’s poem is built upon a surprisingly broad base. One of the most unusual compositions consists of a series of anagrams that have been arranged in tabular form. Entitled “A Linda” (“To Linda”), it was inspired by Linda Molina da Silva, the sister of one of Apollinaire’s friends, whom he courted unsuccessfully during 1900 and 1901. Since it departs so radically from the traditional model, the poem has attracted a certain amount of attention. Following Stefan Themerson, for example, Timothy Mathews insists on its visual specificity and complains that subsequent editors have failed to respect the original typography.25 Arguing that “A Linda” illustrates 24

Interestingly, Raymond Roussel used the same song to generate the tale of “Le Poète et la moresque” in Impressions d’Afrique, which Apollinaire saw with Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp in 1911 or 1912. 25 Timothy Mathews, Reading Apollinaire: Theories of Poetic Language (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 162.

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the material foundation of language, Georges Longrée draws a parallel between this work and Apollinaire’s calligrams.26

A Linda Ilnda Nilda Indla Indal Lnida Lndia Lndai Lidna Lidan

Adnil Danil Nadil Nalid Dilan Lanid Landi Naldi Dalni

Alnid Aldin Ildan

Although “A Linda” does not seem very promising initially, it turns out to have a charm all of its own. Even its harshest detractors would agree that it is attractive to look at. Since the poem has little if any verbal content, it seduces us through its appearance. Apollinaire’s attention to visual compositon anticipates his creation (or recreation) of visual poetry in 1914. Like Mallarmé in Un Coup de dés n’abolira jamais le hasard (A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance), he is conscious of the arrangement of blacks and whites on the page.27 The twenty-two permutations are distributed in three columns of unequal length, parallel to each other but dislocated vertically so they begin and end on different levels. Each of the words begins with a capital letter. The central column (which is also the highest) is crowned with a capital “A” of gigantic proportions, much thicker and blacker than the other letters. Through its size and intensity it counterbalances the series of anagrams and gives the composition a 26

Georges H. F. Longrée, L’Expérience idéo-calligrammatique d’Apollinaire, rev. ed. (Paris: Touzot, 1985), p. 117. 27 See ibid. for additional similarities between Apollinaire and Mallarmé.

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focal point. Mathews speaks of “a geometric ‘aesthetification’ of the letter in the manner of the Futurists’ anti-discursive calligraphy.”28 Indeed, since the same letter occurs elsewhere in Lacerba, Apollinaire seems to have actually borrowed it from his Italian friends. While “A Linda” rejects traditional poetics, a few traces of the original model remain. Like conventional poetry, for example, the poem proceeds from left to right and from top to bottom—albeit one column at a time. In contrast to its minimal content, moreover, the title (which spills over onto the first line) provides a certain amount of information. While Apollinaire could have chosen an abstract title, or simply dispensed with one altogether, the dedication “A Linda” establishes the poem’s purpose, subject, and destination. Not only is it concerned with Linda, whose beauty it ostensibly celebrates, but it is intended for her as well. Inevitably, one wonders if she ever received Apollinaire’s unusual tribute. To be sure, the composition bears little resemblance to a conventional love poem. Except for the title, it appears to be totally non-referential, totally abstract. What little information it conveys must be inferred from its physical characteristics. We have two choices: we can watch the five letters combine and recombine, or we can listen to the various sounds they produce (or both). Although the visual play in “A Linda” is relatively subdued, it is continuous. The reader’s eye is drawn at first to the large capital “A,” then to the first word in the left-hand column: “Linda.” Scanning each of the columns in turn, one perceives that the word continually changes shape. With one exception (a string of words beginning with “L”), the initial capital is repeated no more than twice in a row. And as the letters shift back and forth, the typographical skyline changes accordingly. In contrast to the first word, for instance, which utilizes two vertical strokes, the second contains three strokes. Whereas the former appear at opposite ends of the word, two of the latter occur at the beginning. Although the poem’s visual effects follow no perceptible pattern, the play of the five phonemes is carefully orchestrated. The soft, liquid sounds of “Linda” combine and recombine in a subtle, ever-changing pattern like an erotic incantation: “Linda / Ilnda / Nilda / Indla / Indal,” etc. They resemble a magic spell taken from one of those grimoi28

Mathews, Reading Apollinaire: Theories of Poetic Language, p. 162.

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res (“books of charms”) that so interested Apollinaire, a spell designed to make Linda fall in love with him. Of the 3125 phonetic combinations at the poet’s disposal, only twenty-two proved to be suitable. They had to be possible to pronounce, they had to possess two syllables (in order to preserve the initial rhythm), and they needed to be euphonious. Indeed, a number of syllables are repeated throughout the poem, rendering it even more harmonious.29 Although quite a few words end in da, nil, or di, the composition does not follow a coherent rhyme scheme. Apollinaire utilizes assonance instead because it provides more flexibility. Paralleling the first column, which begins with “Linda,” the second begins with the reverse spelling: “Adnil.” With one or two exceptions, the former column is assonanced in “a” and the latter in “i”30 “Poems are significant,” Jonathan Culler avers, “if they can be read as reflections on or explorations of the problems of poetry itself.”31 In contrast to Keat’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which illustrates one approach, “A Linda” does not represent a meditative exercise. Since it utilizes an alien vocabulary, any kind of explicit discussion is out of the question. Rather, the poem calls attention to poetry’s material properties. Like “A Linda,” it seems to say, every poetic composition is both a visual poem and a sound poem. We only need to stop, look, and listen. Although the Futurists had also begun to publicize this fact, they were attracted to machine-age onomatopoeia and flashy typography. Unlike the author of “A Linda,” they were not attracted to abstract poetry. Apollinaire’s true heirs were the Dadaists, who attempted to re-invent poetry a few years later. Beginning with Hugo Ball’s “O Gadji Beri Bimba,” the Zurich group experimented with phonetic poetry, while Man Ray and others composed purely visual poems. Raoul Hausmann eventually combined the two strains to create optophonetic poetry. To be sure, poetry is not the only arena in which sound and typography play a fundamental role. For if poetry makes use of language, language inevitably encompasses poetry. They share the same material 29

Apollinaire often creates the next term in the series by reversing two or three letters at the beginning of a word or at the end. In one instance (“Nalid”/”Dilan”), he reverses the entire word. 30 This explains why three of the words begin with Lnd, which is virtually unpronounceable: Apollinaire wanted to preserve the assonance at all costs. 31 Culler, Structuralist Poetics, p. 177.

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attributes, the same preoccupation with phonetic and visual operations. In the last analysis, therefore, “A Linda” constitutes a critique of language itself. Or rather, as John J. White remarks, it focuses on the “resources of language.”32 Besides the latter’s physical characteristics, Apollinaire celebrates the role of linguistic mechanisms in generating and preserving meaning. If language is a storehouse of words, to paraphrase Ferdinand de Saussure, words in turn are composed of letters.33 By effortlessly generating one word after another, the poem demonstrates the alphabet’s awesome power. Not only language, Longrée reminds us, but countless volumes of literature have been created by rearranging its twenty-six letters.34 That the words in “A Linda” are meaningless, he adds, demonstrates the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign. As Saussure demonstrated long ago, letters are free to combine any way they like. Words have nothing in common with the objects they designate.35 One of the most intriguing “Quelconqueries” is entitled “0,50”: As-tu pris la pièce de dix sous Je l’ai prise (Did you take the 50 centime coin I took it)

Unlike most of the works we have examined so far, “0,50” was never conceived as a poem. Since Apollinaire was interested in linguistic anomalies, he included it in a list of redundant constructions in the cahier de Stavelot. As soon as the text appeared in print, however, it acquired an independent life of its own. Despite its humble origins, it became a daring, experimental piece of poetry. The key to this curious composition lies in its utter triviality, which testifies to the poem’s authenticity. As with other “Quelconqueries,” its subject is ultimately its own banality. Like pipe tobacco or snuff, the 50 centime coin was an extremely common object. It had become so common that nobody even noticed it any more. By depicting the coin from a new 32

John J. White, Literary Futurism: Aspects of the First Avant-Garde (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) p. 263. See p. 183 as well. 33 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally, et al., tr. Wade Baskin (1916, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 15. 34 Longrée, L’Expérience idéo-calligrammatique d’Apollinaire, p. 117. 35 Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, pp. 67-70.

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angle, Apollinaire managed to give it a brand new life—much as pop artists would do with soup cans and soap boxes many years later. However, the closest parallel is with Dada instead of neo-Dada—with Marcel Duchamp instead of Andy Warhol. For the 50 centime coin is not a symbol of popular culture but rather an objet trouvé (“readymade”). By singling it out, giving it a title, and exhibiting it in a privileged space, Apollinaire transformed the coin into a work of art. Zooming in on an object calls attention not just to its existence but also to its structure and design. “Once we learn to recognize patterns of beauty in pragmatic and economic ideas,” Paola Antonelli remarks, “we will realize that our kitchen drawers, our purses, our car trunks, and our bathroom cabinets are vibrant museums full of masterpieces.”36 “0,50” does not attempt to describe the coin so much as to define it. Apollinaire does not dwell on its physical properties because everyone already knew what a 50 centime coin looked like. Instead, he defines it in terms of human relationships, which is to say in terms of its primary function. For a brief second we glimpse the coin passing from one person to another. Judging from the fact that the first speaker employs the familiar tu form, these two individuals appear to be well acquainted. Since neither is ever identified, we are free to imagine a number of scenarios. The scene could be situated in a sidewalk cafe, for instance, where two friends have been relaxing over a glass of wine. The second person could be collecting his or her change before leaving. Although one would love to know what is taking place, this information is basically irrelevant. We are left with the following definition: a coin is something one individual gives to another in exchange for a service. In addition to being a readymade, “0,50” is also a conversation poem—the shortest one that Apollinaire ever composed (or recorded). Like “Lundi rue Christine” and similar works, it consists of a slice of everyday reality captured in everyday speech. In its enigmatic brevity, cast in a question and response format, the work resembles a snatch of dialogue by Eugène Ionesco. For some reason, it seems strangely familiar. Where, one wonders, could Apollinaire have encountered this banal exchange? While he noted the source of several redundant expressions, “0,50” is not among them. Although it would be difficult 36

Antonelli, Humble Masterpieces, p. 1.

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to prove, one suspects the text was taken from a French grammar, for it illustrates an important grammatical principle: a past participle must agree with a preceding direct object. Since “pris” follows a feminine pronoun in the second line, it becomes “prise.” Freed from its original mooring, “0,50” became a floating signifer drifting aimlessly with the cultural current. For this reason, the most promising interpretations are anchored in contemporary reality. While one can imagine a number of realistic scenarios, such as paying the bill at a sidewalk cafe, additional interpretations exist at the metaphoric level.37 In particular, the image of money changing hands can be viewed as a metaphor for linguistic exchange. More precisely, since it refers to purely denotative language, it describes the exchange of factual information. That “0,50” assumes the form of a dialogue makes this interpretation all the more attractive. The metaphor itself goes back at least to Mallarmé who, contrasting poetic discourse with direct discourse, described the latter as follows: Narrer, enseigner, même décrire, cela va et encore qu’à chacun suffirait peut-être pour échanger la pensée humaine, de prendre ou de mettre dans la main d’autrui en silence une pièce de monnaie. (To narrate, to teach, even to describe, it suffices as would also perhaps for anyone wishing to exchange human thought, to take or to put in another’s hand silently a coin.)38

The Comic Muse Many of the “Quelconqueries” are noteworthy for their offbeat humor, which is often as important as their banality. André Breton rightly perceived that Apollinaire’s use of humor was connected with

37

For example, Scott Bates observes that pièce de dix sous was slang for “anus” in the 19th century, which suggests a different scenario than the one that follows. See his Dictionnaire des mots libres d’Apollinaire (Sewanee, Tennessee: privately printed, 1991), p. 221. 38 Stéphane Mallarmé, “Crise de vers” in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry (Paris: Gallmard/Pléiade, 1956), p. 368.

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his desire to liberate every literary genre.39 Stressing the historical importance of works like “Le Phoque” and “Chapeau-Tombeau,” he declared: “Apollinaire s’est entendu mieux que tout autre à faire passer dans l’expression … quelques-unes des attitudes les plus caractéristiques de l’humour d’aujourd’hui” (“Apollinaire managed to express … some of the most characteristic attitudes of today’s humor better than anyone else”). Breton’s remarks are especially applicable to Dada and Surrealism, whose adherents possessed a vivid sense of what he called “humour noir”—humor with a wicked twist to it. As he declared, this describes the humor in the “Quelconqueries,” which is direct, powerful, and often perverse. Not surprisingly, Apollinaire’s comic imagination assumes a number of different guises. Like the previous poem, “1890” consists of a brief dialogue. Thanks to the title, we know exactly when the conversation supposedly takes place. Although one speaker is anonymous, the other is identified as Alfred Capus, a journalist, novelist, and playwright who specialized in bourgeois comedies. In contrast to another text by Apollinaire, which portrays him as a lecherous scoundrel, “1890” depicts Capus as a cynical misogynist.40 Apropos of absolutely nothing, the first speaker remarks that every woman between 45 and 50 remembers falling in love with Victor Capoul—an operatic tenor who sang at the Opéra-Comique from 1861 to 1870.41 To which Capus sarcastically replies: “Et de bien d’autres” (“And with lots of other men too”). Women are fickle creatures, he implies, who fall in love at the drop of a hat. A confirmed sceptic, Capus was famous for uttering acerbic boutades like the one attributed to him by Apollinaire.42 Indeed, one begins to suspect that “1890” records an actual rejoinder. Transformed into a “Quelconquerie” by Ardengo 39

André Breton, Anthologie de l’humour noir (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1966), p. 311. Guillaume Apollinaire, “Lettre de Paris,” Le Passant, November 25, 1911. Repr. in Guillaume Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose complètes, ed. Pierre Caizergues and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1991), Vol. II, p. 382. 41 Capoul was especially famous for singing the role of Romeo in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. According to the Robert encyclopedia, “il a donné son nom à une coiffure qui comporte une raie au milieu de la tête, les côtés du front dégagés et le milieu recouvert de deux petites boucles” (“he lent his name to a hair style consisting of a part down the middle, twin forelocks, and two little curls in the middle of the forehead”). 42 Léon Treich reproduces numerous examples in L’Esprit d’Alfred Capus, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1926), pp. 23-72. 40

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Soffici, it may simply have been an amusing anecdote that Apollinaire was saving for the right occasion. Dating from 1898, “Etoile” (“Star”) was originally considerably longer and much more ambitious.43 Consisting of rhymed alexandrines, the first five verses are all that remains of the initial version. The other lines were presumably added in 1914 and follow a different model. While Apollinaire originally complained that women were faithless, echoing Alfred Capus in “1890,” this theme was eliminated from the final poem. Indeed, judging by all the children the protagonist has fathered, it is the male who is naturally promiscuous not the female. Je songe à Gaspard ce n’est certainement pas Son vrai nom il voyage il a quitté la ville Bleue Lanchi où tant d’enfants l’appelaient papa Au fond du golfe calme en face des sept îles Gaspard marche et regrette et le riz et le thé La voie lactée La nuit car naturellement il ne marche Que la nuit attire souvent ses regards Mais Gaspard Sait bien qu’il ne faut pas la suivre (I am thinking of Gaspard that is certainly not His real name he is traveling he has left the city Blue Lanchi where so many children call him father On the gulf’s calm shore opposite the seven islands As he walks Gaspard fondly remembers the rice and tea The Milky Way At night for naturally he only walks At night often attracts his glance But Gaspard Knows better than to follow it).

Despite its anecdotal style and realistic pretensions, “Etoile” is basically an Absurdist drama. Although the first person narrative (which quickly switches to the third person) proceeds in a factual manner, the story that it relates is hopelessly vague. Masquerading as a straight-forward account, the poem poses far more questions than it answers. Although the reference to rice and tea situates the story in 43

The original version is reprinted in Décaudin, “Autour de Stavelot: deux cahiers et un agenda,” pp. 10-11.

