Igre Reči U Apolinerovim Alkoholima

Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Puns in Apollinaire's "Alcools"

Author(s): Anne Hyde Greet and Apollinaire
Source: Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Autumn, 1965), pp.
308-329
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1207293
Accessed: 22-06-2016 11:38 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Wisconsin Press, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin

System are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Wisconsin Studies in
Contemporary Literature
This content downloaded from 147.91.173.31 on Wed, 22 Jun 2016 11:38:58 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PUNS IN
APOLLINAIRE'S
ALCOOLS
Anne Hyde Greet
Some years ago, Louis Cazamian observed that modern French poets,
beginning with the romantics, are the first since the late Middle
Ages in France to exploit humor as a poetic technique. During the last
century and a half, French poets have turned increasingly to a humor-
ous attitude, an ironic tone of voice, a style of speech that mingles wit
with nonsense, so much so that it sometimes seems to us they have
gone too far. Yet we might remember, when baffled or annoyed by
the verbal sources of surprise used by dadaists, surrealists, and others,
that comic effect and formal experiment often coincide in poetry, for
in the world of art, as in the real world, humor's main implication
seems to be the destruction of established boundaries.
Guillaume Apollinaire is a key figure in twentieth-century French
poetry, a transitional figure whose work at once echoes the symbolists
and anticipates cubist and surrealist effects. The techniques which he
uses, unlike the irony and the wit that shape the fantasies of Leon-
Paul Fargue or the fables of Jules Supervielle, are predominantly
verbal in character. He delights in ambiguities which, by mingling
poetic suggestion with comic shock, produce that "vertu po6tique de la
surprise" (to quote M. Michel D6caudin), which Apollinaire, like
Baudelaire before him, prized so highly. One senses nascent in Apol-
linaire's verse what tends to become extravaganza in the writings of
Desnos, Queneau, occasionally Michaux, and, above all, Pr~vert-
word games compensating for an increasing absence of regular rhyme
308 f CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
and meter. The pun especially assumes, in Apollinaire's hands, new
significance as generator of bizarre surprises as well as of symbolic
overtones.
One finds Apollinaire using puns in his first volume of verse to

appear in print, Le Bestiaire ou Cortege d'Orphee, a collection of
quatrains illustrated with wood engravings by Raoul Dufy. The musi-
cal, faintly hermetic language and the self-contained quality of the
poems recall Mallarm6's manner as well as medieval and renaissance
emblematic poems. The volume contains, among other things, a wood-
cut, entitled "Ibis," of a long-legged, beaked, and writhing bird, and
beneath it, the following quatrain:
Oui, j'irai dans I'ombre terreuse,

