Reading Apollinaire's Calligrammes

Willard Bohn

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781501338328
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

Reading Apollinaire's Calligrammes examines Guillaume Apollinaire's second major collection of poetry. Composed between 1913 and 1918, the nineteen poems examined here fall into two main groups: the experimental poetry and the war poetry. They also provide glimpses of the poet's personal history, from his affair with Louise de Coligny-Châtillon to his engagement to Madeleine Pagès and his marriage with Jacqueline Kolb. Each section examines all of the previous scholarship for the work in question, provides a detailed analysis, and, in many cases, offers a new interpretation. Each poem is subjected to a meticulous line-by-line analysis in the light of current knowledge.

1

Revolution and Renewal

Introducing Calligrammes to the members of the Club du Meilleur Livre in 1955, Michel Décaudin observed that, despite the volume’s astonishing diversity, an unexpected harmony exists between all the poems.¹ Serious remarks are juxtaposed with humorous ones, gaiety with melancholy, happiness with anxiety, tenderness with ribaldry, puns with pure poetry, the past with the future, and tradition with the avant-garde. Despite the poems’ obvious differences, one might add, they consistently reflect Apollinaire’s persistent optimism and his vigorous personality. His enthusiasm for life is evident everywhere, even (especially!) in the battlefield poetry, written under difficult conditions in the midst of unspeakable carnage. The same observation applies to Apollinaire’s continual creativity. Besides a certain “élan vers l’avenir,” Claude Debon identifies “une volonté sans cesse réaffirmée de créer du nouveau” that manifests itself throughout the volume.² Susan Harrow also detects extensive Cubist influence as Apollinaire “probes the fractured experience of a subjectivity shaped by quotidian events and by the desire to wrest free of the real through fantasy and dream-work.”³

These various qualities not withstanding, the history of the reception of Calligrammes has been rather disappointing. Published in 1918, the volume received quite a few decent reviews but was also accompanied by widespread incomprehension. As Claude Debon remarks, “la nouveauté du recueil et en particulier les calligrammes sont passés sous silence ou, au mieux, considérés avec indulgence.”⁴ The few reviewers who praised the book did so for all the wrong reasons, some of them stressing its patriotism and others insisting on its classical inspiration. Compared to Alcools, which became a classic relatively quickly, Calligrammes failed to make much of an impression on most readers. This unfortunate situation continued for the next eighty years and has persisted up to the present day. Not surprisingly, the number of articles and books published about the first volume far exceed those about the second. Many critics found the visual poetry to be childish and the war poetry rather boring. Following the war, in addition, many European artists and writers adopted a conservative aesthetics—the so-called Return to Order. Europe was exhausted economically, morally, and artistically. People yearned for a return to normalcy: the days of endless experimentation were over. Not until the 1970s, when the second generation of Apollinaire critics came of age, did the visual poetry begin to be taken seriously. Ignored for more years than that, the war poetry has begun to be rehabilitated only recently.

Entitled “Ondes,” the first section of Calligrammes consists of poems that were mostly composed during 1913 and 1914. These years witnessed a flurry of intense experimentation as poets and painters competed to see who could produce the most important artistic breakthroughs. Alluding to radio waves in particular, the name evokes the telegraphic style that characterizes the poetry in this section. As immediately becomes apparent, the prosody in “Ondes” is much less restrictive than that in Alcools. However, Apollinaire’s decision to eliminate punctuation dates from the previous volume. “Avec cette suppression,” Michel Butor declares, “Apollinaire obtient une nouvelle ‘couleur’ typographique et nous oblige à une lecture différente, détachant chaque vers.”⁵ Like punctuation, classical meter and classical rhyme have also been abandoned. Incorporating different techniques, Scott Bates notes, his synthetic style allows him to inject “even more of the twentieth century into his simultaneous vision of it.”⁶ Expressing his passion for contemporary life, Harrow adds, the poems in “Ondes” capture “the sheer diversity of material experience.”⁷ Apollinaire found the poetic experiments quite exhilarating and recalled them fondly in later years. Unfortunately, just as he was getting into his poetic stride, they were interrupted by the First World War. Although Apollinaire held a Russian passport, and was thus exempt from the draft, he volunteered for the French army and was sent to artillery school. Discussing his experimental poems in a letter to Madeleine Pagès from the front, dated July 30, 1915, he remarked: “ils resortissent à une esthétique toute neuve dont je n’ai plus depuis retrouvé les ressorts.”⁸

“Liens”

Characterized by ambiguity and a constant oscillation between attachment and detachment, Debon remarks, “Liens” appeared in Montjoie! on April 14, 1913—before Apollinaire had conceived the idea of publishing a second volume of poetry.⁹ Indeed, his first collection Alcools would not appear in print until six days later. Since “Liens” is the very first poem in Calligrammes, one suspects it was intended to serve as a preface. In actuality, as gradually becomes apparent, it was conceived both as an introduction and as a manifesto—like “Zone” in Alcools. Interestingly, “Liens” is the only poem in the volume that is printed entirely in italics. Although the function of this typeface is primarily emphatic, in French usage italics sometimes take the place of quotation marks. With a little effort one can imagine Apollinaire uttering the words himself. Addressing the reader personally, he confides his most intimate thoughts.

