Guillaume Apollinaire is at the intersection of so many paths that only one side of him fits into the scope of this book – that, we might say, only one point of his star is consumed here. A world separates him from the most accomplished types of modern humour, who are at once agitating and reasoning: a Lafcadio, a Jacques Vaché, or that extraordinary Gino Pieri who was for a time Apollinaire’s secretary, and whom, under the name Baron d’Ormesan, he made the hero of ‘The False Amphion,’ the last story in The Heresiarch and Co. Despite the sympathy that his great natural curiosity caused him to feel for such characters, he was for his part much less liable to attract or hold onto them. The moment one of them got him into trouble with the outside world, he fell into childishness, lost no time in courting ridicule in an effort to clear his name, and immediately made himself the butt of the jokes. When in 1913, victim of the interest he had taken in this same Gino Pieri (to the extent of harbouring two Phoenician statuettes that the latter had stolen from the Louvre), Apollinaire found himself implicated in the theft of the Mona Lisa, he wept, composed bad plaintive verses, and solicited character testimonials from his friends. On the other hand, everyone remembers – as noted in the anonymous preface to the 1931 reprinting of The Debauched Hospodar – letters from the ‘Baron d’Ormesan’ in which he detailed his own part in the affair: ‘Nothing can better situate the difference that exists between a man who puts humour in his life and one who creates humour, between an adventurer and one who merely has a taste for adventure.’
Similar vexations occurred with Arthur Cravan, who, having used the term ‘that Jew Apollinaire’ in an article, was astounded to receive a visit from the latter’s seconds. ‘Although,’ Cravan told them, ‘I am not afraid of Apollinaire’s big sword, but because I have very little pride, I am prepared to make every reparation in the world and state that … Guillaume Apollinaire is in no way Jewish, but rather Roman Catholic. In order to avoid any future misunderstandings, I would like to add that M. Apollinaire, who has a fat belly, looks more like a rhinoceros than a giraffe, and that, when it comes to his head, he takes more after the tapir than the lion, and also that he tends more toward the vulture than toward the long-beaked stork.’
These reservations aside, it is undeniable that Apollinaire was better than anyone at introducing into the domain of expression (the only domain in which he excelled) several of the most characteristic attitudes of today’s humour. If this sense of humour utterly failed him in certain instances when it would have been fitting (I’m thinking of his active gullibility in the face of war: I can still see him on his death bed on the eve of the armistice, staring delightedly at his kepi, on which they had just sewn a second stripe), he was marvellously adept at putting it into his poems and stories. ‘So keen an awareness,’ someone has said, ‘of the bonds between poetry and sexuality, the awareness of the iconoclast and the prophet: that is what gives Apollinaire his particular place in history.’ It was when he came to the end of his efforts to liberate every literary genre that Apollinaire, carried poetically by a furious wind, in the passion of imagination and imagination alone, encountered grand humour: let us recall the subject of Ieximal Jelimite in The Poet Assassinated. Often while walking in the street, he would turn back favourably toward those old pack-rat vagrants whom one sometimes encounters at night, on Paris’s Left Bank, heading toward the quays. He regarded them as a bit of literary history, and for a moment his eye seemed to drown in them. His laugh, inspired by something entirely different, made the same sound as an early shower of hail against the window pane.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: L’Enchanteur pourrissant, 1909. L’Hérésiarque et Cie, 1910. Le Bestiaire ou le Cortège d’Orphée, 1911. Méditations esthétiques: Les Peintres cubistes, 1912. Les Onze mille Verges. Alcools, 1913. Le Poète assassiné, 1916. Les Mamelles de Tirésias, 1917. Caligrammes, 1918. La Femme assise, 1920. Il y a, 1925. Anecdotiques, 1926, etc.
BIBLIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH: The Heresiarch and Co. Bestiary, or the Parade of Orpheus. The Cubist Painters. The Debauched Hospodar (Les Onze Mille Verges). Alcools. The Poet Assassinated. Caligrammes. The Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire.
Young man, we’re going to tell you a few subjects for plays. If they were signed by known names we’d play them, but these are masterpieces by unknowns which have been entrusted to us and which, because you are a personable young man, we are about to bestow upon you.
Problem Play: The Prince of San Meco finds a louse on his wife’s head. He brushes it off and makes a scene. For six months the princess has slept with no one but the Viscount of Dendelope. The spouse makes a scene with the Viscount who, having slept only with the princess and Madame Lafoulue, the wife of a Secretary of State, has the government overthrown and overwhelms Madame Lafoulue with his scorn.
Madame Lafoulue makes a scene with her husband. Everything is explained when Mister Bibier, the Senator, arrives. He scratches his head. He is deloused. He accuses his voters of being lousy. Finally everything is resolved.
Title: ‘Parliamentary Procedure.’