O mort certaine, ainsi soit-il!
Latin mortel, parole affreuse,
Ibis, oiseau des bords du Nil.
Ibis, the sacred Egyptian heron, is also the second person singular,
future tense, Latin "thou shalt go." Nil, the river Nile, is also a variant
of the Latin nihil. Thus, "Ibis, bird on the banks of Nile" can also be
read, and with added significance, as "Thou shalt go, bird on the
shores of nothing." These puns are not immediate to the perception.
Ibis probably comes first to one's attention, because stressed in title
and woodcut, and translated in the first line. Nil, a less obvious pun,
takes longer to apprehend, although its associations are anticipated
at the end of the first line by terreuse which suggests terreur. The
two puns not only carry a delayed surprise, but Nil is a poetic sound
to end on, with its monosyllabic long vowel and the soft but lingering
nasal and liquid consonants. Latin, a language of liturgy, is proper to
a poem about death. And none of the associations are really incon-
gruous-at the most, they are faintly ironical. The last line, taken as a
whole, first evokes and then refutes the Egyptian cult of life after
death, commenting indirectly on death's mystery and man's vanity.
The puns expand and, in a sense, make possible the symbolic image
of the ibis. Appearing only in the final line, to which the first three
lines build up, they serve a structural function, comparable to the final
and capping phrase of a joke.
Verbal techniques in Apollinaire's verses-ranging from his earli-
est efforts to the war poems of Calligrammes--are usually, as in "Ibis,"
amusing, and at the same time adapted to a lyric context. Even
his most serious poems about love or death or the art of poetry seek
through mockery to resolve moods of unhappiness and longing, and
GUILLAUMIE APOLLINAIRE 309
the mocking tone of voice is never more effectively generated than by
word games-by the homonym, with its built-in surprise effect, or by
the ironic equivocation. A slowing-up of the surprise may produce a
"poetic" rather than a comic pun. Again, a pun may be toned down to
a lyric context by its associations.
Apollinaire's use of verbal humor is particularly interesting in
Alcools where we see the poet vacillating between traditional and
experimental verse as he evolves towards a mature style. Nine of the
shorter lyrics, dating mainly from the Rhineland period, or inspired
by those years, and concerned with various kinds of yearnings, find
their structure and their poetic substance in a play on words. Written
as early as 1901 and as late as November, 1912, six months before
Alcools was published, they show, with one exception, the same fanci-
ful elaboration of symbolist techniques and word play.
In "Nuit rh6nane," the last line-"Mon verre s'est bris6 come un
6clat de rire"-has a magical quality appropriate to a poem about
supernatural beings; at the same time, the two meanings of eclat
which are simultaneously brought into play create a tension between
material and immaterial, dependent upon a linguistic phenomenon,
not upon reason, which dispels in a playful manner the poet's vision
of the Rhine. A comparable assignment of value to seemingly fortui-
tous verbal relationships is, of course, exploited by the surrealists and
later poets.
In "Cr6puscule," a poem which describes musically the making of
a poem, the appeal, as in "Nuit rh6nane," is primarily visual until the
final word of the final stanza, where the poet takes leave of his fantasy
and of us with a pun:
L'aveugle berce un bel enfant

La biche passe avec ses faons
Le nain regarde d'un air triste
Grandir l'arlequin trismegiste
The epithet trismdgiste, which in Apollinaire's often esoteric vocabu-

