Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918):

Life
 He kept his early childhood and place of origin secret, but is known to be the son of a Polish
emigrant without any claim to French heritage
 In 1901, time spent in the German Rhineland would greatly impact later images and themes
in his poetry
 He fell in love with an English girl Annie Playden who rejected him even after he followed
her to London. These events inspired his work Chanson du mal-aimé.
 He frequented cafés enjoyed by fellow writers and artists including André Derain, Raoul
Dufy, and Pablo Picasso
 With Picasso, Apollinaire studied cubism in both literature and art. Along with Max Jacob
and André Salmon, Picasso and Apollinaire formed the foundation for the modern art
movement.
 He enlisted in WWI, received a head wound, was trepanned, then later died in the Spanish
Influenza outbreak of 1918. The injury inspired Le poète assassiné.

Poetry
 L’Enchanteur pourrissant, L’Hérésiarque et Cie, Le Bestiaire all came before his first great
work l’Alcools.
 His poetic style varied between metered and unmetered lines, traditional rhymes and lack of
rhymes, as well as a complete disregard for punctuation.
 He believed that sex was essential to understanding all human relations.
 His collection Calligrammes spoke to Apollinaire’s time in the war and contains concrete
poems that are shaped on the page according to meaning
 His poems are considered as precursors to the surrealist movement
 Apollinaire’s poems are characterized by:
o A feeling of surprise resulting from the juxtaposition of contrasting words
o Experimentation with the technical aspects of poetry
o Lack of punctuation
o Love for “realistic” women compared to the idealization common in the Symbolist
movement

Source:
Burnshaw, Stanley. The Poem Itself. Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press, 1995.