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Asia, we have no idea where Blue Lanchi is located. The town could be in Turkey or Japan or anywhere in between. The original text specified that it was located in China. Nor do we have any idea where Gaspard is headed (or why)—he simply sets off on a mysterious journey. In the original version, he was going to visit Hindu sages in India. A number of other questions come to mind. What is Gaspard’s real name? Why does he conceal his identity? Where does he come from? What was he doing in Blue Lanchi? Why does he only travel at night? And finally, why is it such a bad idea to follow the Milky Way? Since Gaspard (or Gaspar) was the name of one of the Three Wisemen, perhaps he is following a sacred star to Bethlehem. Or, since he seems to be an adventurer, perhaps he is merely following his own star—like Marco Polo before him. “Té” presents a different set of problems, one of which confronts readers before the poem begins: how are we to interpret the title? Since neither the letter T nor its homonym thé (“tea”) appears to make any sense, the explanation must lie elsewhere. Reviewing the various possibilities, one discovers that té is an exclamation of surprise in the south of France (a deformation of tiens), which might be translated as “Hey!” in English. Since the poem consists of six unrelated thoughts, ranging from the witty to the absurd, this would seem to be the best choice. Like several other “Quelconqueries” (or parts of them), “Té” seems to have been especially composed for Lacerba. More precisely, since the individual texts were composed years before, they seem to have been collected for Lacerba. One wonders whether Apollinaire decided which ones to include or whether he left that task to Soffici. In either case, the six texts were clearly chosen at random. Like the fourth and fifth excerpts, which were borrowed from the cahier de Stavelot, the others were jotted down on different occasions over the years. The first text takes the form of an aphorism: “En matière de religion la première cause de doute est souvent l’ennui surtout chez les jeunes gens” (“the first cause of religious doubt is often boredom especially where young people are concerned”). This observation recalls several statements by the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, who claimed that human behavior was frequently influenced by ennui. Hovering in the background, the sardonic author of the Maximes is quickly displaced by another 17th century philosopher, who initiated the cult of reason. Parodying a celebrated passage in the Discours de

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la méthode, the second text introduces an amusing paradox: “Il pensa qu’il ne pensait pas” (“He thought that he wasn’t thinking”). Whereas Descartes derived his entire method (and deduced the existence of God) from his ability to think, Apollinaire demonstrates that this premise contains a fatal flaw. By deconstructing the opposition between thought and non-thought, consciousness and unconsciousness, he reveals the inherent contradiction that plagues the Cartesian method and Descartes’ view of the universe. Unconsciously parodying Marcel Proust in the third text, Apollinaire cites an example of involuntary memory that resembles the latter’s experience in A la recherche du temps perdu. Like Proust nibbling his petite madeleine, he bites into a lemon and is amazed to discover that the taste transports him back to his childhood, when his mother used to administer castor oil mixed with lemon and coffee. Taken from an early draft of Le Poète assassiné, the fourth text describes the protagonist’s sexual awakening. Rejecting any pretense of love, Nyctor (his original name) abandons himself wholeheartedly to the pleasures of the flesh.44 The fifth text consists of a vivid simile that Apollinaire had saved for future use: “Fumer comme un condamné à mort” (“Smoking like a man condemned to death”). Although the prisoner is presumably smoking furiously, in reality, someone about to be executed would savor every puff. The poem concludes with a joke that resists translation into English: “Le cyclope aveugle à qui on a crevé son oeil dit Je suis borgne” (“The Cyclops whose eye has been put out says I am blind in one eye”). The irony being that he only has one eye and thus is no longer borgne but aveugle (“totally blind”). And yet, since borgne means “one-eyed” as well as “blind in one eye,” the term continues to apply to him. Describing the Cyclops before and after the event that cost him his vision, it presents the reader with a logical conundrum much like the one evoked in the second text. As always, Apollinaire is attentive to the play of language and fascinated by its endless possibilities. Other “Quelconqueries” derive humorous effects from comments that are silly, childish, and/or nonsensical. This describes the last three lines of "Le Phoque") ("The Seal”), for example, which appear to make no sense whatsoever. 44

For more information about Nyctor, see the introduction and notes to Le Poète assassiné in Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose completes, Vol. I.

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Apollinaire on the Edge J’ai les yeux d’un vrai veau marin Et de Madame Ygrec l’allure On me voit dans tous nos meetings Je fais de la littérature Je suis phoque de mon état Et comme il faut qu’on se marie Un beau jour j’épouserai Lota Du matin au soir l’Otarie Papa Maman Pipe et tabac crachoir caf’conc’ Laï Tou (My eyes are those of a baby seal And my walk that of Madame Y I can be seen at every meeting I practice literature I am a seal by profession And since everybody must marry One fine day I will marry Lotta From morning ‘til night lottery Papa Mama Pipe and tobacco spittoon music hall Laï Tou)

Like “Fiord,” “Le Petit Balai,” and “Voyage à Paris,” this poem was taken from a comic operetta entitled Le Marchand d’anchois (The Anchovy Merchant), which Apollinaire composed in 1906.45 Originally meant to be sung (to the tune of “Le Pendu”), “Le Phoque” is written in octosyllabic verse with alternating rhymes. Even a cursory glance reveals why André Breton included it in his Anthologie de l’humour noir. A wicked satire in the tradition of “Monsieur Prudhomme,” it is thoroughly amusing. Like Verlaine, who satirized pompous bourgeois fathers, Apollinaire directs his barbs at pompous literary figures. As in the earlier poem, the dramatic monologue allows the speaker to reveal his own inadequacies. Unaware of his serious limitations, the latter behaves like a fatuous ass—or rather, like a big fat seal. Instead of bleu marin (“deep blue”), as Gerald Kamber points out, the reader is surprised to encounter the term “veau

45

See Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose completes, Vol. I, pp. 984-1007. The manuscript of “Le Phoque” is discussed on p. 1459 and reproduced in Album Apollinaire, ed. Pierre-Marcel Adéma and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1971), p. 183.

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marin.”46 Although the latter expression is synonymous with phoque, it resonates with additional associations. A veau is not only a calf, for example, but also someone who is a “lout.” And veau marin inevitably reminds one of vaurien—a person who is “good for nothing.” If the first line attacks the protagonist’s intelligence, the second line casts aspersions on his masculinity. Not only is he a dummy, the poem proclaims, but he is effeminate as well. Fluttering his eyelashes and flouncing around like a drag queen, he is a conspicuous figure at literary gatherings. Not surprisingly, he also turns out to be a pretentious twit. The first indication appears in the third line, where he employs the English word “meeting” instead of its French equivalent. However, this affectation is insignificant compared to the facetious statement in the next line. The proper reply to a query about one’s occupation is not “I do literature,” as Kamber puts it, but rather “I am a writer” or “I write poetry.” The actual response manages to be boastful and irreverent at the same time. Although the fact that the speaker writes “literature” suggests he is an important author, the manner in which this statement is phrased implies that literature is simply an amusement. It is uttered in the same spirit as “Je fais du sport” (“I go in for sports”) or “Je fais de l’auto” (“I am fond of motoring”). The following line is equally revealing and equally devastating: “Je suis phoque de mon état.” It is impossible to grasp the underlying allusion, however, unless one knows that phoque is a slang term for "blockhead."47 Confirming the reader’s earlier impression, the protagonist confesses that he is a “professional idiot.” The manuscript reveals that Apollinaire was originally thinking of Jean Lorrain, a minor Symbolist poet who had become a “prisonnier de son esthétisme décadent.”48 Illustrating Apollinaire’s love of word play, the next three lines culminate in a triple pun: “l’Otarie” (“sea-lion”), “Lota rie” (“Lotta laughs”), and “loterie” (“lottery”). Like the remainder of the poem, they evoke the speaker’s imaginary future. Once he and Lota are married, he confides, their house will be filled with 46 Gerald Kamber, Max Jacob and the Poetics of Cubism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), p. 149. 47 Césaire Villatte provides the following German equivalents: Dummkopf, einfältige Gans, and Blökerin. See his Parisismen, ed. Rudolf Meyer-Riefstahl and Marcel Flandrin, rev. ed. (Berlin-Schöneberg: Langenscheidt,1912), p. 286. 48 Michel Décaudin, La Crise des valeurs symbolistes: ving ans de poésie française, 1895-1914 (1960) (Geneva: Slatkine, 1981), p.168.

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laughter. Although he will no longer be single, he plans to preserve his bachelor lifestyle. While his wife attends to domestic details, he will continue to smoke, gamble, and frequent music halls. Since the national lottery was not created until 1933, “loterie” probably refers to another kind of gambling--perhaps a popular version of roulette known as loterie foraine. Although “Le Phoque” seems fairly coherent up to this point, its conclusion is problematic. Following the triple pun, the poem disintegrates into a jumble of isolated nouns and nonsense syllables whose purpose is far from clear. Apollinaire interjects two exclamations in particular that make little or no sense: “Papa Maman” and “Laï Tou.” While Kamber astutely deduces that the second expression is a distorted version of “Là est Tout” (“There You Have It”), he mistakenly interprets it as yodeling. However, the question remains: why is the phrase distorted? This query prompts us to reexamine the first expression, which has much in common with the second. In retrospect, the two phrases are clearly examples of baby talk. Their significance only becomes apparent when we ask ourselves who is speaking. Uttered by the protagonist, whose narcissism and selfishness are well documented, they would satirize his childish behavior. Uttered by the imaginary children he will have with Lota, they would belong to his vivid fantasy. Although both interpretations are tempting, a third possibility exists which seems to be the correct explanation. In 1885, an obscure poet named Ernest d’Hervilly published a collection of sonnets devoted to Parisian animals, including a fascinating text entitled “Le Phoque.”49 As he was strolling along a boulevard, d’Hervilly related, he encountered a sideshow featuring a trained seal. The illustration shows a tout wearing a crumpled hat, a nondescript coat, and checkered pants gesturing with his cane to the animal on the other side of a fence. Remembering how much he enjoyed similar performances as a child, d’Hervilly purchased a ticket (for 15 centimes) and eagerly stepped inside. J’entrai. —Las, mes amis, ce n’était plus le même. C’était bien son grand oeil à la tendrese extrême, 49 Ernest d’Hervilly, Les Bêtes à Paris (Paris: Launete, 1885). Each of the thirty-six poems is accompanied by a marvelous illustration by G. Fraipont. Besides the seal, the performing animals include an organ grinder’s monkey and—incredibly—a marmot dancing to the music of a hurdy gurdy.

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Et sa moustache longue en héros de roman, Mais il ne disait plus ni papa ni maman. (I entered. —Alas, my friends, it wasn’t the same. I recognized his large eyes full of tenderness, And his long mustache like a romantic hero’s, But he never said papa or mama.)

Astonishingly, French seals seem to have been taught to pronounce certain words as part of their performance. What looks like baby talk in “Le Phoque” turns out to be baby talk uttered by a marine mammal! Since Apollinaire’s readers were familiar with this convention, they would have grasped the reference immediately. “Papa Maman” and “Laï Tou” simply continue the seal metaphor that dominates the rest of the poem. Like the first expression, the second also seems to have been part of the seal’s vocabulary. Indeed, it may even have signaled the end of the performance. Taking a cue from a more recent model, one might translate the last line as “That’s all Folks.” Erotic and even scatological remarks also play a significant role in the “Quelconqueries.” As noted previously, “L’Arrivée du paquebot” and “Té” include several references to erotic encounters. Similarly, a poem entitled “69 6666 ...6 9...,” in which the poet discusses the secret affinities of 6 and 9, alludes to a notorious sexual position. For that matter, “Le Phoque” conceals an obscene pun that seems to have eluded Scott Bates’ vigilant eye. To an English speaker, as Apollinaire well knew, the title sounds like a slang term for sexual intercourse. However, the prize in this category goes to a hilarious composition entitled “Chapeau-Tombeau” (“Hat-Tomb”). Included in André Breton’s Anthologie de l’humour noir, the poem satirizes a recent fashion trend that threatened to decimate yet another avian species. As soon as the vogue for ostrich feathers began to wane, followed by a similar passion for egret plumes, stuffed birds began to appear on women’s hats. “Chapeau-Tombeau” attacks both the designers who were responsible for these new creations and the women who wore them. The first two stanzas satirize the new style, while the third dismisses it altogether. On a niché Dans son tombeau L’oiseau perché

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Sur ton chapeau Il a vécu En Amérique Ce petit cul Or Nithologique Or J’en ai assez Je vais pisser (Marooned On your bonnet His tomb There upon it He came from Martinique One dumb Ex-parakeet That’s Enough for me I’ll take a pee)

The rude gesture that accompanies the final stanza effectively expresses Apollinaire’s disgust. Taking the reader by surprise, the poem concludes with a burst of derisive laughter. “L’esthétique de la surprise chère à l’auteur,” Décaudin remarks, “s’épanouit ici dans le rire” (“the aesthetics of surprise so dear to the author culminates in laughter here”).50 Indeed, this describes many of the “Quelconqueries,” whose humorous effects derive from unexpected juxtapositions, incongruous associations, and frequent word play. As early as 1914, Apollinaire declared that surprise played a central role in modern literature and art. “La surprise est le plus grand ressort nouveau,” he proclaimed three years later; “C’est par la surprise, par la place importante qu’il fait à la surprise que l’esprit nouveau se distingue de tous les mouvements artistiques et littéraires qui l’ont précédé” (“Surprise is the greatest new motive force of all. It is the use of surprise, the important role that it reserves for surprise, that distinguishes the new spirit from all the literary and artistic movements that have 50

Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, p.1146.

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preceded it”) (the italics are Apollinaire’s).51 Conceived as a global principle, surprise assumes many different forms in the “Quelconqueries” and elsewhere, including unexpected shock, deliberate provocation, and confrontation with the absurd. By stressing the aesthetic function of surprise, Apollinaire paved the way for Dada and Surrealism, which adapted the principle to their own needs. Whereas the Dadaists perfected the art of scandal, the Surrealists focused their attention on the “marvelous.” By insisting on the aesthetic importance of banality, Apollinaire sought not just to demystify the work of art but also to redefine the nature of art itself. The “Quelconqueries” are profoundly subversive because they reject a whole series of traditional assumptions. Possessing remarkable diversity and tremendous freedom, they represent not a defiant genre so much as a defiant gesture. As we have seen, Apollinaire refused to differentiate between artistic and non-artistic materials. Objects do not possess aesthetic significance in themselves, he maintained, but are endowed with that quality by the poet. Everything and anything is grist for his mill, from the loftiest sentiment to the humblest object. “On peut partir d’un fait quotidien,” Apollinaire declared in 1917; “un mouchoir qui tombe peut être pour le poète le levier avec lequel il soulèvera tout un univers” (“An insignificant event can provide a point of departure: a handkerchief dropped accidently may be the lever with which the poet can move an entire universe”).52 Apollinaire was thinking not only of Shakespeare, who accomplished this feat in Othello, but also of the Greek inventor Archimedes. While the former constructed a tragedy around the loss of Desdemona’s handkerchief, the latter boasted: “give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the world.”

51 Apollinaire, “L’Esprit nouveau et les poètes,” Oeuvres en prose complètes, Vol. II, p. 949. 52 Ibid., p. 951. Margaret Davies discusses this principle in “Un Mouchoir qui tombe,” En hommage à Michel Décaudin, ed. Pierre Brunel et al. (Paris: Minard, 1986), pp. 193-201. When Vigny’s translation of Othello was performed in 1829, the audience responded with cries of outrage at the unbearably common word “handkerchief.” See Alfred de Vigny, “Lettre à Lord *** sur la soirée du 24 octobre 1829 et sur un système dramatique” in Oeuvres complètes, ed. F. Baldensperger (Paris: Gallimard/ Pléiade, 1964), p. 291.

Chapter 3

Apollinaire and Children’s Rhymes Comment faire pour être heureux Comme un petit enfant candide — “La Chanson du Mal-Aimé”

Studying the relations between Apollinaire, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp, Katia Samaltanos concludes that the poet served as a major catalyst for primitivism in modern art.1 Stressing his radical artistic vision and his important function as leader of the French avantgarde, she identifies three areas in which Apollinaire’s influence was decisive. Not only did he help to publicize African and Oceanic art, but he also wrote about children’s drawings and the art of the insane. What Samaltanos calls “primitivism” is perhaps better described as unmediated experience—experience that has not been distorted by viewing it through civilized lenses. Instead of describing, interpreting, and classifying it, the primitivists strove to communicate the experience itself. Reducing their participation to a bare minimum, they sought to create an art brut. Representing a truer path to reality—or at least a more direct route—unmediated experience was also prized by numerous writers. Besides its ability to put them in touch with the authentic world, they valued its cathartic power, which allowed them to break with the past and to expand their creative horizons. Like the artists, therefore, they contributed to the evolution of modern aesthetic consciousness. Motivated by the same desires as the primitivist painters, Apollinaire experimented with unmediated experience in a number of different works. The most prominent example is “Lundi rue Christine” (“Monday Christine Street”), which consists of random phrases overheard in 1

Katia Samaltanos, Apollinaire: Catalyst for Primitivism, Picabia, and Duchamp (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984), pp. 9-60. Jean-Claude Blachère comes to much the same conclusion in Le Modèle nègre: aspects littéraires du mythe primitiviste au XXe siècle chez Apollinaire, Cendrars, Tzara (Dakar, Abidjan, Lomé: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1981), p. 70.

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a cafe. Like the other conversation poems, it serves essentially as a transcript. Similarly, many of the “Quelconqueries” incorporate bits of earlier manuscripts or, like “1890,” reproduce actual quotations. Others describe ordinary objects or experiences without attempting to embellish them. In addition, as Antoine Fongaro has demonstrated, a number of Apollinaire’s poems contain snatches of popular songs.2 Since they are informed by a collage aesthetic, this is not terribly surprising. Reflecting “une poétique des ciseaux et de la colle” (“a poetics of scissors and paste”), in Michel Décaudin’s words, Apollinaire’s works contain many different kinds of citations.3

Childish Games Fongaro’s discovery has shed important light on a number of poems, especially those written during the First World War, which incorporate snatches of barracks ballads. He also noted in passing that “Fusée” (“Flare”) contains a verse taken from a children’s rhyme: “Une souris verte file parmi la mousse” (“A green mouse flees among the moss”).4 The rhyme in question, or at least one version, goes as follows: Une souris verte Qui courre dans l’herbe. On l’attrape par la queue, On la montre à ces messieurs. Ces messieurs me disent: “Trempez-la dans l’huile, Trempez-la dans l’eau; Il sortira un escargot.” (A green mouse Scurries through the grass. I caught it by the tail, I showed it to those gentlemen. 2 See Antoine Fongaro, “‘Les Sept Epées’ et Le Plaisir des dieux,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 327-330 (1972), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 11, pp. 111-19 and “Sources gaillardes (suite),” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 677-681 (1983), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 16, pp. 171-74. 3 . Michel Décaudin, “Alcools” de Guillaume Apollinaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), p. 53. For an excellent description of Apollinaire’s poetic technique, see pp. 43-54. 4 Fongaro, “Sources gaillardes (suite), p. 174, n. 1.