lary comes to signify "a learned magician," literally describes harle-
quin's stature as three times his ordinary size. On another level, it
refers to those powers of magic that allow him to grow. The juxtaposi-
tion of literal and figurative meanings amuses, in much the same way
that some of Pr6vert's plays on words will later amuse. In addition,
the ambiguities contained in trismegiste are an ironic contrast to the
word triste with which it rhymes and make a humorous comment
about human weakness. The harlequin grows literally before the on-
310 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
lookers' eyes and takes on stature as well in their imagination, espe-
cially in the imagination of the wistful dwarf. The last laugh is not
against the dwarf, however, but against harlequin who speaks a secret
language, invokes the supernatural, prophesies, and turns common
objects to gold, or gives the illusion of doing these things, like the
poet himself.
Other brief lyrics that lead up to a pun in the final line are "Clair
de Lune," "Clothilde," and "Rosemonde." "Clair de Lune," one of
Apollinaire's first poems to appear in print, ends with a play on words,
la rose des vents, taken in its figurative and literal meanings, which
recurs with more significance in "Merlin et la Vieille." Here, its pat-
ness and lack of surprise are appropriate to the kind of bad symbolist
verse which the poem seemingly intends to parody. "Clothilde" and
"Rosemonde," both published the year before Alcools appeared, are
more polished than the juvenile "Clair de Lune" in several ways,
including their skillful use of a play on words which can at once end
the poem on a note of surprise and be relevant to the central theme.
In the closing verse of "Clothilde"-"Cette belle ombre que tu veux"
-the word ombre, as in "La Chanson du Mal-Aime," provides two
meanings, "ghost" and "shadow," and so suggests both the living
woman and her ghost, the present illusion and the ideal or memory.
The pun, like most of Apollinaire's verbal plays, is not entirely serious;
announced by a line in the second stanza ("I1 y vient aussi nos
ombres") which to a lesser extent contains the same ambiguity, it
casts ironic light on the poem's faintly symbolist theme-love as a
doomed, and vague, quest. In "Rosemonde," the unusual number of
near rhymes, de / deux, dame / Amsterdam, vit / vie, prepare the way
for a bilingual pun on Rosemonde, a name which suggested to Apol-
linaire the German for "rosy mouth" as well as the Latinism la rose
du monde. One of the charms of the poem is that it offers an example
of a word suggesting meanings it does not have-and this is in com-
plete accord with the gallant, carefree tone of voice of the poet. Rose-
monde, or Rosamund, is a Germanic name which combines rose not
with mund "mouth" but with a common suffix meaning "hand" or
"protection" (as in Raymond, Siegmund). The pun adds a last-minute
dimension to the girl's name: Rosemonde, during most of the poem
seemingly so suggestive of terrestrial loves, evokes almost as an after-
thought the Rose of the World and the mystical Rose of Heaven.
"Nuit rhenane" and "Crepuscule" lead up to a pun in the last
line which simultaneously crystallizes and dispels the poetic illusiol.
To a lesser extent, "Clair de Lune," "Clothilde," and "Rosemonde"
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 311
do the same. In all five poems, with the possible exception of "Rose-
monde," the verbal play consists not of homonyms, as in "Ibis," but
of what one might call equivocal puns-and this is worthy of note.
Contrary to what one might expect, the effects, humorous and other-
wise, Apollinaire produces by his verbal plays seem determined not
by their linguistic category but by their context. Thus, the meanings
of 6clat, for example, provide, in "Nuit rh6nane," a greater shock than
do those of ibis, although the latter is an unusual homonym and the
phrase eclat de rire, a clich6.
The most amusing example of a pun which, lying at the center of
a poem, at once divides it and holds it together is probably "Oc6an
de Terre" in Calligrammes,' but already in Alcools puns occur near
the center of two short lyrics. Their role is not primarily a structural
one, as in "Ocean de Terre"; yet, in both poems the puns playfully
supplement the central image. In "Marizibill" the second of three
quatrains begins with an idiom taken in both figurative and literal
meanings which comments ironically on the streetwalker Marizibill's
devotion to a Jew: "Elle se mettait sur la paille / Pour un maquereau
roux et rose." "She went broke for the sake of a pimp" or, with equal
appropriateness, "She lay down in the straw" for him. One finds com-
parable use of a play on words in "La Porte." The fifth line of the
poem, which contains, in all, eight lines, reads: "Anges frais d6bar-
ques a Marseilles hier matin." The poetic value of the pun has been
perceptively analyzed by Madame Marie-Jeanne Durry.2 However,
the juxtaposition of images has also, I think, a comic value, underlined
by the first appearance of the angels or angel-fish as "Pi-mus couples
allant dans la profonde eau triste."3 The speaker of "La Porte," the
unhappy hotel clerk who yearns for a more significant way of life,
evokes not only angelic messengers from another world but radiant,
open-mouthed angel-fish. These may, on one level, be the hotel guests
whom the clerk at once envies and despises, the tourists who circle
slowly through the foyer, staring out of the window at a world which
waits to snare them, and deaf to the distant music that haunts the
1 Attention on va jeter l'ancre

