[6]Apollinaire wrote to his friend André Billy: "Was I not too a master of rhymed verse?" This brief couplet, paraphrased from: Luth! Zut! marked a point of departure toward Calligrammes.
[7]This "absolute" poem, "freed from the restrictions of even language" may be profitably studied for its positive suggestions. The Dadaists, whose godfather Apollinaire was, took up this form with a passionate conviction that terrified the populace after the war. "Is not every art-theory, every school, only the triumph of an individual's taste, the imposition of a stronger mind upon the weaker ones?" Nonsense-poems, were the reductio ad absurdum of all literary artifice. The final word, the ultimate bankruptcy. Apollinaire's intense desire to negate literary precedent and to innovate, led through the stimulus of the Cubist painters to Calligrammes, which contains his calligraphic poetry. The typography is arranged most intricately, with regard to its pictural or abstract effect. Apollinaire hoped ultimately to unite poetry and painting, in fact his last critical writings in the Mercure de France are filled with amazing conjectures as to the future of art. The "poèmes conversations" of Calligrammes, as André Billy relates, may well have originated in the following manner: "He, Dupuy, and I are sitting at Crucifixe with three glasses of vermouth. Suddenly Guillaume bursts out laughing—he has completely forgotten to write the preface to Robert Delaunay's catalogue, which he promised to mail that evening. 'Quick waiter, pen and ink. Three of us will get through with this in a jiffy.' Guillaume's pen is off already: 'Of red and green all the yellow dies.' His pen stops. But Dupuy dictates: 'When the arras sing in our natal forests.' The pen starts off again transcribing faithfully. It is my turn: 'There is a poem to be written about the bird with but one wing.' A reminiscence from Alcools—the pen writes without a stop. 'A good thing to do if there is any hurry,' I said, 'would be to send your preface over the telephone.' And so the next line became: 'And we shall send this by the telephone.' I no longer remember all the details of this singular collaboration, but I can state that the preface to the catalogue of Robert Delaunay came out entire."
[8]This chapter is obviously written in an entirely different period. The Poet Assassinated, composes, if we choose to believe so, Apollinaire's vision of his own life. The book was collated from many fragments, many beginnings, and published in 1916, by "l'Édition," for the so-called "Librairie des Curieux." In the opening passage of this chapter part of the influences of the Cubist painters, and their inventions are particularly apparent.
[9]The theatre in France of the period immediately preceding the war is a sorry thing to relate. We will pass over Brieux, Hervieu, Battaille, Bernstein, to consider Donnay, Porto-Riche and their ilk. These worthies and their imitators achieved unparalleled financial and social triumphs by incorporating a certain intimate lewdness into their trivial drama. Their obvious theatrical machinery, which Apollinaire ridicules, has been as successfully adopted in this country and elsewhere in Europe, under the label of "modern drama."
[10]Mamamouchi is a character in Molière's play, le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, a dignitary whose sense of office is so strongly imbedded in him that he always enters shouting, "Je suis Mamamouchi!"
[11]François Coppée, this sentimental nineteenth century poet was amazingly popular, and truly French in his weaknesses, like the music of Massenet. Apollinaire takes grave liberties with him, out of sheer mischief.
[12]Archipel, archipelago, used in the sense of papier buvard (!) blotting paper! The disciples of Mallarmé went even farther than this.
[13]Tychobrahé, Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer (1546-1601). Although lord of a province in Scania, he took refuge in a monastery where he pursued his scientific researches. He settled in Prague, at the invitation of Emperor Rudolf II, and died there. Whether he ever really visited the monastery at Brünn is hard to judge.
[14]The number of prizes given for poetry and for other forms of literature has reached an even more disquieting figure since the war. Great publicity attends each award, and the publishers vie with each other in establishing such prizes. However, the lot of the true poet is as hard as ever, since it has become distinctly unfashionable to be the recipient of a prize.
[15]Paul Fort, Prince of Poets, he, of the broad-brimmed black hat, and the flowing scarf, frequented the Closérie des Lilas, with his band, whereas his avowed enemy, Apollinaire, and his far more disreputable cronies quartered themselves in the Café Rotonde, a short distance east along the Boulevard Montparnasse.