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Those gentlemen told me: “Dip it in oil, Dip it in water; It will turn into a snail.”)5

A collage portrait of life at the front, “Fusée” includes glimpses of various animals, including Apollinaire’s horse, a stretcher-bearer’s dog, a tawny owl and the aforementioned rodent. That the latter is a magic mouse is confirmed not only by its unusual color but by the children’s rhyme cited above. An emissary from another time and place, it contributes to the unreal atmosphere that progressively envelops the poem. While the influence of military songs on Apollinaire’s war poetry is perfectly understandable, the discovery of a line from a children’s rhyme is surprising. Nor, as it turns out, is this an isolated instance. Inspired by the martial music and chansons gaillardes he encountered at boot camp, Apollinaire looked for other musical models to emulate as well. One of the first children’s songs to attract his attention was the following: As-tu connu Pipo, Pipo Du temps qu’il était militaire? As-tu connu Pipo, Pipo Du temps qu’il était sous les drapeaux? (Did you know Pipo, Pipo In the days when he was a soldier? Did you know Pipo, Pipo When he was in the army?)6

Since the song already embodied a military theme, it only needed to be modified slightly. Changing a few words to reflect his own situation, Apollinaire added the following refrain to “Les Saisons”: As-tu connu Guy au galop Du temps qu’il était militaire? As-tu connu Guy au galop Du temps qu’il était artiflot A la guerre? (Did you know Galloping Guy 5

Pierre Roy, Cent Comptines (Paris: Jonquières, 1926), n.p. Jean Baucomont et al., eds. Les Comptines de langue française (Paris: Seghers, 1961), p. 175.

6

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Apollinaire on the Edge In the days when he was a soldier? Did you know Galloping Guy When he was an artilleryman In the war?)

As Fongaro points out, the initial letters of each line form a playful acrostic reading “A DADA” (“ON A HORSIE”).7 Composed shortly after Apollinaire arrived at the front, the refrain reflects the jaunty demeanor he adopted initially—before he experienced the full horror of the war. Sent to Louise de Coligny-Chatillon in May 1915, the poem sought to reassure her (and perhaps Apollinaire himself) that he was in no real danger. Following his disastrous affair with Lou, Apollinaire impulsively proposed to Madeleine Pagès, whom he had met during a train trip, and was accepted. In December, he received a military leave that allowed him to visit his fiancée in Algeria, where she lived with her family. During the two weeks he spent in Oran, Apollinaire eagerly soaked up many exotic sights and sounds. One thing he enjoyed repeatedly, he confides in La Femme Assise (The Seated Woman), was watching a group of schoolgirls jumping rope.8 What fascinated him in particular was the discovery that their rhymes were inspired by recent events. Not only was the traditional genre still alive, but it was continuing to evolve as well. Thrilled to observe folklore in the making, he jotted down two of the songs the girls were singing: A. B. C. D. Les Français ont gagné, Les All’mands ont perdu, Le Kaiser sera pendu. Ah! Mon Dieu! quell’ triste année! Tout le mond’ mobilisé. Ya des morts et des blessés, Il y a mêm’ des prisonniers. Viv’ la classe de vingt ans! C’est des homm’s, plus des enfants, S’ils s’en vont aux Dardanelles, 7

Antoine Fongaro, “Un Acrostiche peu visible,” Que Vlo-Ve? Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th ser., No. 6 (April-June 1999), pp. 84-85. 8 The experience was recounted in the first version of La Femme Assise, published in 1920. See Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose, ed. Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/ Pléiade, 1977), Vol. I, p. 1363-64.

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Qu’ils n’oublient pas leurs petits demoiselles. (A. B. C. D. The French have won, The Germans have lost, The Kaiser will be hanged. Oh! My God! What a horrible year! Everyone has been drafted. There are dead as well as wounded, There are even some prisoners. Hooray for the military graduates! They are men, no longer children. If they are sent to the Dardanelles, Don’t let them forget the girls at home.)

So far we have focused our attention on texts composed during the First World War. However, earlier evidence of Apollinaire’s interest in children’s rhymes exists as well. In an article entitled “Le Folklore des jeux d’enfant” (“The Folklore of Children’s Games”), published in Paris-Journal on June 26, 1914, he reported: Pierre Roy est en train de graver sur bois des compositions importantes destinées à illustrer ces petites poésies merveilleuses, et parfois fort anciennes, que les enfants récitent dans leurs jeux et tout particulièrement pour se répartir en camps différents: Pique et piqué comme gramme Bourre et bourré ratatamme Miss tram drame. (Pierre Roy is carving some important woodcuts destined to illustrate those marvelous little poems {which are sometimes extremely ancient}that children recite during their games, and especially to divide themselves into different groups: Pique et piqué comme grame Bourre et bourré ratatamme Miss tram drame.)9

9

Guillaume Apollinaire, “Le Folklore des jeux d’enfant,” Paris-Journal, June 26, 1914. Repr. in Oeuvres en prose complètes, ed. Pierre Caizergues and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1991), Vol. II, p. 793. The projected volume was interrupted by World War I but finally appeared in 1926 with 45 illustrations. See note 5.

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Apollinaire was thinking of a wide variety of songs and oral formulas usually associated with folklore, whose freshness and spontaneity he greatly valued. Assembled under the general heading of comptines, these include jump-rope rhymes, counting-out rhymes, riddles, and other childhood games. Since these shape much of our early experience, their memory persists throughout adulthood. By incorporating words and images into his works from children’s rhymes, Apollinaire opened up yet another field of experience for poetic exploration and appealed to modern sensibility in its endless quest for variety and diversity. His enthusiasm for comptines was far from a recent phenomenon, moreover, and can be traced back at least to the turn of the century. Dating from 1902, “La Maison des morts” (“The House of the Dead”) was inspired by a visit to a cemetery in Munich. Struck by the sight of forty-nine corpses displayed in a window like department store mannequins, Apollinaire imagined a scenario in which they briefly returned to life. As the adults celebrated their reunion with friends and family, the children serenaded them. Des enfants De ce monde ou bien de l’autre Chantaient de ces rondes Aux paroles absurdes et lyriques Qui sans doute sont les restes Des plus anciens monuments poétiques De l’humanité. (Children From this world or the other Were singing those rounds With absurd lyric verses That are doubtless the relics Of humanity’s Oldest poetic monuments.)

Like the article cited previously, “La Maison des morts” reveals that Apollinaire was acquainted with folklore scholarship. For although scholars dispute the exact age of children’s rhymes, they agree that most of them are ancient.10 According to several authorities, some 10

According to Iona and Peter Opie, 85 per cent of children’s rhymes are probably at least than 200 years old, and a quarter date from before 1600. See the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 6-7.

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of the classic rhymes are thousands of years old. In addition to the poems discussed earlier, a number of other works by Apollinaire display traces of children’s rhymes as well, including “Le Pont Mirabeau,” whose second stanza evokes an imaginary bridge: Les mains dans les mains restons face à face Tandis que sous Le pont de nos bras passe Des éternels regards l’onde si lasse (Let us face each other hand in hand While beneath The bridge of our arms flows The water weary of our endless glances).

As Thérèse Roméo notes, this idea was borrowed from the following comptine, which has several variations: Enfilons les aiguilles de bois Dans le jupon de ma grand-mère. Enfilons les aiguilles de bois Dans le jupon du Chinois. Refrain: Passe, passe, passera La dernière, la dernière restera. (Let’s thread the wooden needles In my grandmother’s petticoat. Let’s thread the wooden needles In the Chinese man’s petticoat. Refrain: Pass, pass, pass again The last, the last one must remain.)11

A considerable number of comptines are gender specific, that is, traditionally reserved for one sex or the other. Like jump-roperhymes, “Enfilons les aiguilles de bois” is associated with a gameusually played by girls. As they all chant the words, the littlest onespass under a bridge formed by the arms of two older girls. As in the

11

Thérèse Roméo, “Apollinaire paysagiste,” paper presented at the Colloque Apollinaire in Nice, June 1980, apparently unpublished. Cf. Baucomont et al., eds. Les Comptines de la langue française, pp. 311-12.

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American game of musical chairs, each girl is eliminated in turn until only one remains.

“La Blanche Neige” Another poem that appears to have been influenced by children’s rhymes is “La Blanche Neige” (“The White Snow”), which presents a charming fantasy: Les anges dans le ciel L’un est vêtu en officier L’un est vêtu en cuisinier Et les autres chantent Bel officier couleur du ciel Le doux printemps longtemps après Noël Te médaillera d’un beau soleil D’un beau soleil Le cuisinier plume les oies Ah! tombe neige Tombe et que n’ai-je Ma bien-aimée entre mes bras (Angels angels in the sky One is dressed like an officer One is dressed like a cook And the others are singing Handsome sky-blue officer Long after Christmas sweet spring Will decorate you with a golden sun With a golden sun The cook is plucking the geese Ah! Fall snowflakes Fall and if only I had My sweetheart in my arms)

Mechtild Cranston speculates that “La Blanche Neige” dates from March 1902, when Apollinaire went to Cologne to observe the

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Mardi Gras celebration.12 However, internal evidence suggests the poem was composed during the Christmas season—either in 1901 or a few years later. Citing the cook, the Christmas goose, and the snow, LeRoy C. Breunig conjectures that it depicts a Rhineland scene but does not propose a date.13 Since the final line seems to refer to Annie Playden, Michel Décaudin suggests the poem was composed during the winter of 1903-1904.14 Scholars also disagree about the source of “La Blanche Neige.” Stressing its fundamental indeterminacy, Cranston concludes that the poem is modeled on fairy tales.15 Focusing on the role of the angels, Mario Richter suggests it is indebted to various Christmas carols.16 Analyzing the equation between angels, geese, and snowflakes, Antoine Fongaro detects traces of several literary models.17 My own guess is that the poem was inspired by a visual source. I suspect Apollinaire borrowed the fanciful scene either from an illustration or from a window display. What matters ultimately, to be sure, is how Apollinaire transformed his original burst of inspiration into the finished composition. As Michael Riffaterre has demonstrated, every poem results from “the transformation of ... a minimal and literal sentence into a longer, complex, and non-literal periphrasis.”18 This operation is performed by a “hypogram” (primary intertext), which distorts the sentence and 12 Mechtild Cranston, “A la découverte de ‘La Blanche Neige’ de Guillaume Apollinaire,” French Review, Vol. XXXIX, No. 5 (April 1966), p. 685. We now know Apollinaire witnessed the Cologne Mardi Gras in February. See Apollinaire, Correspondance avec son frère et sa mère, ed. Gilbert Boudar and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Corti, 1987), p. 39. 13 LeRoy C. Breunig, “The Chronology of Apollinaire’s Alcools,” PMLA, Vol. LXVII, No.7 (December 1952), p. 919. 14 . Michel Décaudin, “La Blanche Neige,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 104107 (1964), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 3, p. 128. 15 Cranston, “A la découverte de ‘La Blanche Neige’ de Guillaume Apollinaire,” p. 693. 16 Mario Richter, Apollinaire: il rinnovamento della scrittura poetica all’inizio del novecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), pp. 67-78. Entitled “‘La Blanche Neige’ d’Apollinaire”, an earlier version appeared in Etudes autour d”Alcools”, ed. Anne de Fabry and Marie-France Hilgar (Birmingham, Alabama: Summa, 1985), pp. 41-50 and earlier in Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Apollinaire, 2nd ser., Nos. 6-7 (April-September 1983), paginated separately. 17 Antoine Fongaro, “Des Sources d’Apollinaire,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 146-149 (1966), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 5, pp. 112-114. 18 Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), p. 19.

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produces the final text through conversion and expansion. The hypogram may consist of a quotation, a thematic configuration, a set of literary conventions, or a cliché. In the absence of actual citations, therefore, a poem will incorporate themes and/or stylistic devices borrowed from other works. This procedure is illustrated by “La Blanche Neige,” whose tone, imagery, and rhetorical devices recall those of children’s rhymes. Instead of evoking a specific model, the poem embodies a series of generic expectations. Except for the final two lines (which may have been added later), “La Blanche Neige” was clearly designed for children. Or rather, since Apollinaire was writing for an adult audience, it was intended to give the impression that it was designed for children. In keeping with this mission, as A. E. Pilkington remarks, “the poem exploits the mode of the nursery rhyme.”19 Together with the frequent repetitions, which lend a singsong quality to the work, the final twist recalls various children’s songs. Greet agrees with this assessment but attributes the resemblance to the irregular line lengths, occasional rhyme, and fairytale imagery.20 In addition, as Décaudin points out, several identical rhymes (“ciel” / “ciel”; “soleil” / “soleil”) and one banal rhyme (“printemps” / “longtemps”) contribute to the general echolalia.21 To a considerable extent, these rhetorical devices are responsible for the childish tone that pervades the composition. They are complemented not only by the simple diction, which verges on banality, but by the fact that the speaker joyfully embraces the Christmas fantasy. Indeed, by the end of the second stanza, he has become an active participant. Observing the angelic army officer shivering beneath his sky-blue overcoat, he assures him that spring is just around the corner. Since the speaker turns out to be Apollinaire, however, these remarks are entirely fanciful. They are addressed not to the “bel officier” but to an implicit audience composed of one or more children. This impression is reinforced by the angels’ costumes, which are equally fanciful. Shedding their long white robes, they have disguised themselves as a cook and a soldier—exactly like two children playing “dress-up.” These and other playful touches provide 19

Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, ed. A. E. Pilkington (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), p. 128. 20 Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, tr. and ed. Anne Hyde Greet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), p. 82. 21 Décaudin, “La Blanche Neige,” p. 126

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the key to the poem, which depicts a fantasy world where anything can occur. Like every good children’s story, it strives to be entertaining. When Apollinaire reminds us of his presence in the last two lines, it comes as quite a shock. Like the imaginary children grouped around him, we are so immersed in the tale that reality—and the adult world—takes us by surprise.

“La Dame” Besides stylistic and thematic traces of children’s rhymes, “La Dame” contains several quotations. Unlike the innocent fantasy presented in “La Blanche Neige,” the drama that it enacts borders on the bizarre. In contrast to the first poem, which is perfectly coherent, the second is fragmentary and fraught with mystery. Toc toc Il a fermé sa porte Les lys du jardin sont flétris Quel est donc ce mort qu’on emporte Tu viens de toquer à sa porte Et trotte trotte Trotte la petite souris (Knock knock He has closed his door The garden lilies are withered Whose corpse are they carrying off You just knocked on his door And the little mouse Goes trot trot trot)

“La Dame” was originally taken from a much longer work entitled “La Clef” (“The Key”), whose female protagonist sets out in search of a symbolic key.22 When she returns with the object of her quest, she discovers her lover is dead and drowns herself in a lake. Published in 1903, “La Dame” was conceived initially as a dialogue between the woman and an anonymous bystander. Originally entitled “Le Retour” (“The Return”), it consisted of five octosyllabic lines rhyming 22

Guillaume Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Marcel Adéma and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1965), p. 553.

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ABAAB. Apollinaire eliminated the fifth verse in 1912, added two more lines, and changed the title to “La Dame.” Finally, as he would do in Alcools the following year, he removed the commas, periods, and quotation marks. This decision drastically altered the way in which the reader perceives the poem. By abolishing the punctuation signs, Décaudin notes, “Apollinaire a transmuté un petit drame en une scène énigmatique” (“Apollinaire transformed a brief drama into an enigmatic scene”).23 Just how enigmatic can be seen from the first stanza, which juxtaposes three apparently unrelated remarks. Uttered by one or more disembodied voices, they appear to be completely unmotivated. Who is knocking at the door, one wonders, and what does he or she want? Who is the man in the house, and why has he shut his door? Why are the lilies withered? Where did the corpse come from? Not surprisingly, critics are divided on these and similar questions. Since the poem is basically indeterminate, several different scenarios are possible. Although Didier Alexandre disagrees, most scholars believe the corpse belongs to the man mentioned in the first line.24 The reason he refuses to answer the door is because he is dead. And while the same critic claims the visitor is “la cruelle et insouciante incarnation de la mort” (“the cruel and remorseless incarnation of death”), we know from “La Clef” that she is the man’s fiancée—who is evoked in the title. Wondering why there is no response, she looks around distractedly and notices several people carrying a coffin, which ironically contains her lover. Thus the poem opens on a negative note that becomes more intense as the reader progresses. In addition, the withered lilies introduce a funereal atmosphere, which deepens with the discovery of the corpse in the next line. While it is not surprising to encounter flowers at a funeral, those in “La Dame” possess a symbolic function. Upon reflection, one perceives that they are emblems of mortality. “C’est parce que les lis sont flétris,” Marc Poupon explains, “que le lecteur divine aussitôt que le mort est le propriétaire du jardin” (“Since the lilies are withered, the reader deduces that the garden belongs to the

23

Décaudin, “Alcools” de Guillaume Apollinaire, p. 52. Didier Alexandre, Guillaume Apollinaire, “Alcools” (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), pp. 51-52. 24

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dead man”).25 Ultimately, the garden and the vacant house belong to Death, which presides over the first three lines. Despite the stanza’s morbid thematics, which seem far removed from the experience of childhood, several echos of children’s rhymes can be detected. Since the latter contain frequent references to death, this is not terribly surprising. A simple comptine like that quoted by Pierre Roy could conceivably have served as a point of departure: J’entre dans un petit cabinet J’y vois la Mort qui rôtissait Je la prends par les pieds par la tête Je la jette par la fenêtre. (I enter a small room I see Death roasting by the fire I take her by the feet by the head I throw her out the window.)