Attention a 1'encre que l'on jette
2 Marie-Jeanne Durry, Alcools, tome I (Paris, 1956), pp. 86-88.
3 Pi-mus are pairs of fish that, according to ancient Chinese lore, have
only one eye between them. M. D6caudin points out, in Le Dossier d'Alcools
(Geneva, 1960), p. 87, their mention in an early notebook of Apollinaire's and
their source-a translation that appeared in the fournal Asiatique (Jan.-Feb.
1896).
312 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
clerk. The irruption of such minor irreverence into a confession of real
unhappiness creates that mixture of amusement, sympathy, and doubt
which the reader soon comes to associate with Apollinaire's verse and
which constitutes one of its greatest charms.
A pun may not only occur at the center of a poem and provide a
focal point; it may govern the poem entirely. Apollinaire's awareness
of the pun's suggestive power is supremely illustrated by a poem
written on the galleys of Alcools.4 The poetic quality of "Chantre,"
the shortest poem in the collection, and one of the latest, seems to
spring entirely from the shock-effect and baroque juxtapositions con-
tained in plays on words. These have been fully discussed by M.
Andr6 Rouveyre."
Unlike the poems we have discussed so far, which build up to the
pun, or center around it, "La Tzigane" seems to emerge from the
verbal play in the first stanza:
La tzigane savait d'avance

Nos deux vies barries par les nuits
Nous lui dimes adieu et puis
De ce puits sortit 1'Espirance
The poem hesitates between joy and doubt. Was the gypsy's prophecy
favorable or menacing? The ambiguity is stressed by a series of puz-
zling images, and especially by the two puns in the first stanza.
Barries, a pun based on equivocation, means both "to bar the way"
and "to cross out or cancel." In addition, it suggests the image of a
4 In even briefer contexts Apollinaire exploits the pun as fuser of mean-

ings, in titles such as "Ibis" or, for that matter, "Chantre," which means
both a "singer" (especially in the sense of "poet") and a nasal-voiced "cantor."
A handful of the most serious and moving lyrics in Alcools are concerned with
one of the most painful experiences of his life and grouped together under the
title "A la Sant6." The pun on sant6 "health" and the Sant6, where the poet
was jailed from September 7 to 11 in 1911, juxtaposes ironically the image of
prison and the concept of justice with the spiritual malady of despair which
lays siege to the innocent prisoner. Already Apollinaire had found for a much
earlier poem a title equally charged with meaning-the horrible homonym
palais which mingles the images of palace and palate, reminding one of Poe
or Baudelaire.
5Amour et Poesie d'Apollinaire, Editions du Seuil (Paris, 1955). The
alexandrine of which the poem consists ("Et l'unique cordeau des trompettes
marines") contains a homophone and a pun based on equivocation: cordeau
"cord" is also cor d'eau "horn of water" (and possibly corps d'eau "body of
water"); trompette marine is a "trumpet marine" (i.e., a musical instrument
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 1 313
bar (non-alcoholic) and thus links the nights that bar one's life to the
lines that bar the palm of the hand. More immediate to the perception
and, at the same time, more complex in implications, is the phrase
"Et puis de cc puits" which Apollinaire has constructed about a homo-
phone and which accordingly can be read two ways: "and then from
that then" or "and then from that well." The meaning seems to be one
of several.-The gypsy's prophecy was most favorable and becomes a
well of hope for the lovers.-To the contrary, her words were dis-
couraging; but although an unpleasant future appears unavoidable,
hope rises within one as from a well (an allusion perhaps to the
clich6 "La v6rit6 sort du puits".) Or hope rises within one, despite the
inner gouffre that both lovers (or one) are aware of. If only one of
the two is made aware of an inner void, the gypsy has caused an
obstacle to rise between the lovers, and this obstacle may be what they
think about at the end of the poem. Another possibility is that the
gypsy spoke like the sybil; and so, when the lovers leave her, they con-
sign her puzzling predictions, with a mental "0 well," to temporary
oblivion-but in vain, because everything that happens afterwards
makes them wonder if they are fulfilling her prophecy."
The meaning of the poem "La Tzigane," instead of being clarified
by plays on words, as in "Ibis" or "Cr6puscule," is obscured by them.
All too appropriately enigmatic, they suggest that the gypsy's original
prophecy was stated as cautiously as some of the ancient oracles.
Thus, through word-play, the poet at once creates and casts doubt
on his own creation.
with a single string) or, literally, a "marine trumpet." The poem has been
praised by M. Rouveyre for its lyric qualities, for the likeness between the
shape of the trumpet marine and that of the cord (and that of the poem), for
the likeness between the sound of the trumpet marine and the cantor's voice.
Besides the surprise effect caused by the jeux d'analogies, there is that caused
by the trumpet marine itself which has an awkward shape and a glum note.
In Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, M. Jourdain's liking for the trumpet marine is
a source of comedy (II, i). It is the contrast between the trumpet marine's
comic connotations and the evocative title and lyric alexandrine derived from
it that inspire M. D6caudin's shrewd comment on Apollinaire's poetics: "Son
principal ressort est pour lui la surprise, c'est-a-dire non seulement l'6merveille-
ment, mais aussi le rire, l'6tonnement devant l'insolite. Ce qu'on a souvent
pris pour un penchant a la mystification n'est que l'expression de cette vertu
po6tique de la surprise" (D6caudin, p. 113).
6 Madame Durry, "Sur la Tzigane," La Revue des Lettres Modernes
(Autumn, 1963), has pointed out what is perhaps the most significant pun in
the poem. In the first line of the second stanza, "L'amour lourd comme un
ours priv6," prive' means not only "tamed" but "deprived" or "frustrated."
314 ! CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
In a comparable manner, later French poets approach serious
concerns. They treat one thing in terms of another or find, in the mis-
leading resemblances between words and phrases, an entire poetic
substance and structure-and a final destruction.
Apollinaire does not go so far as some of his successors. For him,
plays on words are only one of numerous devices at the poet's dis-
posal. His experiments with the pun show that he regards it and
related ambiguities not as sources of inspiration or of expanding uni-
verses but simply as ways (among others) of communicating the most
music, meaning, and retraction of meaning as briefly as possible.
II
In the longer, more experimental poems, puns play a less dominant