Cordes faites de cris

Sons de clochers à travers l’Europe

Siècles pendus

Rails qui ligotez les nations

Nous ne sommes que deux ou trois hommes

Libres de tous liens

Donnons-nous la main.

Written in free verse like so many other poems in Calligrammes, “Liens” exemplifies the poet’s collage style. Sentences and stanzas are abruptly juxtaposed with each other like objects in a Cubist painting. Continuing the theme announced by the poem’s title, the first five stanzas illustrate various kinds of bonds. To Debon, the cords recall a poem by Paul Fort, while the cries evoke Baudelaire’s “Les Phares.”¹⁰ Mario Richter signals their resemblance to lines of verse, especially those printed in italics as in “Liens.”¹¹ As several critics have pointed out, the poem’s title is ambiguous. Do the “liens” in question constitute a positive force, one wonders, or a negative force? Do they represent connections or constraints? Garnet Rees believes Apollinaire was trying to free himself from Alcools and thus that the bonds represent “constrictions on the poet.”¹² According to Timothy Mathews, however, “Liens” and “Les Fenêtres” announce that the poet’s latest project is “not a headstrong rejection of the experience encountered in Alcools.”¹³ On the contrary, he maintains, Apollinaire seeks to transform this experience into a poetry that reflects a different world filled with new demands. Seen in this light, the “liens” would seem to exert a unifying force on Europe and the world in general.

Regardless of the scenario one chooses, the poem’s ambiguity continues unabated. The first three “liens” are purely metaphoric. Because the cries and bells can be heard throughout Europe, Apollinaire compares them to cords binding the continent together. They are something every country shares with its neighbors. Counterbalancing the two spatial metaphors, the “siècles pendus” introduce a temporal metaphor. Linked together historically to form a chain, the centuries seem to be hanging vertically like a string of dead bodies. Since the experiences they embody are in the past, and thus “dead,” Apollinaire compares them to hanged men dangling from a gibbet. Perhaps this is the source of the cries uttered in the first line. As Greet and Lockerbie observe, lines 2 and 3 suggest the simultaneity of space and time in the modern world.¹⁴ Similarly, Richter concludes that the cords are “corde spazio-temporale.”¹⁵ Whereas the sound of the cries expands horizontally, the bells are hanging vertically like the hanged men. The same critic notes that “Cordes faites de cris” could conceivably refer to vocal cords or even to stringed instruments. Nevertheless, the poem’s ambiguity refuses to disappear. Are the cries in the first line cries of pleasure, one wonders, or are they cries of pain? Are the bells in the second line celebrating a wedding, or are they sounding a death knell? There is simply no way to be sure.

Although the next four lines appear at first to dissolve the initial ambiguity, they compound it still further. According to Marc Poupon, railroad tracks extending from one country to another symbolize connection and comradeship: “La camaraderie, mieux encore que les trains, abolit les distances.”¹⁶ Because they link different countries together they enable goods and people to travel easily from one region to the next. Debon concurs with Poupon’s assessment and expands the rails’ symbolism to embrace “solidarité.”¹⁷ And yet, Mathews observes, “rails that unite people also bind them.”¹⁸ The introduction of the verb ligoter changes the situation dramatically. Whether the nations are “tied up” or “tied together,” the comparison to prisoners is unavoidable. The countries are actually constrained by the rails instead of being liberated by them. The previous illusion of comradeship and solidarity crumbles before our eyes. Even worse, Apollinaire boasts in the next two lines that he and a few friends (doubtless including Picasso) are “libres de tous liens.” The traditional bonds that hold a community together mean nothing to them. This statement recalls a line from “Il Pleut”: “Ecoute tomber les liens qui te retiennent en haut et en bas.” In order to liberate their creativity, Apollinaire declares, he and his friends need to separate themselves from the stifling crowd. At this point, he invites his companions to join hands in what, ironically, looks like a gesture of solidarity. Although they have shed the external bonds that threatened to suffocate them, the bonds of friendship are too precious to abandon. The next two stanzas list additional examples of “liens”:

Violente pluie qui peigne les fumées

Cordes

Cordes tissées

Câbles sous-marins

Tours de Babel changées en ponts

Araignées Pontifes

Tous les amoureux qu’un seul lien a liés

D’autres liens plus ténus

Blancs rayons de lumière

Cordes et Concorde.

Recalling “Il Pleut” once agai...