Where one finds the clearest influence of children’s rhymes, however, is at the beginning and the end of “La Dame.” Like “eenie, meenie, minie, moe” in English, “toc toc toc” is a phrase used in counting-out rhymes. In the following comptine, for example, the children stand in a circle around their leader, who counts them by reciting the rhyme. When he or she reaches the final word (“tonnere”), the child in question receives a tap on the cheek and must withdraw. Toc toc toc Il pleut sur la terre; Toc toc toc Il fait noir et claire; Toc toc toc Tu bats des paupières; Toc toc toc Tu fais des éclairs; Toc toc toc Voici le tonnerre. (Knock knock knock It is raining outside; 25

Marc Poupon, “Sources allemandes d’Apollinaire,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 530-536 (1978), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 14, p. 14.

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Apollinaire on the Edge Knock knock knock It is dark and bright; Knock knock knock You blink your eyes; Knock knock knock You make lightning; Knock knock knock Here comes the thunder.)26

As several critics have noted, threshold imagery plays an important role in Apollinaire’s works. However, the same doors and windows that allow us to pass from one realm to another can also serve as impediments. It depends on whether they are open or closed. Whereas “Les Fenêtres” invites readers to throw back the shutters and admire the Paris rooftops, “La Porte” dissuades them from opening the door to a dismal hotel. Other doors—like that in “La Dame”—remain tightly shut no matter how hard one pounds on them.27 Interestingly, portes (both doors and gates) also play a significant role in children’s rhymes, where they are associated with similar rites of passage. Since they are usually closed, most of the rhymes exhort the children to open them. This describes several comptines associated with the jeu du tunnel, traces of which appear in “Le Pont Mirabeau.” As they pass under a bridge formed by their friend’s arms, some children chant “Pic et pic bagnolet, / Les portes sont-elles ouvertes?” (“Pic et pic bagnolet, / Are the doors open?”). Others prefer a version of “Enfilons les aiguilles de bois,” which includes the following lines: Saint Pierre nous a donné Les clés du Paradis Pour ouvrir les portes, les portes, Pour ouvrir les portes, les portes du Paradis. (Saint Peter has given us The keys to Paradise To open the gates, the gates, To open the gates, the gates of Paradise).28

26

Baucomont et al, Les Comptines de la langue française, p. 293. See Madeleine Boisson, Apollinaire et les mythologies antiques (Paris: Nizet & Fasano: Schena, 1989), p. 354 and Marie-Jeanne Durry, Guillaume Apollinaire: “Alcools” (Paris: SEDES, 1964), Vol. II, pp. 120-23, respectively. 28 Baucomont et al, Les Comptines de la langue française, pp. 312 and 311-12 respectively. 27

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As Marie-Jeanne Durry notes, the last two lines of “La Dame” “font une disparité guillerette avec la mélancolie de ceux qui précèdent” (“contrast vividly with the melancholy lines that precede them”).29 Not only is the rhythm much more lively, but the conclusion catches the reader by surprise. Introduced at the very last moment, the image of the scurrying mouse appears to be entirely gratuitous. Divorced from the rest of the poem, the last two lines strike one as completely illogical. Fortunately, with a little effort the mouse’s identity and motives can be reconstructed. Critics generally agree that the lines refer to the dead man’s fiancée, who, receiving no response to her knock, decides to leave.30 Significantly, the poem was originally entitled “La Petite Souris” (and before that “La Souris”) until Apollinaire changed the title to “La Dame.” While this much is fairly clear, one wonders why the poet chose to compare the lady to a tiny rodent. Greet believes the last two lines represent a verbal play on a popular cliché: “On entendrait trotter une souris” (“You could hear a pin drop”).31 According to this scenario, the knocking on the dead man’s door would be followed by a deep silence. She adds that the mouse itself may have been suggested by the lady’s feet appearing and disappearing beneath her long skirts. Indeed, since “trotte trotte / Trotte” records the sound of her heels clicking briskly on the pavement, this is more than likely. By contrast, Scott Bates and Didier Alexandre believe the lady is a prostitute (one of the numerous meanings of souris).32 Bates reports that streetwalkers were called trotteuses and cites a popular refrain: “trotte, trotte / Javote / Et toujours / Revends tes amours” (“trot, trot / Javote / And sell your love / Again and again”). Finally, Décaudin suggests that Apollinaire was thinking of a poem by Verlaine, entitled “Impression fausse,” which includes the following stanza: Dame souris trotte Noire dans le gris du soir, Dame souris trotte 29

Durry, Guillaume Apollinaire: “Alcools,” Vol. II, p. 64. However, Poupon thinks the conclusion depicts the departure of the dead man’s soul, which is disguised as a mouse (“Sources allemandes d’Apollinaire,” p. 14). 31 Apollinaire, Alcools, tr. and ed. Greet, p. 266. 32 Scott Bates, Dictionnare des mots libres d’Apollinaire (Sewanee, Tennessee: private printed, 1991), pp. 142-43 and Alexandre, Guillaume Apollinaire, “Alcools,” p. 52. 30

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Apollinaire on the Edge Grise dans le soir. (Lady mouse trots along Black in the gray evening, Lady mouse trots along Gray in the evening).33

Although it is tempting to conclude that “La Dame” was modeled on “Impression fausse,” Apollinaire actually drew on a different source. The two poems resemble each other not because one is indebted to the other but because they were both influenced by children’s rhymes. The latter’s impact on the second composition is signaled, among other things, by the abrupt change in tone that introduces the conclusion. As Pilkington remarks, the last two lines possess the disarming logic of nursery rhymes.34 All of a sudden, Apollinaire seems to be addressing an audience composed of children rather than adults. The manner in which the mouse departs, for example, recalls any number of comptines. Not only does she trot off—instead of running or scampering—but she trots off in triple time. Compare the following rhyme: Quand madame va en campagne, Elle va au pas, au pas, au pas; Quand le fils va en campagne, Il va au trot, au trot, au trot; Quand le monsieur va en campagne, Il va au galop, au galop, au galop. (When Madam goes to the country, She goes at a walking pace; When the son goes to the country, He goes trot, trot, trot; When Monsieur goes to the country, He goes at a gallop, gallop, gallop).35

Nevertheless, the most obvious token of Apollinaire’s interest in children’s rhymes is clearly the little mouse herself, who figures 33

Michel Décaudin, Le Dossier d’”Alcools”, rev. ed. (Geneva: Droz and Paris: Minard, 1965), p. 200. 34 Apollinaire, Alcools, ed. A. E. Pilkington, p. 148. Greet also notes their resemblance to nursery rhymes. 35 Eugène Rolland, Rimes et jeux de l’enfance (1883) (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1967), p. 27.

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prominently in French folklore. The subject of a well-known comptine (with countless variations), she has been a favorite of French children for centuries. As the following excerpt will demonstrate, she is thoroughly charming: Quelle heure est-il? —Il est midi. —Qui est-ce qui l’a dit? —La petite souris. —Où donc est-elle? —Dans la chapelle. —Qu’est-ce qu’elle y fait? —De la dentelle. (What time is it? “It is noon.” “Who told you?” “The little mouse.” “Where is she?” “In the chapel.” “What is she doing?” “Making lace.”)36

Unlike the Three Blind Mice (who are frankly repulsive) or the star of “Hickory Dickory Dock” (who seems demented), la petite souris embodies a whole series of human virtues. In contrast to her Anglo-Saxon cousins, she is a civilized mouse—which is to say a French mouse. According to all indications, she is clever, pious, and talented. Not only does she know how to tell time, but she is also an accomplished lace-maker. By contrast, the little mouse in “La Dame” merely serves as a metaphor. Despite her virtual existence, she is far more than a pale reflection. Indeed, since her metaphorical function is largely implicit, she is endowed with a surprising presence. The fact that she has an extensive history means that she is accompanied by substantial cultural baggage. A popular figure in her own right, she completely eclipses the lady whom she supposedly represents.

36

Baucomont et al., Les Comptines de la langue française, pp. 233-34.

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“Salomé” Published in Vers et Prose in 1905, “Salomé” has attracted far more critical attention over the years than “La Dame.” Since it revolves around a legendary femme fatale, this is not particularly surprising. However, “Salomé” is also much more ambitious than the preceding poem, more finely crafted, and—doubtless for this reason— ultimately more successful. And yet, despite their obvious differences, the two compositions have quite a bit in common. Like “La Dame,” for example, “Salomé” features a female protagonist whose loved one has recently passed away. Like the earlier poem, it encompasses a garden whose lilies are strangely wilted. In addition, the two works possess the same structure and are similarly indebted to children’s rhymes. Finally, as numerous critics have commented, they are both ambiguous—although not as much as is generally supposed. Most of “Salom锑s ambiguity stems from readers’ failure to grasp the underlying assumptions that govern the text. Celebrated by the Symbolists in particular, Salomé was an extremely popular character at the dawn of the twentieth century. As Décaudin remarks, she was “une figure privilégiée, chargée des rêves et des phantasmes de l’époque”(“a privileged figure, expressing the dreams and the fantasies of the period”).37 In France alone, according to Maurice Kraft, 2789 poets celebrated the dancer during the fifty years preceding World War I!38 By the time Apollinaire decided to write about her, she had acquired mythic proportions. Nevertheless, while the cult of Salomé was widespread, the tradition was gradually coming to an end. Few aesthetic options remained that had not already been explored. For someone like Apollinaire, who prized originality above all else, this presented a serious problem. Instead of simply writing a pastiche, he chose to create a revolutionary new poem, one that would make the literary world sit up and take notice. Toward this end, he devised four principal strategies. Apollinaire first decided to create a radical new mise-en-scène. Defying spatial and temporal conventions, he transposed the biblical tale to a different country and a different historical period. Readers 37

Michel Décaudin, “Un Mythe ‘fin de siècle’: Salomé,” Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. IV, Nos. 1-2 (1967), p. 110. 38 Cited in ibid., p. 109.

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expecting to revisit ancient Palestine are astonished to encounter a medieval French court. Herod and his wife have been transformed into the king and queen of France, and Salomé has become a French princess! Commentators have generally assumed that the drama takes place in France and the Holy Land simultaneously. Thus Durry calls the poem “une bigarrure d’époques juxtaposées” (“a hodgepodge of different periods”) and Robert Couffignal “une rêverie envoûtante, où se mêlent les époques: temps évangéliques, moyen âge, temps modernes” (“an enchanting fantasy combining biblical times, the Middle Ages, and the modern period”).39 Most critics find the chronological mixture disturbing or confusing (or both). While Durry accuses Apollinaire of creating a carnival atmosphere, others complain that the poem is filled with anachronisms. Nevertheless, close examination fails to substantiate these and similar complaints. In actuality, “Salomé” is situated neither in multiple countries nor during different historical periods. The medieval French setting displaces, effaces, and replaces the biblical setting altogether. While the transition from one to the other is startling, with a little effort it is possible to discover a logical explanation. As Jacqueline Bellas mentions, Apollinaire may have been inspired by a medieval painting or drawing.40 Indeed, since he possessed a keen interest in art, this is quite likely. A painting such as Benozzo Gozzoli’s The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist could well have provided the necessary inspiration. The center of Gozzoli’s exquisite composition depicts Salomé dancing for Herod

39 Durry, Guillaume Apollinaire: “Alcools”, Vol. III, p. 146 and Robert Couffignal, L’Inspiration biblique dans l’oeuvre de Guillaume Apollinaire (Paris: Minard, 1966), p. 35. 40 Jacqueline Bellas, “L’Equivoque de Salomé dans la littérature et l’art ‘fin de siècle’” in Poésie et peinture du symbolisme au surréalisme en France et en Pologne, ed. Elzbieta Grabska (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 1973), p. 46.

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Figure 3.1 Benozzo Gozzoli, The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (1461-1462)

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and his guests, all of whom are dressed in fifteenth-century finery. On the left, John the Baptist prepares to be beheaded by a soldier wearing medieval armor. At the rear, Salomé presents the severed head to her mother. Couffignal offers a different explanation of Apollinaire’s poem entirely. He suggests that it is concerned with a French princess who has lost her mind and believes she is Salomé.41 However, there is really no need to justify the geographical and chronological changes in “Salomé.” Like modern directors who situate Hamlet in Brazil or Heart of Darkness in Viet Nam, Apollinaire may simply have decided that medieval France would make a good location. In order to make the transition more convincing, he added a number of contemporary details. Herodias is dressed like a French countess, while her eldest son is called the Dauphin. The king has a jester to entertain him and soldiers with halberds to protect him. Even the trees are arranged in a French pattern! Apollinaire decided next to center the poem around a single, symbolic date. The day he selected was June 24th which, as Rafael Cansinos-Asséns notes, traditionally marks the summer solstice.42 However, the events recounted in “Salomé” do not take place on Midsummer’s Day but rather the evening before—on Midsummer’s Night. The composition is precisely situated both in time and in space. While the full significance of this date will become evident as we progress, several aspects are readily apparent. In France, for example, Midsummer’s Night is called la nuit de la Saint-Jean because it is the eve of John the Baptist’s birthday. In addition, as Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream attests, it was associated in the popular imagination with the height of madness—foolishness as well as insanity. Marveling at Malvoglio’s strange behavior in Twelfth Night, Olivia protests: “Why, this is very midsummer madness” (Act III, Scene 4). Although it is not immediately apparent, this theme is introduced at the very beginning of “Salomé.” Whereas Apollinaire’s first two strategies set the stage for the story, the last two focused on the story itself. They determined not only how the narrative would be presented but also how it would be structured. Rejecting the dialogue form adopted by Mallarmé in 41

Couffignal, L’Inspiration biblique dans l’oeuvre de Guillaume Apollinaire, p. 35. Rafael Cansinos-Asséns, Salomé en la literatura (Flaubert, Wilde, Mallarmé, Eugenio de Castro, Apollinaire) (Madrid: América, 1919), pp. 241-43.

42

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Hérodiade, which interrupts the alexandrines’ stately flow, Apollinaire decided to compose a dramatic monologue. By reducing the descriptive elements to a minimum, he allowed the hapless protagonist to reveal her innermost thoughts and feelings. Though troubling, the resulting portrait of Salomé’s psychological distress is intimate and unforgettable. Surprisingly, the portrait that gradually emerges does not conform to her traditional depiction. Generally portrayed as cruel and unfeeling, Apollinaire’s Salomé seems strangely vulnerable. In contrast to Mallarmé’s princess contemplating her reptilian nudity, she seems immensely human. Apollinaire’s final stroke of genius was to focus on the aftermath of Salomé’s actions rather than on the actions themselves. Eschewing the anecdotal approach favored by many writers, the poem commences where the traditional story leaves off. It begins not with John the Baptist’s denunciation of Herodias’ incestuous marriage, nor with her plans for revenge, nor even with Salomé’s famous dance, but after the prophet has been beheaded. Apollinaire had treated Salomé once before, in a short short story published in 1902 (collected in L’Hérésiarque et Cie). Entitled “La Danseuse,” it contains the following description: “Salomé, enjolivée, attifée, diaprée, fardée, dansa devant le roi et, excitant un vouloir doublement incestueux, obtint la tête du Saint refusée à sa mère” (“Looking beautiful, wearing a lovely dress, attractively made up, scintillating, Salomé danced before the king and, arousing a doubly incestuous desire, obtained the Saint’s head which he had refused her mother”).43 This account, which reflects the fin-de-siècle myth, depicts her not only as a willing participant but as a scheming accomplice. By contrast, Salomé was transformed into a completely different figure three years later. Instead of a voluptuous temptress, she was cast as a naive adolescent. Consisting of five quatrains loosely rhymed ABAB, “Salomé” is composed largely of alexandrines. Apollinaire varies the formula by introducing a decasyllable in the fourth stanza, rhyming the final stanza ABBA, and appending three half lines at the end. The reader’s first glimpse of Salomé is profoundly astonishing. Although she had asked Herod to bring her the head of John the Baptist, she is overcome by grief when she finally receives it.

43

Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose, Vol. I, p. 125.

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Pour que sourie encore une fois Jean-Baptiste Sire je danserais mieux que les séraphins Ma mère dites-moi pourquoi vous êtes triste En robe de comtesse à côté du Dauphin (If John the Baptist could smile again Sire I would dance better than the seraphim Tell me mother why you are so sad Dressed like a countess beside the Dauphin).

The first stanza orients the reader with respect to the story and evokes Salomé’s extraordinary talent. Elsewhere Apollinaire calls her “la danseuse au pied prompt.”44 As this felicitous phrase implies, Salomé is totally consumed by dance. Dancing is not only her favorite pastime but her raison d’être. And yet, while the first two lines acknowledge her remarkable gift, they are also deeply ironic. Although her marvelous dancing brought about John the Baptist’s death, it is powerless to restore him to life. Even the heavenly seraphim— who according to Talmudic lore are dancing-masters—could not accomplish such a feat.45 While the third line is uttered by Salomé, as is the entire work, in reality it is concerned with her mother. Here and elsewhere, Salomé serves as an unconscious mirror, reflecting the actions of those around her. We never view the other characters directly. Only through her, for example, do we learn that Herodias has a sad expression on her face. Like Salomé’s sudden grief, this discovery comes as a considerable surprise. Since her mortal enemy John the Baptist is dead, one would expect Herodias to be jubilant. As the story unfolds, however, the reader gradually perceives that her daughter has lost her mind. This is the source of Herodias’ sadness. But what could have happened to drive Salomé insane? As it turns out, there are two answers to this question. The first one is relatively simple: she is suffering from midsummer madness. Her illness stems from Midsummer’s Night itself, which exerts a mysterious influence over her. The second explanation is more complicated.