Character Piece: Isabelle Daddy-Longlegs promises her husband to be faithful to him. Then she remembers having promised the same thing to Jules, the shopboy. She suffers from being unable to reconcile her good faith and her love.
Meanwhile, Longlegs fires Jules. This event determines the triumph of love and we find that Isabelle has become a cashier in a big store where Jules works.
Title: ‘Isabelle Daddy-Longlegs.’
Historical Play: The famous novelist Stendhal is at the centre of a Bonapartist plot which is ended by the heroic death of a young singer during a presentation of Don Juan at La Scala in Milan. Since Stendhal goes under a pseudonym, he gets out of the affair admirably. Grand processions, historical characters.
Opera: The ass of Buridan is hesitant about satisfying his hunger and thirst. The she-ass of Balaam prophesies that the ass will die. The golden ass comes in, eats and drinks. Donkey Skin shows her nudity to this asinine bunch. While passing through, the ass of Sancho, pensive, decides to prove his robustness by kidnapping the Infanta, but the traitorous Melo warns the Genius of La Fontaine. He proclaims his jealousy and kicks the golden ass. Metamorphoses. The Prince and the Infanta enter on horses. The King abdicates in their favour.
Patriotic Play: The Mexican government brings suit against France for counterfeiting Mexican jumping beans. In the last act, they exhume the remains of a fourteenth-century alchemist who invented these beans at La Ferté-Gaucher.
Vaudeville:
A driver who was quite appealing
Yelled to the lady next door:
If you let me see your ceiling
I’ll let you see my floor.
Here, sir, is enough to nourish an entire life of dramaturgy.
– from The Poet Assassinated
(translated by Ron Padgett)
* * *
It was while running after Tristouse Ballerinette like this that Croniamantal continued his literary education.
One day when he was trudging across Paris he suddenly found himself beside the Seine. He passed over a bridge and walked a little further when suddenly, noticing Mr François Coppée ahead of him, Croniamantal regretted that this stroller was dead. But nothing prevents you from talking to a dead person, and the meeting was pleasant.
‘You’ve got to admit,’ thought Croniamantal, ‘for a stroller, he’s quite a stroller, in fact the very author of The Stroller. He’s a skilful and witty rhymer full of a feeling for reality. Why not talk with him about rhyme?’
The poet of The Stroller was smoking a black cigarette. He was dressed in black, his face was black; he was funnily standing on a block of stone, and Croniamantal could clearly see by his pensive air that he was working on a poem. Croniamantal approached him, and after saying hello he said point-blank:
‘Dear master, you look so sombre.’
He replied courteously:
‘It’s because my statue is bronze. It exposes me to constant mistakes. Thus, the other day,
‘Strolling by me the Negro Sam MacVea
‘Saw me blacker than he and wept at the idea
‘See how clever these lines are. I’m in the process of perfecting rhyme. Have you noticed that the distich I recited for you rhymes perfectly for the eye.’
‘Yes,’ said Croniamantal,’ because it’s pronounced Sam MacVea, as in Shakespeer.’
‘Here’s something that will do the job better,’ continued the statue:
‘Strolling by me the Negro Sam MacVea
‘Wrote three names on the base immediately
‘Now there is a seductive refinement, the full rhyme for the ear.’
‘You enlighten me on the subject of rhyme,’ said Croniamantal. ‘And I’m very happy, my dear master, to have strolled your way.’
‘It’s my first success,’ replied the metallic poet. ‘However, I have just composed a little poem bearing the same title: there is a man walking along, The Stroller, down the corridor of a railroad coach; he spies a charming lady with whom he stops at the Dutch frontier instead of going straight on to Brussels.
‘They passed at least a month at Rosendeal
‘He liked the ideal she loved the real
‘In every way he was different from her
‘Thus it was love that they knew there
‘I call your attention to these last two lines; although rich in rhyme, they contain a dissonance which causes a delicate contrast between the full sound or masculine rhymes and the morbidity of the feminine ones.’
‘Dear master,’ said Croniamantal louder, ‘tell me about free verse.’
‘Long live freedom!’ cried the bronze statue.
– from The Poet Assassinated
(translated by Ron Padgett)
* * *
Of a sea calf I’ve got the eyeses
And of Miss XYZ the allure
You’ll find me at all our assizes
I’m the one making literature
I’m a seal by birth and by trade
And since marry it seems we might
One fine day I’ll wed Ota the maid
Otary1 morning till night
Papa Mama
Pipe and tobacco spitoon cabaret
Lai Tu
* * *
In his grave
They’ve nestled him
The bird who perched
On your brim
He once parked
In Arkansas
His little
Or
nithological ass
Or
Enough of this
I’ve got to piss
– from Whatevers
* * *
He enters
He sits
He pays no attention to the pyrogenic redhead
The match flares
He leaves
– from There Is
1. Untranslatable pun: Otarie (otary, or eared seal) can also be read Ota rit: Ota laughs. [trans.]