role. They are used to underline a fantastic contrast or a key image or,
more rarely than one might think, to create a diversion: to startle, to
explode, or to enchant. Already in the youthful symbolist narratives,
"Merlin et la Vieille" and "L'Ermite," a pun occurs, combined with
other techniques, to supplement a meaning. In "L'Ermite" the hermit,
tormented by erotic visions, debates with himself about the nature
of love and in passing makes a pun on the homophone 1'amour / la
mourre, comparing love to an Italian street game played by rowdy
children. In "Merlin" a thornless rose des vents is part of the symbolic
landscape and symbolizes, according to Madame Durry,7 a pre-Chris-
tian world where the crown of thorns has no meaning.
In one of Apollinaire's first successful free-verse poems, "Rh6nane
d'Automne," ambiguous language heightens the elegiac climax of the
poem and keeps it from being sentimental. The personification of the
wind gives way to the image of the windblown leaves and that, in
turn, suggests the restlessness of ghosts. Then comes the line: "Et des
mortes parfois voudraient bien revenir." The poignancy of this remark
is to some extent dissolved at the end of the line by a play on words-
an all too appropriate verb, for naturally un revenant wants to revenir.
The same play on words occurs, less subtly, in "La Maison des Morts."
In "Rh6nane d'Automne" the pun itself is incidental, but not obtrusive
or shocking. It underlines the main concern of the poem, which is the
relationship of the living to the dead, the superstitious half-loving,
half-fearful thoughts of the former about the latter. It underlines also
7Durrv, Alcools, p. 220.
the poem's mood and direction-the lift from emotion into imagina-
tive play.
Two other Rhenanes, both ballads, resort in passing to a play
on words at once poetic and amusing. In "Schinderhannes," the ety-
mological pun-"La fleur de mai c'est le florin"-reinforces a contrast
between coin and flower which is part of a general contrast between
the bandits' greed and their sentimentality. In "La Loreley," the
word flammes alternates figurative and concrete senses, and an asso-
nance flamme / flambe is pun-like in effect:
Mes yeux ce sont des flammes et non des pierreries