44

Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, p. 1030. Scott Bates, “Notes sur ‘Simon Mage’ et Isaac Laquedem,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 123-126 (1965), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 4, p. 68.

45

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Apollinaire on the Edge Mon coeur battait battait très fort à sa parole Quand je dansais dans le fenouil en écoutant Et je brodais des lys sur une banderole Destinée à flotter au bout de son baton Et pour qui voulez-vous qu’à présent je la brode Son baton refleurit sur les bords du Jourdain Et tous les lys quand vos soldats ô roi Hérode L’emmenèrent se sont flétris dans mon jardin (My heart beat how very fast it beat Dancing in the fennel as I listened to him And I embroidered lilies on a banner Meant to fly from the tip of his staff For whom should I embroider it now His staff blooms on the Jordan’s banks And all the flowers withered in my garden King Herod when your soldiers led him away).

The conclusion that inevitably emerges from these two stanzas is that Salomé was in love with John the Baptist. The construction “battait battait” mimics her quickening heartbeat, for instance, and betrays her excitement at hearing his voice. And the banner she is embroidering recalls a similar device in courtly romances. Whenever a knight enters a jousting tournament, his lady presents him with a scarf or a handkerchief to affix to his lance as a sign of her favor. Serving as a badge of his authority, John’s staff even resembles a lance. Depicted in countless paintings and drawings, it is long and straight with a short crosspiece near the top. Since the fleur-de-lys pattern was reserved for French royalty, the fact that Salomé chose to embroider it on the banner is also significant. Like the king of France, who governs the secular domain, John is the supreme authority in the spiritual realm. As the flower of Easter, moreover, the lily symbolizes rebirth and spiritual renewal. Viewed in this perspective, it alludes to the fact that John is the great Precursor whose role prefigures that of Jesus. His staff not only resembles Aaron’s rod in the Bible but is imbued with the same symbolism as the lily. Blooming on the banks of the Jordan River (where he used to baptize his disciples), it symbolizes the coming of Christ. Since Salomé possesses lilies of her own, however, the situation is considerably more complicated. Insofar as she is concerned, the

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flowers are associated with purity and virginity. In many paintings of the Annunciation, the angel carries a stalk of lilies for the same reason. The theme of purity would seem to indicate that the love between her and John the Baptist was strictly platonic. An argument could even be made that she was in love with his religious message, rather than with the man himself, and thus that she was a potential convert. This interpretation is subverted by other symbols which imply that she was passionately in love with John. In particular, several critics have called attention to the sexual symbolism that permeates the two stanzas. Bates points out that the staff is a common symbol for the phallus and that fennel traditionally represents pubic hair.46 Refuting Poupon’s contention that the lilies are associated with violent death, Fongaro emphasizes their phallic nature and the fact that they are planted in the yonic garden.47 He concludes from this that Salomé and John the Baptist were lovers. Whichever interpretation one chooses, the spiritual or the carnal, the withered flowers (borrowed from “La Dame”) clearly parallel John the Baptist’s death. Both groups of lilies, the heraldic and the biblical, are eclipsed at the same moment. Ultimately, the withered flowers reflect far more than the death of John the Baptist. Since they are related to Salomé metonymically, their unfortunate fate mirrors her own. Serving as objective correlatives, they translate her deteriorating mental condition into concrete terms. Retracing the preceding chain of events, it is clear that Salomé’s madness stems above all from the death of the man she loved. The recognition that she was to blame has caused her to lose her mind. And yet the question remains: how could Salomé have done such a thing? How could she have betrayed the man she loved? Since she asked for John’s head in person, it is hard to believe she didn’t know what she was doing.48 Couffignal attributes her actions to her “demonic personality,” but this describes the mythical Salomé better than the sorrowful adolescent in the poem.49 The best explanation is doubtless the traditional one: that she was manipulated by her evil 46

Bates, Dictionnaire des mots libres d’Apollinaire, pp. 247 and 160 respectively. Poupon, “Sources allemandes d’Apollinaire,” pp. 14-18. Antoine Fongaro, “Des ‘lys,’” Que Vlo-Ve? Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th series, No. 14 (April-June 2001), pp. 42-45. 48 Décaudin, Le Dossier d’”Alcools,” p. 140. 49 Couffignal, L’Inspiration biblique dans l’oeuvre de Guillaume Apollinaire, p. 35. 47

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mother. How Herodias managed to achieve this goal is left to the reader’s imagination. Ironically, despite her murderous history, Salomé is a surprisingly sympathetic character. This is due partly to her mother’s manipulation, partly to her obvious remorse, and partly to the fact that she has lost her mind. Like John the Baptist, she is a victim of Herodias’ thirst for revenge. Until this point, however, there has been no obvious indication that Salomé is insane. Only in the last two stanzas does the reader perceive that she is demented. The earlier experience has so unhinged her that she has become a child again. Her mental age is perhaps five or six. Unlike the first three stanzas, which are situated in the royal palace, the final two appear to take place on the palace grounds. All of a sudden, Salomé invites everyone to come outside and dance. Venez tous avec moi là-bas sous les quinconces Ne pleure pas ô joli fou du roi Prends cette tête au lieu de ta marotte et danse N’y touchez pas son front ma mère est déjà froid (Come with me under the quincunxes everyone Please don’t cry charming jester Take this head for your scepter and dance Don’t touch mother his forehead is already cold).

Consisting of four objects at the corners of a square and a fifth in the middle, a quincunx is a common floral pattern in public gardens. However, the first line refers not to flowers but to plane trees, which have been planted in alternate rows. Salomé’s sudden gaiety contrasts vividly with the weeping jester who, like Herodias, is distressed by her madness. Presenting him with John the Baptist’s head, which she has been cradling in her arms, she advises him to lay down his scepter and join in the future dancing. Since the scepter is adorned with bells and topped by a hooded fool’s head, her suggestion possesses a certain bizarre logic. Finally, Salomé commands the king and his attendants, including a Spanish princess, to form a procession. Sire marchez devant trabants marchez derrière Nous creuserons un trou et l’y enterrerons Nous planterons des fleurs et danserons en rond Jusqu’à l’heure où j’aurai perdu ma jarretière Le roi sa tabatière L’infante son rosaire

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Le curé son bréviaire (Sire march before halberdiers march behind We will dig a hole and bury it We will plant flowers and dance in a ring Until I have lost my garter The king his snuff-box The Infanta her rosary The priest his breviary).

Suddenly, as Durry remarks, “tout se met à tourner au galop” (“everything begins to whirl around and around”).50 The accelerating rhythm at the end is complemented by the quadruple rhyme scheme, both of which contribute to the general gaiety. The poem concludes on an unexpected note with the royal party joining hands and dancing around John the Baptist’s grave until they are exhausted. Although we can visualize their actions easily enough, the conclusion is entirely imaginary. The reader is swept up by the accelerating rhythm like the characters themselves. Not surprisingly, since she has reverted to her former childhood, Salomé is attracted to childish games. “The final three lines dissolve away into a dance of pure unreality,” Pilkington comments, “with an incantation like that of a children’s rhyme.”51 Similarly, Anna Boschetti declares that the poem concludes “au rythme de comptine” (“with the rhythm of a comptine”).52 In addition, the final scene recalls a traumatic experience that befalls every child at one time or another—the death of a beloved pet. Like a group of children who have organized a mock funeral, the king and his followers march to the appointed spot and bury the object they are carrying with all the pomp and ceremony they can muster. Bellas provides an even closer link to the experience of childhood. Evoking her youth in the Ardennes, where Apollinaire spent the summer of 1899, she recalls a similar song that that she and her friends used to act out.53 Accompanying a dead heroine who refused to marry the “p’tit roi d’Angleterre,” they would dig a hole, pretend to bury her, plant flowers, and dance around her grave. Finally, as Serge and Hélène Auffret note, Salomé herself resembles a character in a 50

Durry, Guillaume Apollinaire: “Alcools,” Vol. III, p. 146. Apollinaire, Alcools, ed. A. E. Pilkington, p. 130. 52 Anna Boschetti, La Poésie partout: Apollinaire, homme-époque (1898-1918), (Paris: Seuil, 2001), p. 74. 53 Bellas, “L’Equivoque de Salomé dans la littérature et l’art ‘fin de siècle,’” p. 47. 51

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popular comptine. Like her, the miller’s daughter loves to dance but ends up losing her garter.54 C’est la fille de la meunière Qui dansait avec les gars; Elle a perdu sa jarretière, Sa jarretière ne tenait pas. Gibouli, giboula, On dit qu’elle est malade; Gibouli, giboula, On dit qu’elle en mourra. (It’s the miller’s daughter Who liked to dance with the boys; She lost her garter, Her garter wouldn’t stay up. Gibouli, giboula, They say that she is sick; Gibouli, giboula, They say that she will die.)55

Although “Salomé” ends “in the whirl of a nonsense rhyme,” as Garnet Rees puts it, the conclusion itself is far from nonsensical.56 C. M. Bowra offers an allegorical interpretation, for instance, in which the frenzied dancing constitutes a myth of artistic creation.57 In addition, the conclusion was clearly inspired by an ancient folkloric rite handed down through the centuries. It is modeled not on a maypole dance, as I suggested in an earlier study, but on another picturesque custom known as le feu de la Saint-Jean.58 “Coutume populaire qui subsiste encore dans nombre de villages et de faubourgs,” La Grande Encyclopédie reported in 1902; “la veille ou le jour même de la fête de saint Jean-Baptiste (23 ou 24 juin), on allume des feux autour desquels on danse, par-dessus lesquels on saute” (“A popular rite that still exists in a number of villages and suburbs: the evening before John the Baptist’s feast day, or the day itself (June 23rd or 24th), people light bonfires and dance around or leap over them”). After a 54

Serge and Hélène Auffret, Le Commentaire composé (Paris: Hâchette, 1968), p. 163. 55 Baucomont et al, eds. Les Comptines de la langue française, p. 310. 56 Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, ed. Garnet Rees (London: Athlone, 1975), p. 147. 57 C. M. Bowra, The Creative Experiment (London: Macmillan, 1949), p. 74. 58 Willard Bohn, Apollinaire and the International Avant-Garde (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 190.

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decline in popularity, the custom is currently experiencing a massive revival in France. An extensive discussion of this pan-European phenomenon can be found in Sir James George Frazer’s book The Golden Bough, which describes several French celebrations. “In Provence,” he declared in 1922, “the midsummer fires are still popular. Children go from door to door begging for fuel, and they are seldom sent empty away. Formerly the priest, the mayor, and the aldermen used to walk in procession to the bonfire, and even deigned to light it; after which the assembly marched thrice round the burning pile.”59 According to La Grande Encyclopedie, a similar ceremony used to take place in Paris, at the

place de Grève, until it was abolished in 1768. Apollinaire was obviously familiar with the midsummer celebration—which he probably witnessed in Provence during his youth—from which he borrowed two key elements. The conclusion to “Salomé” incorporates not only the circular dance around the fire but the formal procession that preceded it. Surprisingly, several critics find “Salomé” to be amusing—presumably because of its curious ending.60 By contrast, Leroy Breunig emphasizes the anxiety that the composition elicits in the reader, which I think is closer to the mark.61 The impression of gay abandon that accompanies the conclusion is patently artificial—too much gloom hangs over the poem for it to be convincing. Although Salomé’s gaiety is doubtless sincere, her companions are simply humoring her. They know the princess is mad and that their behavior is totally inappropriate. For these and other reasons, “Salomé” is not an amusing poem—nor was it ever intended to be. On the contrary, as I have tried to show, Apollinaire created a psychological study that is deeply disturbing. Although it begins and concludes with the theme of dancing, Salomé’s childish game at the end bears little resemblance to the performance that beguiled Herod. Ironically, despite her royal blood, she fares little better than John the Baptist. By the end of the

59

Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, abridged ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1963), p. 730. 60 See, for example, Apollinaire, Alcools, ed. A. E. Pilkington, p. 129. 61 L. C. Breunig, “Les Phares d’Apollinaire,” Cahiers du Musée d’Art Moderne, Vol. LXXXI, No. 6 (1981), p. 66.

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poem, she is reduced to a pathetic figure, a poignant shadow of her former self.

Chapter 4

The Mammaries of Tiresias “Rien ne m’intéresse.” “Rie, en aimant, Thérèse.” —Robert Desnos,“Dialogue”

Performed on June 24, 1917, at the Conservatoire Renée Maubel in Montmartre, Les Mamelles de Tirésias attracted artists and writers from all over Paris. It generated so much interest in fact that many people had to be turned away. Of the 490 spectators who managed to obtain tickets, the vast majority came prepared to have a good time. Word had leaked out about the play’s extravagant stage effects, and a festive atmosphere prevailed from the very beginning. Two women even appeared with yellow paint smeared all over their faces and bright blue eye-shadow. The performance itself took place before a tumultuous house that was packed to the rafters. In the best avantgarde tradition, members of the audience bantered with each other— and with the actors on stage—as the play progressed. “Le spectacle était dans la salle,” Paul Souday reported; “Ce furent deux heures de reposante folie” (“The real show was provided by the audience. The refreshing madness continued for two hours”).1 Writing to Pierre Varenne the next day, Apollinaire declared: “Je crois que le succès a été très franc et très net” (“I think the play was very clearly a success”).2 No one tried to sabotage the performance, he added, and no one fell asleep. Not surprisingly, in view of its revolutionary aesthetics, Les Mamelles de Tirésias received mixed reviews from the critics. While some writers responded positively, others complained that the performance was a waste of time. An angry polemic also ensued 1

Paul Souday, Paris-Midi, June 26, 1917. This and other reviews are reprinted in Que Vlo-Ve”, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 3rd ser., Nos. 15 (January 1978), 17-18 (July-October 1978), 19 (January 1979), 20 (April 1979), 23 (January 1980), 26 (October 1980), and 4th ser., No. 4 (October-December 1998). 2 Letter from Guillaume Apollinaire to Pierre Varenne, June 25, 1917. Repr. in Apollinaire, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Michel Décaudin (Paris: Balland-Lecat, 196566), Vol. IV, p. 886.

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between Apollinaire and some of the Cubist painters, who publicly disassociated themselves from the play. By avant-garde standards, however, Les Mamelles de Tirésias was immensely successful. The negative reviews and hostile protests simply contributed to the succès de scandale that it enjoyed. Following Apollinaire’s death on November 9, 1918, the play gradually sank into obscurity. Apart from a handful of disciples and a few cognoscenti, no one paid much attention to Les Mamelles de Tirésias for many years except to dismiss it as a crude experiment.3 As late as 1965, Michel Décaudin noted that the play was under appreciated and deserved to be better known.4 Since Les Mamelles de Tirésias influenced a number of playwrights who came after Apollinaire, this situation was highly ironic. Happily the play has received the recognition it deserves since then and occupies a secure place in the history of the French avant-garde. Like Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi, for instance, it is considered to be an important precursor of the Theater of the Absurd.

The Aesthetics of Surrealism Whereas Apollinaire could simply have continued to write poetry when he returned from the front, Henri Béhar observes, “il prit la direction de l’avant-garde et commanda une véritable attaque du théâtre avec la représentation des Mamelles de Tirésias ... , montrant qu’il avait parfaitement médité l’exemple d’Alfred Jarry” (“he assumed the leadership of the avant-garde and ordered a serious attack on the theater with the performance of The Mammaries of Tirésias ... revealing that he had studied Alfred Jarry’s example closely”).5 Indeed, traces of the latter’s influence abound in the play, from the wordplay involving merde to the funny accent adopted by the husband and the collective character called the People of Zanzibar. Like them, the gendarme’s cardboard horse, the masks worn by some of the 3

For example, David Grossvogel in The Self-Conscious Stage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), p. 46 and Jacques Guicharnaud, in his Anthology of 20th Century French Theater (Paris and New York: Paris Book Center, 1967), p. 44. 4 Michel Décaudin, preface to Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 123-126 (1965), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 4, p. 3. 5 Henri Béhar, Le Théâtre dada et surréaliste (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), p. 77.

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actors, and the placards on stage were inspired by Ubu roi. In addition to rapid rhythms and abrupt transitions, Peter Read adds, both plays also make abundant use of caricature.6 As we saw in Chapters 2 and 3, one way in which Apollinaire strove to revolutionize modern aesthetics was by importing cultural artifacts. Besides games, common objects, and children’s rhymes, he incorporated posters, handbills, graffiti, and bits of everyday speech into many of his works. In addition to compositions like “Le Pont Mirabeau,” “La Dame,” and “Salomé,” this describes the conversation poems, the calligrams, the Quelconqueries, the simultaneous poems, and Les Mamelles de Tirésias. Like its companions, the latter constitutes “un hybride de culture populaire et de recherches d’avantgarde” (“a hybrid of popular culture and avant-garde experiments”).7 In particular, Apollinaire drew heavily on popular forms of theater such as the circus, the music hall, silent films, marionettes, and Punch and Judy shows (which also fascinated Jarry).8 Parodying American cowboy movies at one point, two clowns called Presto and Lacouf draw their pistols, fire at each other, fall down dead, and miraculously come back to life. As Apollinaire insisted in the prologue to Les Mamelles de Tirésias, the modern age demanded a new kind of theater—one that would reflect modern experience. In contrast to Classical French drama, with its emphasis on decorum, verisimilitude, and the three unities, the new theater would be brash, provocative, and absurd. In contrast to the Naturalist theater, with its trompe l’oeil effects and “slice of life” philosophy, it would be profoundly anti-realistic. Despite its aversion to mimesis, Apollinaire added with a paradoxical flourish, the new theater would actually be more realistic than traditional theater. Privileging human experience over visual perception, it would “faire surgir la vie même dans toute sa vérité” (“conjure up life itself in all its truth”). Focusing on basic principles rather than physical phenomena, the latter concept was crucial to 6

Peter Read, Apollinaire et Les Mamelles de Tirésias: la revanche d’Eros (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2000), p. 65. Alfred Jarry discusses several of these devices in “De l’inutilité du théâtre au théâtre,” Oeuvres complètes, ed. Michel Arrivé (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1972), Vol. I, pp. 405-10. 7 Read, Apollinaire et Les Mamelles de Tirésias: la revanche d’Eros, p. 72. For a list of the different kinds of modern media that figure in the play, see p. 73. 8 Pierre Caizergues, “Apollinaire, le cirque et les marionnettes,” Berenice (Rome), Vol. II (July 1981), pp. 32-44.