“Guillaume Apollinaire.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Guillaume-Apollinaire. Date Accessed 9 March
2020.
 Guillaume Apollinaire
La Chanson du mal-aimé
 I think the structure of each stanza is a bit odd. There are very few strong rhymes in the poem
and the grouping of five lines is a bit cumbersome, particularly in the second stanza when the
odd-numbered lines don’t rhyme. I would not go so far as to say that the chanson is lacking in
musicality or lyricism, but at times the reader has to work for it. I say this of course as a non-
native speaker, so I would be interested in a Frenchman’s thoughts on the subject. The
commentary in “The Poem Itself” even said that « Sacontale » and « mâle » in the seventh
stanza may only appear as necessary for a rhyme.
 The homogeneity of the idea of the poem is rather astounding. Apollinaire chasing after a
sleazy personification of his love, the context with Annie Playden, the Biblical allusions, the
hazy setting of a foggy evening in London all coalesce into a united meditation on the nuanced
differences between love and infatuation. Apollinaire even resists the common temptation of
poets to wallow a bit in their suffering, instead choosing to process his thoughts and emotions
with a rare degree of maturity and self-awareness.
 I understand now why Apollinaire’s views on love are contrasted with those from the rest of
the Symbolists. He still speaks of his love through a certain lens of abstraction, but there is no
Baudelairean idealization, no Mallarméean philosophizing, no Laforguean irony. The
reference to the return of Ulysses in the sixth stanza is comparable to the tenderness of
Verlaine’s Green, but Apollinaire goes further to capture one of the most elusive and beautiful
facets of love. It is the same tint of romance that motivates King Solomon to call his wife “my
sister, my bride” (Song of Solomon 2:10), the same endearment between lovers advanced in
age, a love that burns hot but finds its source in unknown, more transcendent depths.
 The poem feels more modern to me than the others that I’ve studied. The urbanized spatial
setting, the personal narrative, and the more grounded, realistic view of his feelings for Annie
represent a distinctive shift from the poetry of his predecessors.
 Guillaume Apollinaire
Vitam Impendere Amori
 The two poems appended together like this is interesting considering they have two very
different feelings. Again, I get the sense that Apollinaire is writing for his own sake to organize
his thoughts, and that these poems have almost “accidentally” been published for all to see.
This internal dialogue is evident in the first poem when he reassures himself over and over
again that despite how he feels in the moment, another woman to love will come around.
Writing this poem must have been therapeutic for him much in the same way that modern-day
counselors recommend journaling to their clients.
 In the second stanza of the first poem, Apollinaire mentions the passing and eventual return of
spring. Springtime is commonly associated with a time of love when the world is made new
again. I mention it though only because I once again see a connection to King Solomon and
his bride, particularly in the following passage: “My beloved spoke and said to me, ‘Arise, my
darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in
our land. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.’ ” (Song
of Solomon 2:10-13). These associations are more of a bias on my part for understanding
Apollinaire’s emotion and help to explain why I think his depictions of romance carry more
gravitas then many of the previous poets. He is clearly not the only poet or artists to make the
connection between love and the spring, but his confidence that the coming of the season is as
sure as the coming of a new love is what I find so interesting.
 The second poem is rife with interesting and unusual imagery. Apollinaire alludes to scenes
that were common among the group of cubist painters and writers with whom he and Marie
Laurencin were friends. Through the subtlety of the allusions and the lens of poetry,
Apollinaire has even further abstracted the theatrics of the circus scene. With the same
confidence in the coming future as before, he says « Voici que s’en vient la saison et des
dédains et du soupçon ». Possibly the reason Apollinaire sounds so wise and Biblical to me is
that he seems to have tapped into the “natural rhythm and flow” of life and love. He seems just
as aware that love will come again in his youth as he is sure that he will come to have pain and
regrets about that same love in adulthood. He seemingly foresees the ups and downs of
romantic entanglement and comes to peace with them.
 Guillaume Apollinaire
La jolie rousse
 Apollinaire’s artistic mission to embrace the new style of cubism, encourage an amiable
break from the Symbolists, and lay the groundwork for even more experimental approaches
to poetry is evident in this poem. After WWI shocked the globe with humanity’s capacity for
destruction, new paradigms were necessary to make sense of the modern world. Apollinaire
bridges the gap of this transition by retaining elements of the old–the occasional alexandrine
or rhyme–while surging forward into the new–elements of concrete poetry and varied lengths
of the lines. Line 10 for example, « Je sais d’ancien et de nouveau autant qu’un homme seul
pourrait / des deux savoir », breaks the line into two parts and places « des deux savoir »
right in the middle of the page rather than aligned to the left. Apollinaire places himself in the
very center between old and new, striving to understand the merits of the past while
exploring new possibilities for the future. The same effect is achieved in line 13.
 It’s been in the back of my mind since starting to read Apollinaire that his works remind me
of another author, and only after beginning to read this prose poem did it occur to me that the
association is with Cormac McCarthy. Both incorporate a kind of Biblical weight into their
writing and both forego the use of punctuation. Additionally, to me they both straddle a line
in their works. As mentioned above, Apollinaire represents the dawning of modernity in
French poetry while still drawing some inspiration from the Symbolists. McCarthy,
particularly in his acclaimed novel “The Road”, writes almost halfway between prose and
poetry similar to Apollinaire’s Calligrams. They are both focus on capturing an innovative
and creative artistic spirit rather than mastery of the technical aspects of writing such as
Verlaine’s lyricism or Mallarmé’s poetic dogma.
 The Poem Itself mentioned the rhymes and assonances of lines 36-39, but I found the stanza
starting on line 40 to be the most melodic and pleasing to the ear of the whole poem. The
delicate arrangement of o, r, é, and n sounds dance around the mouth along with the –ait and
–nent rhymes and repetition of « qui ». There’s so much tightly-packed into the four lines,
and it comes just before Apollinaire appeal to his contemporaries. It seems like one last
display of his poetic abilities within structural and metrical constraints to give credit and
authority to his more groundbreaking and ambitious views about poetry.
 I find it hard to place the tone of the last stanza/paragraph. Are these five lines an earnest
appeal from a humble innovator or are they a sharp reprimand against the complacency of
masses? The phrase « surtout gens d’ici » is indicative that Apollianire’s petition is aimed
specifically to those around him. Additionally, the shaping of the lines indicates a build-up of
righteous anger followed by the shorter, more pleading « Ayez pitié de moi ». I think these
two features of the closing lines indicate some resentment, but an argument could be made
that ending is merely impassioned and sincere.