Jetez jetez aux flammes cette sorcellerie
Je flambe dans ces flammes 6 belle Loreley

Qu'un autre te condamne tu m'as enscorcel'
The troubadour preciosity of these lines stresses the bishop's unex-

pected courtliness and the image of the lady's destructive eye. The
verbal play underlines both the medieval atmosphere of the poem and
the image that dominates it of the Lorelei who, though a water spirit,
is described throughout in terms of fire and light.
In several of the longer poems a pun used in one section of the
poem contributes to the general meaning of that section rather than
to the main theme. "Le Voyageur," one of the latest poems in Alcools,
contains a description that dates probably from the Rhineland period
and which contains a phrase reminiscent of both "Rhbnane d'Au-
tomne" and "La Maison des Morts,"-the paradoxical ombres vivaces.
"Lively shades" plays once more on the various meanings of ombres.
Moreover, it links, somewhat humorously, the traveler's voyage to-
wards death with that intimate rapport between this world and the
next, stressed in earlier poems.
Generally, when Apollinaire turns from traditional to experi-
mental verse, he continues to use many of the same techniques; verbal
techniques in particular remain a constant factor; consequently the
punning that seems, in traditional verse, to derive from the symbolists,
assumes, in free verse, a more daring, a more modern air. In a serious
context, whether traditional or experimental, puns may become almost
completely humorless. "Le Brasier," written in 1907-1908, marks a
change in Apollinaire's attitude towards his art-he has put behind
him the sentimental irony and the nostalgia of the poems to Annie,
he will transcribe the poet's mystical vision of life. In the final section
of the poem, where this mystical report has become increasingly
obscure, he uses word play to help communicate the experience that
316 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
has assailed his soul. Near the beginning of the passage he invokes a
place name: "Quand bleuira sur l'horizon la D6sirade." As in "La
Chanson du Mal-Aim6," la Desirade suggests at once an actual island
and one's heart's desire. The verbal play, like the etymological puns
of some symbolists, consists in part of tracing a word back to its origi-
nal meaning; like some surrealist distortions, it consists too of finding
a word enclosed in another word. Near the end of the section, and of
the poem, this pun is echoed by an assonance which assumes in its
turn the character of a verbal play: "Terre / O D6chirie que les
fleuves ont reprisde." Dichirde evokes Desirade and desiree, and thus
suggests an ironical second meaning "0 desired earth." It links the
image of the unobtainable island with that of the real world and, in
addition, stresses the rapport between earth and poet, between the
loved and the lover: the poet, like the planet, has been rent by his
youth and by his desires; now he is healed by rivers of forgetfulness
and renewed by the rivers of life.
A later free-verse poem, "Cortege," uses a comparable technique
to illumine an obscure passage. The introduction places the unanimist
vision that follows in nonhuman dimensions of space and time. Al-
ready the third line of the poem fuses a terrestrial point of view with
what may be a bird's-eye view or, more likely, the point of view of the
entire solar system: "A la limite oi' notre sol brille d6j~." Sol contains
a double meaning, "earth" and the Latin "sun." The line suggests
both the glitter of the sun and that of the earth by night when one's
far enough away from it. M. D6caudin quotes from an earlier work,
I'Enchanteur Pourrissant, a passage that may contain a first version of
this play on words:
Les aigles ...