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Apollinaire’s project. In order to reveal a superior truth (sur-vérité), he reasoned, the playwright would need to employ a superior realism (sur-réalisme). Since Les Mamelles de Tirésias embodied precisely this approach, he added the following subtitle: drame surréaliste.9 Although “Surrealism” was destined to gain worldwide fame, the program outlined above was relatively short-lived. Following Apollinaire’s death, the term was appropriated by André Breton and his colleagues, who set out to explore the Freudian unconscious. In the beginning, however, surrealism was associated with literary cubism. The prefix sur- served as an intensifier rather than a transcendental marker. According to Jacques Guicharnaud, the initial term was all but meaningless. “For Apollinaire,” he asserts, “the word ‘surrealist’ had no specific artistic or literary credo.”10 Upon close examination, however, this impression turns out to be mistaken. For one thing, an excellent definition of surrealism occurs in the prologue to Les Mamelles de Tirésias, where it is described as “l’usage raisonnable des invraisemblances” (“the reasonable use of unreasonable inventions”). For another thing, Apollinaire elaborated on his initial discussion in two documents that appeared the following year. In an article entitled “L’Esprit nouveau et les poètes,” for example, he stressed the crucial role of surprise.11 In addition, he drafted a preface for Les Mamelles de Tirésias (published in January) that contained the following remarks: Quand l’homme a voulu imiter la marche, il a créé la roue qui ne ressemble pas à une jambe. Il a fait ainsi du surréalisme sans le savoir.

9

For a more extensive discussion of Apollinaire’s surrealism, see Willard Bohn, The Rise of Surrealism: Cubism, Dada, and the Pursuit of the Marvelous (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp.122-29. Curiously, Picasso once told his dealer that he invented the term surréalisme. See Read, Apollinaire et Les Mamelles de Tirésias: la revanche d’Eros, p. 140. 10 Guicharnaud, Anthology of 20th Century French Theater, pp. 40-41. 11 Guillaume Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose complètes, ed. Pierre Caizergues and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1991), Vol. II, pp. 941-54.

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(When man wanted to imitate walking, he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg. Thus he committed a surrealistic act without knowing it).12

Reflecting the traditional dichotomy between form and content, Apollinaire’s surrealism exploits two key principles: surprise and analogy. It systematically violates the audience’s expectations, and it projects the drama onto a parallel plane. Interestingly, this situation recalls Pierre Reverdy’s discussion of the dynamics of metaphor.13 In order to qualify as surrealist, according to Apollinaire, the relation between the parallel elements must be valid but not immediately evident. The farther apart they are, the more surprising the analogy will be. The most obvious example is the reversal of gender roles in the play. A dedicated feminist, Thérèse transforms herself into a man at the beginning and changes her name to Tirésias. In return, her husband becomes a woman and assumes her wifely duties. Since she refuses to have children, he gives birth to 40,049 infants during the intermission. Discussing this event in the preface, Apollinaire identified it as the crux of the play. As with other vérités supposées (“imaginary truths”), he added in “L’Esprit nouveau et les poètes,” the surprise that it generates stems from its novelty.14

In the Tradition In fact, as Apollinaire well knew, the reversal of gender roles has an extensive history going back to Classical antiquity. For example, three of Aristophanes’ comedies portray worlds dominated by women: Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazousae, and Ecclesiazousae. As Froma Zeitlin observes in her exhaustive survey of Classical Greek literature, the reversal of gender roles is usually symmetrical. “When women are in a position to rule men,” she concludes, “men must become women.”15 Not only does Euripides’ The Bacchae contain a similar reversal, 12

Guillaume Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Marcel Adéma and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1965), pp. 865-66. The basic comparison dates back at least to 1913. See Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose complètes, Vol. II, p. 525. 13 Pierre Reverdy, “L’Image,” Nord-Sud, No. 1 (March 1918), not paginated. 14 Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose complètes, Vol, II, p. 950. 15 Zeitlin, Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 384.

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Marianne Bouchardon points out, but it anticipates the main themes in Les Mamelles de Tirésias as well.16 In addition, a number of other possible sources exist. Apollinaire could have seen an early German film, for example, in which a scientist enables a couple to have huge numbers of children.17 Or he could have observed that several Punch and Judy scenarios require the characters to trade gender roles.18 Or again he could have been inspired by a play about repopulation, published by Pierre-Jean Baptiste Chaussard in 1791.19 Unfortunately, none of these involve actual gender reversals and thus do not seem especially promising. However, Jean Laude has discovered a more likely candidate: an amusing novel by Edmond About entitled Le Cas de M. Guérin, published in 1862.20 In contrast to Mme Guérin, who possesses a mustache and other masculine attributes, her husband is markedly feminine, even to the point of suffering monthly nosebleeds! Eventually she manages to impregnate him, and he gives birth to a son. On the other hand, Pol-P. Gossiaux suggests that Apollinaire’s play may have been inspired by a comic opera dating from 1722: Alexis Piron’s Tirésias.21 Since both works feature the Greek soothsayer, whom the gods transformed into a woman for seven years, they inevitably contain several similarities. However, Apollinaire could simply have drawn his inspiration from the Classical myth without consulting Piron at all. In any case, as Peter Read and Anne Clancier have observed independently, gender reversals occur in a 16

Marianne Bouchardon, “Les Mamelles de Tirésias: le retour de Dionysos,” Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th ser., No. 16 (September-December 2001), pp. 108-13. In addition, she argues that Les Mamelles de Tirésias was inspired by Dionysiaque rites. See also Willard Bohn, Apollinaire and the Faceless Man: The Creation and Evolution of a Modern Motif (Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991), pp. 16-76. 17 Michel Décaudin, “Tirésias et Max Linder,” Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 3rd series, No. 19 (July-August 1995), p. 84. 18 Caizergues, “Apollinaire, le cirque et les marionnettes,” p. 40. 19 Mihaïlo Pavlovic, “La Repopulation et Les Mamelles de Tirésias,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 166-169 (1967), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 6, pp. 133-50. 20 Jean Laude, contribution to a debate on literary cubism, Cahiers du Musée National d’Art Moderne, No. 6 (1981), p. 137. 21 Pol-P. Gossiaux, “Sur une source possible des Mamelles de Tirésias: le Tirésias de Piron,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 576-581 (1980), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 15, pp. 172-73 and “Les Mamelles de Tirésias: note historique et anthropologique,“ Berenice (Rome), Vol. II (July 1981), pp. 25-27.

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number of works by Apollinaire. Citing Le Poète assassiné and other texts, they each conclude that the fantasy of a pregnant man was firmly rooted in the poet’s psyche.22 Male pregnancy was also a recurrent theme—or at least a recurrent metaphor—in avant-garde circles, where it was associated with modern machinery. Since mechanical inventions were created exclusively by men, the process was compared to parthenogenesis. Thus Francis Picabia baptized the machine “fille née sans mère” (“motherless daughter”), and F. T. Marinetti proclaimed in Mafarka le futuriste: Je vous annonce que l’heure est proche où des hommes aux tempes larges et au menton d’acier enfanteront prodigieusement, d’un seul effort de leur volonté exorbitée, des géants aux gestes infaillibles. (The hour is near when men with large brows and chins of steel will prodigiously give birth, with a single effort of their tremendous will-power, to giants with infallible gestures).23

What makes this quote especially interesting—besides the allusion to male pregnancy—is the role that Marinetti assigned to la volonté, which recalls a similar comment in Les Mamelles de Tirésias. Following the prolific intermission, the husband is interviewed by an American journalist who comes, ironically, from a town named Paris.24 Asked how he managed to produce so many children, the husband replies: “La volonté Monsieur elle nous mène à tout” (“Willpower Sir enables us to accomplish anything”). The conjunction of these two themes suggests that Apollinaire was thinking of Marinetti’s novel at this point. 22

Read, Apollinaire et Les Mamelles de Tirésias: la revanche d’Eros, pp. 171-72. Anne Clancier, “Amour parental et amour filial dans l’oeuvre de Guillaume Apollinaire,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 805-811 (1987), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 17, pp. 16-22. While Clancier attributes Apollinaire’s fascination with gender reversal to his sexual ambiguity, Read relates it to his broader preoccupation with the androgyne. See also Peter Read, “Apollinaire et la fécondité masculine,” Que Vlo-Ve? Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th series, No. 20 (October-December 2002), pp. 118-120. 23 F. T. Marinetti, Mafarka le futuriste (Paris: Sansot, 1909), p. xi. The final chapter, which is devoted to precisely this project, contains several similar statements. 24 Seven states have towns named Paris: Illinois, Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Missouri.

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Besides the literary, mythical, psychological, and popular models discussed previously, Les Mamelles de Tirésias may have been inspired by an anthropological source. On January 15, 1910, Apollinaire published a brief notice in Paris-Journal which began: “On se souvient des paroles de la veuve à sir Hudibras: ‘Il paraît qu’en Chine les maris accouchent à la place de leurs femmes’” (“I am reminded of the widow’s words to Sir Hudibras: ‘It seems that in China the husbands give birth instead of their wives’”).25 Apollinaire was referring to a mock-heroic poem by Samuel Butler entitled Hudibras (1663), which contains the following lines: “For though Chineses go to bed, / And lye in, in their ladies stead; / And for the pains they took before, / Are nurs’d, and pamper’d to do more ... .” As the editors of the Pléiade edition note, the way in which Apollinaire modified this passage clearly anticipates Les Mamelles de Tirésias. The importance of Apollinaire’s notice derives not from the reference to Samuel Butler, however, whose influence is problematic, but from its title: “La Couvade.” This term describes a custom that exists in tribal societies in various parts of the world. When a woman has a baby, the father takes to his bed, receives well-wishers, and submits to fasting, purification, and certain taboos. In other words, he acts as if he had given birth himself. Employed exclusively by anthropologists, the term is rarely encountered outside the discipline.26 Indeed, the six volume Dictionnaire Robert does not even mention it. This indicates that Apollinaire possessed some sort of specialized knowledge, probably gleaned from Max Müller’s Essais sur la mythologie comparée (1873) or from an anthropological journal. Coupled with the reference to Hudibras, it suggests not only that he had begun to work on Les Mamelles de Tirésias but that the play may have been inspired by this curious custom.

25

Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose complètes, Vol. II, p. 1265. There is a medical condition called “couvade syndrome,” when a man develops sympathetic symptoms in response to his wife’s pregnancy. 26

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The Plot Like Goethe’s Faust, Peter Read notes, Les Mamelles de Tirésias begins with a lengthy prologue—delivered by an actor representing Apollinaire.27 Dressed in a tuxedo and carrying a canne de tranchée (used to climb in and out of frontline trenches), he emerges from the prompter’s box like a rabbit from a top hat. According to an earlier manuscript, “Il est extrêmement pâle et il boite” (“He is extremely pale, and he is limping”).28 Written in the first person, the prologue is divided into two equal halves consisting of an allegory and an ars poetica respectively. Speaking for the wounded poet, the actor recounts how the Germans extinguished the stars with their cannons and how the French artillery managed to relight them. “As a light shining in the darkness,” J. E. Cirlot remarks, “the star is a symbol of the spirit.”29 For Apollinaire it symbolized the human spirit in particular and all that it had accomplished. Not only is traditional theater is mired in the past, the actor complains, but it is hopelessly pessimistic. A new theater is needed, he continues, that will portray the joy and the complexity of modern life. The remainder of the prologue consists of a defense and illustration of the new aesthetics and a general call to arms. The published version of Les Mamelles de Tirésias differs from that performed at the Conservatoire Renée Maubel in quite a few respects. In 1917, for example, the first act consisted of just three scenes.30 By the time the play appeared in print, however, Apollinaire had divided it into nine scenes. The first of these presents the two main characters and initiates the crisis that will drive the rest of the play. As Béhar rightly observes, Les Mamelles de Tirésias was 27

Read, Apollinaire et Les Mamelles de Tirésias, p. 133. Two fragments of a preliminary manuscript are reproduced on pp. 134-35. The actor was presumably carrying the poet’s own cane, which Jacqueline Apolllinaire later gave to André Billy. See Jean Adhémar et al., Apollinaire (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1969), item 395. 28 See Willard Bohn, “Autour des Mamelles de Tirésias,” Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th series, No. 20 (OctoberDecember 2002), p. 111. 29 J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols. Tr. Jack Sage. 2nd ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 309. 30 Rehearsal scripts by Germaine Albert-Birot, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas. The second act originally consisted of six scenes instead of seven.

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conceived as an act of aggression.31 Pulling out all the stops, Apollinaire subjects the audience to a constant barrage of apparent nonsense. “La surprise ... justifie toutes les incohérences,” Caizergues adds, “et donne son unité à l’ensemble” (“Surprise ... justifies all the incoherencies and succeeds in unifying the whole”).32 It governs every aspect of the play, from the staging to the action to the language employed by the characters. This is particularly true of the first scene, which is as surprising today as when it was first performed. Since Zanzibar is an African island and the name of a popular dice game, the set depicts both at the same time. An ambulatory newspaper kiosk stands on one side of the marketplace, while a collective character called the People of Zanzibar is seated toward the rear.33 All the sound effects are produced by the latter character, who possesses a large array of instruments. Wearing a blue dress adorned with tropical motifs, Thérèse enters as soon as the curtain rises. Unexpectedly, her face is also painted blue!34 “Non Monsieur mon mari,” she announces, “Vous ne me ferez pas ce que vous voulez” (“No my dear husband / You will not make me do whatever you want”). Since she has become a feminist, she continues, she refuses to recognize masculine authority. After each of these statements, she hushes the restless audience, which is still settling down. Here as throughout the play, Apollinaire abolishes the traditional barrier between the stage and the hall. In addition, Thérèse confides, she plans to usurp a whole series of male prerogatives. She proposes to become a soldier first, so she can make war instead of love. This statement is greeted by thunder--produced by the People of Zanzibar. 31

Béhar, Le Théâtre dada et surréaliste, p. 77. Pierre Caizergues, “Apollinaire inventeur d’un nouveau langage théâtral?” in Apollinaire inventeur de langages, ed. Michel Décaudin (Paris: Minard, 1973), pp. 187-88. 33 This character was played by an individual named Howard who seems to have been an artist (Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose complètes, Vol. II, p. 1422). Apollinaire’s address book contains an entry for an American sculptor named Cecil Howard (18881956), who is doubtless the same person (Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 2nd ser., No. 1 {January-March 1982}, p. 7). See Janis Conner and Joel Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893-1939 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), pp. 63-70. 34 Like several other devices in the play, this idea was taken from an earlier pantomime entitled A Quelle Heure un train partira-t-il pour Paris? —which borrowed it from the Italian Futurists and an opera by Alberto Savinio. See Bohn, Apollinaire and the Faceless Man, pp. 144-50. 32

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In theory, these and other comments are addressed to Thérèse’s husband, who remains inside their house next door. Since she is standing in the middle of the marketplace, however, their conversation is scarcely private. “Donnez-moi du lard je te dis donnez-moi du lard” (“Bring me some bacon I tell you bring me some bacon”), exclaims the husband, who seems to be eating breakfast. Delivered in a comical Belgian accent, this demand is followed by the sound of broken crockery—produced by the People of Zanzibar—and by a blatant non sequitur. Thérèse accuses her husband of thinking about nothing but sex and becomes hysterical. She finally calms down enough to mention other masculine occupations that interest her but succumbs to a fit of sneezing. Three lines later, she begins to cackle like a hen. The section culminates in an orgy of sneezing and cackling, after which Thérèse imitates the sound of a train. When the husband orders her to bring him some bacon again, she replies: “Mange-toi les pieds à la Sainte-Menehould” (“Eat your own trotters fried in batter”).35 In other words, although it takes a moment to sink in, Thérèse calls him a big fat pig. What she said during the original performance was less elegant but more direct: “Mange ta queue, cochon!” (“Eat your own tail, swine!”).36 At this point, something even more unexpected occurs. Thérèse is transformed into a member of the opposite sex by a doubly miraculous process. Not only does she suddenly acquire a beard and mustache, but she loses her breasts in the process. Represented by helium balloons—one red the other blue—they emerge when she opens her blouse but remain attached by strings. Separated by an expanse of white skin, they briefly evoke the French flag. “Envolez-vous oiseaux de ma faiblesse” (“Fly away birds of my frailty”), Thérèse exclaims as she watches them soar upward. After tugging on the strings to make the balloons dance, she explodes them with a cigarette lighter. Next 35 Pieds de cochon Sainte-Menehould are the specialty of a town in the Marne region. The precooked trotters are covered with bread crumbs, broiled, and served with mustard or a special sauce. 36 Guillot de Saix, La France, June 25, 1917. Repr. in Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 1st series, No. 15 (January 1978), p. 20. The actors’ copies at the University of Texas contains a different reply: “Mange tes pieds, espèce de cochon!” (“Eat your own feet, you filthy pig!”). And before that, Thérèse said: “Mange tes fesses, espèce de cochon!” (“Eat your buttocks, you filthy pig!”). See Read, Apollinaire et Les Mamelles de Tirésias, p. 122.

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she makes a face, thumbs her nose at the audience with both hands, and throws them some balls she has in her bodice. In the following scene Thérèse adopts the name Tiresias and sets out to conquer the world. Before she leaves, she overpowers her husband, dresses him in her skirt, puts on his pants, cuts her hair, and borrows his top hat.37 While she goes on to experience a series of masculine triumphs, her former mate remains at home caring for all the children he has produced. Following various trials and tribulations, Thérèse and her husband are eventually reunited. How and why they get back together will become clear as we proceed.

Repopulation and Feminism As has already become evident, Les Mamelles de Tirésias is structured around two themes in particular: feminism and repopulation.38 Each of these is associated with a particular individual in turn. While Thérèse advocates social, political, and educational equality for women, her husband insists that women should concentrate on having large families. Since these goals are diametrically opposed, husband and wife go their separate ways. And yet, the two goals are related to each other as well—if only by the apparent impossibility of combining them. As Guicharnaud remarks, “Apollinaire chose [to examine] the ‘realistic’ problem of female emancipation and its relation to population decline.”39 Indeed, he links the two themes together himself at one point: “La femme à Zanzibar veut ses droits politiques / Et renonce soudain aux amours prolifiques” (“Women in Zanzibar want their political rights / And suddenly renounce prolific lovemaking”). Les Mamelles de Tirésias asks whether a cause and effect relation exists between these two phenomena and, if so, whether it can be reversed. 37

Apollinaire envisioned a different scene initially: “Il pleure, elle le bat, il tombe, elle le ligotte, lui tire le pantalon et le tirant par les jambes l’allonge et l’attache d’un bout à l’autre de la scène” (“He cries, she hits him, he falls down, she ties him up, pulls off his pants, and by pulling on his legs, stretches him and attaches him to opposite ends of the stage” (ibid.). 38 Read examines these themes in more detail in Apollinaire et Les Mamelles de Tirésias, pp. 159-68. 39 Guicharnaud, Anthology of 20th Century French Theater, p. 41.

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By 1917, Feminism and repopulation had received widespread publicity and were constantly in the newspapers. Although both movements had been gathering momentum for years, they acquired a sense of urgency during the First World War. Not only were large numbers of men being killed at the front, but their wives and sweethearts were left behind to fend for themselves. Following huge military losses early in 1915, repopulation received more and more attention in the press and became the object of official propaganda.40 In addition, the government instituted a system of ten day leaves, so soldiers could return home once or twice a year and impregnate their wives. Whereas the play’s first act celebrates the attractions of feminism, which are enumerated by Thérèse, the second act celebrates the joys of maternity. Marveling at the codfish’s amazing fertility, the husband adopts the creature as his emblem. A single fish produces enough offspring, he announces, to keep the entire world in brandade and aïoli for a year. As this example demonstrates, children are not a useless expense but a source of great riches. Quels sont donc ces économistes imbéciles Qui nous ont fait croire que l’enfant C’était la pauvreté Tandis que c’est tout le contraire Est-ce qu’on a jamais entendu parler de morue morte dans la misère (Who are these foolish economists Who have led us to believe that children Are a financial drain Whereas it is exactly the opposite Have you ever heard of a codfish dying in poverty)41

The theme of repopulation is handled in a straightforward manner in the play and presents few, if any, problems. The French citizenry was being depleted at an alarming rate, and something plainly needed to be done about it. Although the gendarme objects that so many new 40

Pascal Pia, Apollinaire par lui même (Paris: Seuil, 1969), p. 165. These remarks may have been inspired by an article entitled “La Vie et la dépopulation,” published in L’Humanité on October 1, 1913. Under the subheading “Trop de morues” (“Too Many Codfish”), the anonymous author claimed that a healthy female codfish could produce forty billion offspring in three years, whose volume would be four hundred times that of the earth. 41

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mouths will cause a famine in Zanzibar, the situation in France was quite different. In contrast to the first theme, the second is considerably more complicated. Unlike the husband’s enthusiasm for repopulation, which is presented in a sympathetic light, Thérèse’s passion for feminism is viewed unsympathetically. The question that arises at this point arises is why? How are we to explain this discrepancy? According to Barbara Lekatsas, the answer is obvious: the play represents “an attack on the suffrage movement and feminism.”42 Scott Bates basically agrees with her and adds that Les Mamelles de Tirésias reflects the “fundamental male chauvism of the play’s author.”43Even Pierre Caizergues appears to espouse the anti-feminist interpretation at one point.44 Is it true, as these critics claim, that Apollinaire was opposed to women’s liberation and that Les Mamelles de Tirésias is an antifeminist play? Although it takes a while to sort through the conflicting testimony, the answer is essentially no. To be sure, Apollinaire made a few remarks at the beginning of his career that were less than complimentary. Since the young mal-aimé had little success with women, but a desperate need to be loved, his early writings reveal considerable frustration. Dating from 1905, the most damning text (examined by Caizergues) is a scathing portrait of German women. However, since these are isolated examples, they are not particularly significant. Not only is there no consistent anti-female pattern in Apollinaire’s writings, but he repeatedly supported the feminist cause. In an early poem beginning “A tous tes noirs désirs,” for example, he concluded: “Et c’est le rêve ardent du féminisme / Qui a raison de vouloir l’égalité” (“And this is the ardent dream of feminism / Which rightfully desires equality”).45 Similarly, reviewing a book in 1911, Apollinaire paused to praise a militant feminist from the previous century. 42

Barbara Lekatsas, ed. The Howard L. and Muriel Weingrow Collection of AvantGarde Art and Literature at Hofstra University: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1985), p. 9. 43 Scott Bates, “Erotic Propaganda in Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias,” French Literature Series, Vol. X (1983), pp. 35 and 40. 44 Pierre Caizergues, “De la femme allemande à la fille-soldat ou la femme et l’amour dans les chroniques et les échos d’Apollinaire,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 805-811 (1987), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 17, p. 37. 45 Guillaume Apollinaire, Soldes, ed. Pierre Caizergues (Fontfroide: Fata Morgana, 1985), not paginated. This poem probably dates from 1898-1899.

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Un grand esprit féminin, aujourd’hui bien oublié, Mme Clémence Royer, demandait la suppression du vocable “mademoiselle”, dont le sens actuel est tout récent et qui sépare bien inutilement les femmes en deux classes, celles qui sont mariées et les autres. On n’a pas établi pour les hommes de ces distinctions. (A great feminine spirit who is entirely forgotten today, Mme Clémence Royer demanded the abolition of the term “Mademoiselle,” whose present meaning is quite recent and which--quite uselessly --divides women into two classes, those who are married and the remainder. Similar distinctions do not exist for men.)46

Interestingly, none of the critics who witnessed the first performance of Les Mamelles de Tirésias thought the play was anti-feminist. Neither did any of those who reviewed the published version the following year—with one exception. Writing in the Giornale del Mattino in Bologna, Francesco Meriano identified one of the play’s goals as “la ridicolizzazione del femminismo.”47 Ironically, Apollinaire had attempted to forestall this accusation when he revised the play for publication. Like most plays, in any case, Les Mamelles de Tirésias achieves its full effect only when it is performed. The way the actors speak, look, and gesture contributes to the total Gestalt. The scenery, the music, and the stage effects create a certain atmosphere. Hence the play needs to be viewed in a theatrical context rather than a literary one. The audience is in a better position to grasp Apollinaire’s intentions than the reader. One of the first discoveries that emerges from a theatrical perspective is that the actors’ roles are more nuanced than they first appear. Thérèse is not really to blame for leaving her husband, one discovers, nor is her husband the innocent victim he pretends to be. Not only does he expect Thérèse to wait on him hand and foot, but he behaves in an abusive manner. Furious at having to wait for his breakfast, he bellows at his wife to bring him some bacon and begins smashing dishes. When she fails to appear, he rushes out of the house 46

Guillaume Apollinaire, “Mademoiselle par René Maizeroy,” “L’Intransigeant, August 2, 1911. Repr. in Apollinaire, Oeuvres en prose complètes, Vol. II, pp. 1177-78. 47 Francesco Meriano, “Umane lettere: Il simbolismo in soffitta (Tre scrittori francesi: Apollinaire, Jacob, Cendrars),” Il Giornale del Mattino (Bologna), March 28, 1918. Repr. in Quaderni del Novecento Francese, No. 14 (1991), p. 249.

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and raises his hand to slap her. Thus the husband turns out to be the male chauvinist pig, not Apollinaire. Although he adopts the codfish as his official emblem, he consistently behaves like a swine. He is so obsessed with food, moreover, that Gossiaux concludes he suffers from bulimia. The reason the husband assumes his wife’s role, he adds, is not to ensure the survival of the species but to satisfy his gargantuan appetite. His innumerable children “n’ont d’autre fonction ... que de l’enrichir et le nourrir” (“have no other function ... than to provide him with riches and nourishment”).48 Not only is Thérèse perfectly justified in leaving her husband, therefore, but she is the most important character in the play. By comparison, we know virtually nothing about her spouse, who is simply referred to as “Le Mari.” An anonymous figure with no real presence, identity, or history, he is a function rather than a person. To be sure, he spends more time on stage than Thérèse, but she appears in five key scenes situated at the beginning and the end. After setting the drama in motion, she disappears for a while but returns in time to resolve the central conflict. Interestingly, feminist critic Gloria Orenstein argues that Thérèse is the first in a long line of Surrealist heroines. “The most interesting aspect of this play,” she declares, “is not the fact that Thérèse gives up the conventional woman’s role but that her metamorphosis occasions her total psychic emancipation and that she is ... transformed into a visionary, a seer.”49 Apollinaire depicts women both as the victim of man’s stupidity and as the hope of his salvation. By the end of the play, when Thérèse returns, she has become a fortune teller and a clairvoyant. Symbolizing her uncanny ability to see into the future, her skull is illuminated electrically. Casting off her exotic robes, Thérèse informs her husband that she has finally decided to return. While she has achieved many impressive accomplishments since she left home, she has discovered they are meaningless without his love. By this time, she has become a woman again and has resumed her original shape—with one important difference. Whereas formerly she was well-endowed, her husband is dismayed to discover that she is as flat as a pancake. When he offers to restore her breasts (with some balls and balloons), she replies: “Nous nous en sommes passés l’un et l’autre / Continuons” 48

Gossiaux, “Les Mamelles de Tirésias: note historique et anthropologique,” p. 28. Gloria Orenstein, The Theater of the Marvelous: Surrealism and the Contemporary Stage (New York: New York University Press, 1975), p. 100-01. 49

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(“We have both gotten along fine without them / Let’s continue like that”). To which the husband readily agrees. Although Apollinaire insists in the preface that the play contains no symbols (in response to a reviewer’s comments), this is not strictly true. Not only do the balls and balloons symbolize Thérèse’s breasts, but her breasts possess a symbolic function as well. In retrospect, the entire play can be seen to revolve about her (former) female attributes—which are celebrated in the title. Although her slim profile anticipates that of the flappers in the 1920’s, it is far more than a fashion statement. The reason Thérèse discards her breasts, as one contemporary critic realized, is because they are “fâcheux symboles d’une servilité devenue insupportable” (“distressing symbols of a servility that has become unbearable”).50 They symbolize woman’s traditional subservience to man. This is why Thérèse says “Envolezvous oiseaux de ma faiblesse” (“birds of my frailty”). By divesting herself of her breasts, she is freeing herself from her symbolic chains. That the husband readily acquiesces to Thérèse’s demands at the end of the play signals another important development. Since he is prepared to accept his wife on her own terms, he is no longer a male chauvinist. Both he and Thérèse have progressed significantly since their original dispute. She has experienced a change of heart, and he is prepared to treat her as an equal. Their symmetrical evolution ensures their successful reconciliation. Thus Les Mamelles de Tirésias ends happily as Thérèse and her husband set about creating a model marriage. Ironically, the original performance ended on a different note—not with the triumph of feminism but with Thérèse’s capitulation. According to one reviewer, she begged her husband to take her back with tears in her eyes.51 Apollinaire himself says she returned home “repentante et résignée,” promising to have lots of children.52 A set of proofs at the University of Texas contains the following conclusion: 50 F. Laya, “Guillaume Apollinaire: Les Mamelles de Tirésias,” L’Eventail, April 15, 1918. Repr. in Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th series, No. 4 (October-December 1998), p. 113. 51 Gaston Picard, “Les Mamelles de Tirésias ou la folle journée,” intended for the June 29, 1917, edition of Le Pays but never published. Repr. in Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, lst series, No. 19 (January 1979), p. 19. 52 Reported by G. Davin de Champclos in “Les Mamelles de Tirésias,” Le Petit Bleu, June 26, 1917. Repr. in ibid., Nos. 17-18 (July-October 1978), p. 29.

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Thérèse: Le Mari: Thérèse: Le Mari: (Thérèse: Husband: Thérèse: Husband:

Et combien cher mari M’avez-vous fait d’enfants? Quarante mille cinquante et un Je t’en ferai le double! Mais pas toute seule. CHOEUR And my dear husband how Many children have you made? Forty thousand and fifty-one I’ll make twice as many! But not by yourself CHORUS).

Between the play’s performance and the date it appeared in print, Apollinaire revised the conclusion completely. The final version ends not with the victory of one spouse over the other but with the recognition that marriage is an equal partnership. Thérèse and her husband have learned from experience that they need each other. Significantly, Thérèse is neither resigned nor repentant. She does not apologize for leaving her partner, and she has no intention of resuming her former role. Nor, in contrast to her previous incarnation, does she offer to have more children. Despite her earlier boast, Thérèse and her husband have more than enough already. Signaling her refusal to conform to traditional expectations, Les Mamelles de Tirésias concludes with a distinctly feminist gesture. Seizing the symbolic breasts she has just declined, she throws the balls at the audience and releases the balloons into the air.

Final Considerations Apollinaire insisted repeatedly that he sought to accomplish two time-honored goals in the play: to entertain and to instruct. Faced with hostile criticism from several quarters following the performance, he downplayed the first goal and emphasized the second. Les Mamelles de Tirésias was a patriotic gesture, he insisted, which sought to alert the public to the danger of depopulation. Although this claim seriously misrepresented the play’s goals, it silenced a few critics who did not wish to appear unpatriotic. Conceived essentially as a political

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expedient, the statement exemplifies Apollinaire’s fondness for private jokes. Like his insistence that the so-called Portrait de Guillaume Apollinaire by Giorgio de Chirico was a good likeness, it was patently untrue.53 As several critics have remarked, the fact that the play is filled with absurdities undermines its serious pretensions. When Apollinaire lectures his audience on condoms, for example, or extols the codfish’s incredible fertility, he is obviously joking. And yet, as Béhar points out, he needed to maintain a serious demeanor at the same time.54 If he had allowed himself to smile, the game would have been up. The joke would no longer have been private. Despite Apollinaire’s protestations to the contrary, therefore, the play is not a pièce à thèse. Asserting that it is concerned with feminism or with repopulation is like claiming that Ubu roi is about political ambition. The view that the play is propaganda is contradicted not only by its frequent absurdities but also by its obvious literary character. Apollinaire employs a whole series of complicated devices including irony, parody, word play, and burlesque. In addition, as he proclaims over and over, Les Mamelles de Tirésias is an anti-realistic composition. While it incorporates several realistic themes, these are subjected to considerable abuse. In particular, as Gloria Orenstein recognizes, the play contains “a blatant satire of feminism.”55 It does not attack the movement itself, Victor Basch noted in 1917, but satirizes certain excesses committed in the name of feminism.56 While these receive a certain amount of the poet’s attention, his mocking gaze encompasses everything in the play. As one reviewer remarked following the first performance, “l’oeuvre d’Apollinaire est … une façon de se moquer de tout” (“Apollinaire’s play … manages to make fun of everything”).57

53

See Willard Bohn, “Giorgio de Chirico et le Portrait de Guillaume Apollinaire,” Revue des Lettres Modernes, special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 22, forthcoming and “Giorgio de Chirico’s ‘Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire’ of 1914,” The Burlington Magazine, CXLVII (November 2005), pp. 751-54. 54 Béhar, Le Théâtre dada et surréaliste, p. 79. 55 Orenstein, The Theater of the Marvelous, p. 99. 56 Victor Basch, “Les Mamelles de Tirésias, drame sur-réaliste de M. Guillaume Apollinaire,” Le Pays, July 14, 1917. Repr. in Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 1st series, No. 20 (April 1979), p. 30. 57 René Wisner, “Manifestation Sic—Les Mamelles de Tirésias, par Guillaume Apollinaire,” Le Pays, June 24, 1917. Repr. in ibid., No. 19 (January 1979), p. 15.

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Although Les Mamelles de Tirésias appears initially to be centered around feminism and repopulation, these are essentially pretexts. The point at which the two themes intersect marks the site of Apollinaire’s principal concern. The most important theme is neither political nor demographic, it turns out, but erotic. “La vérité est celleci,” he announces in the preface; “on ne fait plus d’enfants en France parce qu’on n’y fait pas assez d’amour” (“The reason we don’t make children in France any more is because we don’t make love enough”). Apollinaire’s remark is echoed by Thérèse in the final scene, who exclaims: “Qu’importe le trône ou la tombe / Il faut s’aimer ou je succombe” (“Who cares about the throne or the tomb / Let’s make love before I succumb”). This, in the last analysis, is the moral of the play. French men and women need to have sex more often. As Peter Read declares, the last scene illustrates Apollinaire’s conviction that sexuality is the decisive force that shapes human existence.58 Indeed, he adds, this theme presides over the last half of the play. Subtly evoking the pleasures of procreation, the music that introduces the second act is taken from the song “Plaisir d’amour.”59 As we have seen, Apollinaire celebrates sexuality not only as an abstract force but as a pleasurable activity to be enjoyed in its own right. Although much of what he says is implicit, the final scene exhorts the members of the audience to go home and make love. This message is conveyed by three double-entendres that are decidedly risqué. Each is constructed in such a way that only someone who knows the code—and who presumably will not be offended—can decipher it. Masquerading as a gallant tribute, the first example is a great deal lustier than it appears at first glance. Ma foi les dames de Paris Sont bien plus belles que les autres Si les chats aiment les souris Mesdames nous aimons les vôtres (Yes indeed Parisian ladies Surpass all others in beauty If pussies love mice Ladies we sure love yours).

58 59

Read, Apollinaire et Les Mamelles de Tirésias, p. 175. Ibid., p. 96

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This statement is highly ambiguous to say the least. As Claude Debon remarks, innocent readers (or spectators) will wonder which animal Parisian men prefer—cats or mice?60 By contrast, those who know that chat is a slang term for “vagina” will grasp the hidden reference immediately. No sooner has the last line been uttered, however, than Apollinaire hastens to throw his audience off the track. At his prodding, Thérèse intervenes and explains that “souris” is an archaic term for “sourires.” This remark is followed by two imperative constructions a little later that illustrate exactly what Apollinaire has in mind. Whereas formerly Thérèse preferred to make war rather than love, now she invites her husband to make love to her.61 “Viens cueillir la fraise,” she exclaims, “Avec la fleur du bananier” (“Come harvest my strawberry / With your banana flower”). Although Scott Bates identifies fraise as a slang term for “nipple,” it appears to describe the female genitalia as well.62 (A similar expression exists in English.) This interpretation is reinforced by the observation that “avec” can denote agency and that banana flowers have a pronounced phallic shape. Before her husband can respond, Thérèse repeats her passionate invitation: “Il faut s’aimer ou je succombe” (“Let’s make love before I die”). In turn, following a brief attempt to restore her breasts, the husband invites her to join him in bed. Like his wife initially, he employs a slang expression to disguise his request: “Allons plutôt tremper la soupe” (“Let’s go dunk some bread in the soup”). To readers who are unfamiliar with the code, he merely seems to be asking for something to eat. Thérèse and her husband are not only happily reunited as Les Mamelles de Tirésias concludes, therefore, but are also preparing to make love. They have learned two important lessons in the course of the play: that husbands and wives should be equal partners and that they should continue to have an active sex life.

60 Claude Debon, “Relire et revoir Le Bestiaire ou cortège d’Orphée d’Apollinaire,” Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th series, No. 1 (January-March 1998), p. 7. According to Scott Bates, both words are slang terms for “sexe de la femme.” See his Dictionnaire des mots libres d’Apollinaire (Sewanee, Tennessee: privately printed, 1991), pp. 243 and 246. 61 Bates, “Erotic Propaganda in Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias,” p. 39. 62 Bates, Dictionnaire des mots libres d’Apollinaire, p. 194.

Conclusion Although Apollinaire spent much, if not most, of his life working on the aesthetic edge, his innate sensibility prevented him from making a serious misstep. Like a performer on the high wire, he managed to maintain a delicate balance between sense and nonsense. Long before he composed “La Jolie Rousse” (“The Pretty Redhead”), he succeeded in reconciling tradition and invention, order and adventure. While his experiments extended into every conceivable domain, Apollinaire was far from indiscriminate. He loved to experiment with new ideas, especially those that were surprising, but he knew instinctively whether a project was sound or not and could defend it brilliantly if need be. Many of the people who knew him have left accounts testifying to what an extraordinary conversationalist he was and how much they enjoyed listening to him. While Apollinaire left few theoretical writings, he had an excellent grasp of modern aesthetics and a profound understanding of the issues confronting modern artists and writers. One of the reasons he became the leader of the avant-garde, as “L’Esprit nouveau et les poètes” demonstrates, was because he understood exactly what the modern movement was trying to accomplish. At the same time, Apollinaire possessed an excellent grasp of the principles underlying his own work. He knew precisely where he was going, what he was trying to achieve, and why it was necessary in the first place. The best example is Les Mamelles de Tirésias, where he describes his aesthetic program in detail—first in the preface and then in the prologue. Although comparable documents are lacking for the other three genres we have examined, he was perfectly aware of their theoretical underpinnings. Like the play, the bestiary, the whatnots, and the poems inspired by children’s rhymes display meticulous attention to detail. Like Les Mamelles, each employs a distinctive new way of viewing the world and of representing reality itself. Many of Apollinaire’s acquaintances recalled what a hearty appetite he possessed and how much he appreciated good food. The truth is that he possessed a tremendous appetite for life in general. “Je suis ivre d’avoir bu tout l’univers” (“I am intoxicated from drinking the whole universe”), he exclaimed in “Vendémiaire.” Coupled with his insatiable curiosity, this hunger drove him to explore the world around him and to experiment with its endless artistic possibilities. And since

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Apollinaire resided in Paris, he was ideally situated to carry out this ambitious program. The French capital was not only an exciting place to live but a hotbed of intellectual and artistic ferment. Countless new ideas were in the air, countless experiments were taking place that Apollinaire found intoxicating and which he eagerly absorbed. The flourishing avant-garde provided him with the critical mass he needed to function as poet, critic, and playwright. In return, like Picasso or Matisse, he served as an important catalyst that allowed the critical mass to ignite.

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_____. “Autour de Stavelot: deux cahiers et un agenda.” QueVlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 3rd ser., No. 21 (January-March 1996), pp. 1-48. _____. “La Blanche Neige.” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 104107 (1964), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 3, pp. 125 -29. _____. La Crise des valeurs symbolistes: vingt ans de poésie française, 1895-1914. (1960) Geneva: Slatkine, 1981. _____. Le Dossier d’”Alcools”. rev. ed. Geneva: Droz and Paris: Minard, 1965. _____. “Un Mythe ‘fin de siècle’: Salomé.” ComparativeLiterature Studies, Vol. IV, Nos. 1-2 (1967), pp. 109-117. _____. Preface to Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 123-126 (1965), special issue Guillaume Apollinaire 4, pp. 3-4. _____. “Tirésias et Max Linder.” Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 3rd ser., No. 19 (July-August 1995), p. 84. Drucker, Johanna. The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Durry, Marie-Jeanne. Guillaume Apollinaire: “Alcools”. Paris: SEDES, 1956-1964. 3 vols. Fongaro, Antoine. “Des ‘lys.’” Que Vlo-Ve? Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th ser., No. 14 (April-June 2001), pp. 42-45. _____. “Des Sources d’Apollinaire.” Revue des Lettres Modernes, Nos. 146-149 (1966), pp. 112-14. _____. “Deux Notes sur le Bestiaire.” Que Vlo-Ve?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th ser., No. 2 (April-June 1998), pp. 42-43.

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Guicharnaud, Jacques. Anthology of 20th Century French Theater. Paris and New York: Paris Book Center, 1967. Harrow, Susan. The Material, the Real, and the Fractured Self: Subjectivity and Representation from Rimbaud to Réda. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Hervilly, Ernest d’. Les Bêtes à Paris. Paris: Launete, 1885. Hubert, Etienne-Alain. “Petit Cortège pour le Bestiaire.” Que VloVe?, Bulletin International des Etudes sur Guillaume Apollinaire, 4th ser., No. 2 (April-June 1998), pp. 36-37. Jannini, P. A. La fortuna di Apollinaire in Italia. 2nd ed. Milan: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1965. Jarry, Alfred. Oeuvres complètes. Ed. Michel Arrivé. Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1972, Vol. I. Kamber, Gerald. Max Jacob and the Poetics of Cubism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. Laude, Jean. Contribution to a debate on literary cubism. Cahiers du Musée National d’Art Moderne, No. 6 (1981), pp. 135-37. Laya, F. “Guillaume Apollinaire: Les Mamelles de Tirésias.” L’Eventail, April 15, 1918. Lekatsas, Barbara, ed. The Howard L. and Muriel Weingrow Collection of Avant-Garde Art and Literature at Hofstra University: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1985. Logue, Christopher. New Numbers. New York: Knopf, 1970. Longrée, Georges H. F. “Apollinaire parallèle: le cas des ‘Quelconqueries’ et de ‘La Fin de Babylone.’” Les Cahiers des Paralittératures, Vol. I (1989), pp. 101-47.

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Index Apollinaire, Guillaume: and aesthetics, 12, 14, 16, 47, 49, 51, 61-62, 72-73, 80, 106-109; and cubist poetry, 51, 56; and Dada, 46, 47, 48, 57n.24, 60, 62, 73; and the Italian Futurists, 45, 54, 114n.34; and the Surrealists, 46, 48, 63-64, 68, 71, 73,108, 120. Works: “Acousmate,” 47n.9; “A Linda,” 47n.9, 57-60; A quelle heure un train partira-t-il pour Paris?, 48, 114n.34; “A tous tes noirs désirs,” 118; “L’Arrivé du paquebot,” 45-46, 45n.3, 47n.9, 71; “Banalités,” 13, 45-73; Le Bestiaire, 15-43; “La Blanche Neige,” 13, 82-85; “Le Boeuf,” 15n.1, 16, 19-20, 23; “La Carpe,” 23, 33, 34-35, 40-42; “La Chanson du mal-aimé,” 24-25, 75; “Chapeau -Tombeau,” 64, 7173; “La Chaste Lise,” 47n.9; “Le Chat,” 15n.1, 18, 23, 26-28, 35, 43; “La Chenille,” 15n.1, 30; “Le Cheval,” 15n.1, 16, 29-30, 35, 3638; “La Chèvre du Thibet,” 15.n1, 17-18, 21, 23, 34, 36; “La Clef,” 85; “La Colombe,” 20, 29-30, 3536, 43; “La Dame,” 13, 85-91; “La Danseuse,” 96; “Le Dauphin,” 23, 33, 35; “Un Dernier Chapitre,” 47n.9; “Le Dromadaire,” 15n.1, 23, 36; “L’Ecrevisse,” 19, 23, 24, 33; “L’Eléphant,” 18, 23, 32-33, 34; L’Enchanteur pourrissant, 13; “L’Esprit nouveau et les poètes,”

73, 108, 127; “Etoile,” 47n.9, 6566; “Fagnes de Wallonie,” 47n.9; “Les Fenêtres,” 51, 88; “Fiord,” 68; “Fusée,” 76-78; L’Hérésiarque et Cie, 96; “Le Hibou,” 15n.1, 17, 24, 28-29, 33; “Hôtel,” 54-55, 56; “Ibis,” 15n.1, 18, 19, 23, 33, 37; “La Jolie Rousse,” 127; “Le Lapin,” 15n.1, 23, 30, 34; “Lettre-Océan,” 54; “Le Lièvre,” 15n.1, 17, 23, 34; “Le Lion,” 15n.1, 20, 30, 34, 3840, 42, 43; “Lundi rue Christine,” 62; “La Maison des morts,” 80; Les Mammelles de Tirésias, 14, 105-125, 127; Le Marchand d’anchois, 68; “Le Matin,” 47n.9; “La Méduse,” 17, 23, 33, 43; “1890,”64-65; “La Mouche,” 15n.1, 23, 24, 33; “Le Paon,” 15n.1, 17, 30, 33, 36, 43; “Le Petit Balai,” 68; “Le Phoque,” 64, 67-71; Le Poète assassiné, 48, 49, 67; “Le Pont Mirabeau,” 81, 88; “La Porte,” 88; “Le Poulpe,” 24, 25, 26, 28, 33, 43; “La Puce,” 15n.1, 24-26, 28, 33, 43; “Quelconqueries,” 45-73; “Le Repas,” 47n.9, 50-51; “Les Saisons,” 77-78; “Salomé,” 13, 92-104; “La Sauterelle,” 23, 24; “Le Serpent,” 16, 17, 20-23, 30, 33-34, 36; “Les Sirènes,” 16, 18, 23; “69 6666 ...6 9...,” 71; “La Souris,” 18, 24; “Le Tabac à priser,” 47n.9, 56; “Table,” 51-54, 56; “Té,” 47n.9, 66-67; “La

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Tortue,” 15n.1, 19, 20, 23; “Vendémiaire,” 127; “Voyage à Paris,” 68; “0, 50,” 47n.9, 60-63; “Zone,” 51. About, Edmond, 110 Alexandre, Didier, 86, 89 Antonelli, Paola, 53, 62 Aragon, Louis, 48 Archimedes, 73 Aristophanes, 109 Auffret, Serge and Hélène, 101102 Ball, Hugo, 60 Barthes, Roland, 13, 31, 34, 35, 42-43 Basch, Victor, 123 Bates, Scott, 63n.37, 71, 89, 99, 118, 125 Baudelaire, Charles, 46 Béhar, Henri, 106, 113-114, 123 Bellas, Jacqueline, 93, 101 Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo, 42 Bertrand, Gerard, 42 Bonnet, Marguerite, 49 Boschetti, Anna, 101 Bouchardon, Marianne, 110 Bowra, C. M., 102 Braques, Georges, 20 Breton, André, 46, 48, 63-64, 68, 71, 108 Breunig, LeRoy C., 83, 103 Butler, Samuel, 112 Caizergues, Pierre, 114, 118 Cansinos-Asséns, Rafael, 95 Capoul, Victor, 64 Capus, Alfred, 64 Catelain, Georgette, 53 Caws, Mary Ann, 51 Cézanne, Paul, 50 Chaussard, Piere-Jean Baptiste, 110

Chirico, Giorgio de, 123 Cirlot, J. E., 113 Clancier, Anne, 110-111 Cleopatra, 21, 23 Coligny-Chatillon, Louise, 78 Copperfield, David, 12 Couffignal, Robert, 93, 95, 99 Cranston, Mechtild, 82-83 Culler, Jonathan, 47-48, 60 Debon, Claude, 17, 18, 125 Descartes, René, 67 Desnos, Robert, 105 Décaudin, Michel, 47, 56, 72, 76, 83, 84, 89, 92, 106 Derain, André, 20 Duchamp, Marcel, 47, 57n.24, 62, 75 Dufy, Raoul, 13, 15-43 Durry, Marie-Jeanne, 89, 93, 101 Fongaro, Antoine, 46, 76, 78, 83 Frazer, Sir James George, 103 Giono, Jean, 57 Goethe, Wolfgang, 113 Gossiaux, Pol-P., 110, 120 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 93-95 Greet, Anne Hyde, 15, 19, 22, 23, 28, 30, 37-38, 42, 84, 90n.34 Guicharnaud, Jacques, 108, 116 Hagenbeck, Carl, 38 Harrow, Susan, 50 Hausmann, Raoul, 60 Hervilly, Ernest d’, 70 Ionesco, Eugène, 62 Jarry, Alfred, 106, 107 Joyce, James, 52 Kraft, Maurice, 92

Index La Fontaine, Jean de, 30 Laude, Jean, 110 Laurencin, Marie, 18, 28-29, 35 Lautréamont, Comte de, 46 Lawler, James, 56n.23 Lekatsas, Barbara, 118 Logue, Christopher, 11-12 Longrée, Georges, 48, 49, 52, 58, 61 Lorrain, Jean, 69 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 18, 58, 63, 95-96 Marinetti, F. T., 111 Mathews, Timothy, 57, 59 Matisse, Henri, 20, 128 Meriano, Francesco, 119 Molina da Silva, Linda, 57 Morin, Edgar, 32 Müller, Max, 112 Orenstein, Gloria, 120, 123 Pagès, Madeleine, 78 Papini, Giovanni, 45 Picabia, Francis, 57n.24, 75, 111 Picasso, Pablo, 128 Pilkington, A. E., 84, 90, 101 Piron, Alexis, 110 Playden, Annie, 28, 83 Poiret, Paul, 20 Poupon, Marc, 17, 86, 89n.30, 99 Proust, Marcel, 67 Ray, Man, 60 Read, Peter, 107, 110-111, 113, 124 Rees, Garnet, 102 Reverdy, Pierre, 109 Richter, Mario, 83 Riffaterre, Michael, 83 Rimbaud, Arthur, 46 Roméo, Thérèse, 81

143 Roussel, Raymond, 57n.24 Roy, Pierre, 79, 87 Royer, Clémence, 119 Samaltanos, Katia, 75 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 61 Savinio, Alberto, 114n.34 Shakespeare, William, 73, 95 Soffici, Ardengo, 44-45, 65, Souday, Paul, 105 Soupault, Philippe, 48 Strachan, W. J., 23 Sutherland, Graham, 15 Themerson, Stefan, 57 Tydings, Millard, 32 Varenne, Pierre, 105 Verlaine, Paul, 68, 89 Vigny, Alfred de, 73n.52 Warhol, Andy, 62 White, John J., 61 Zeitlin, Froma, 109