Croyant voir, sur le sol, un soleil 6cras6,
Eblouis, ont baiss6 leur seconde paupiere.8
In concluding the section, Apollinaire uses an ambiguous epithet that

supplements the pun with which he opens: "ce feu oblong dont l'in-
tensit6 ira s'augmentant." In this description of an oblong flame, the
adjective, as M. D6caudin points out, describes a trail of light left by
an astral body; that is, it suggests not only shape but motion and, con-
sequently, dimensions of both space and time. One evocation is surely
that of a huge star from outer space that will one day collide with the
sun. Another, since the adjective suggests also the flying saints of old
8D6caudin, p. 128.
paintings and the trails of light left by their blessed bodies,9 is the
Last Judgment and the final coming of the Savior. If, in "Le Brasier,"
verbal play is adaped to a quasi-mystical language, in "Cortege" it
becomes part of the language of prophecy.
So far, we have dealt with poems, or parts of poems, that contain
a single pun, or a single verbal gambit, and we have seen that such
puns have in general a direct relevance to their context and, in many
of the shorter poems, a structural function as well. If generally their
effect is an ironic juxtaposition of incongruous terms, their role can
be, as in "Le Brasier" and "Cortege," completely serious. Usually the
verbal play, by its very nature, contributes a blurring of atmospheres,
a jarring note of mockery.
A half-dozen of the long poems, including all the major ones,
employ puns in considerable number. A poem of Germanic inspiration
and of the same vintage as the Rh6nanes, "La Maison des Morts,"
contains several plays on words which stress the ironic tone of voice
that dominates the poem and which have been discussed elsewhere.10
9 M. D6caudin suggests, in regard to the flying Christ of "Zone," that

Apollinaire may have been influenced by mediaeval paintings, especially those
in the museum at Cologne.
10 Sally Nesbit Lawall, "Apollinaire's 'La Maison des Morts,' " Romanic
Review (April, 1961). Although the indirect approach to ghostliness is funny,
the main themes of the poem, the fusion of death with life and the belief in a
past that has significance for the present, are serious concerns of the poet.
A number of times the underlying meaning is brought out by ironic ambigui-
ties, as when dead and living say goodby to each other, "Au revoir / A de-
main / A bient6t." These ambiguities include plays on words. A dead man
says that no revenant can revenir. The dead are indistinguishable from the
living, because they act with as much vigueur. The clich6 mourir de rire is
used ironically, since half the people laughing are already dead; at the same
time, by his phrasing Apollinaire suggests that mourir is a compound of rire
and that the one action (or state) is a result of the other. He had already
used this verbal joke in a far more macabre fashion, reminiscent of Petrus
Borel's graveyard humor, in his story "La Serviette des Pobtes," where he
describes a tubercular poet coughing his heart out "avec des mines A mourir de
rire" (L'H6rdsiarque et Cie, Paris, 1938, p. 201). There the humor is with-
out a doubt noir: sickness and death exist, although one can, if one likes, laugh
at them. In the poem, however, the dead are indistinguishable from the living
because the poet (an interpreter and prophet, like Teiresias or Dante's Virgil)
has, by his lightheartedness, broken down the barriers between life and death,
the greatest of which is the fear of death: at the end of the poem, death is
banished-in no absolute and literal fashion, as for the surrealists, but ban-
ished from the world of memory, the poet's world, which preserves both the
dead who are no longer subject to change and those who remember.
318 f CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
That memorable postscript to the Rhineland period, "La Chanson
du mal-aim6," contains puns even more ironic than those in "La
Maison des morts." They tend in general to stress the main theme-
or aspects of it that dominate the different sections of which the poem
is composed. Thus, at the beginning, which deals specifically with
illusion and disillusion, ombre suggests, first insubstantial and decep-
tive appearances and, subsequently, the self, when all outward cover-
ings have been stripped away, that is personal identity, the soul's
alter ego. The latter aspect of ombre is developed later in the poem
along lines that anticipate Valbry and provides the poet with an
image of his own continuity despite present despair. Other puns illus-
trate the ambivalence of passion by stressing first one aspect of love,
then another, as the poet's mood changes. Most of these have been
touched upon by Mr. Leroy C. Breuning." In particular, the song of
the seven swords, "Les sept 6pees," contains a number of plays on
11 "Le Roman du mal-aim6," La Table Ronde (Sept. 1952). The poet is

first reminded of Annie by a strange woman: "C'6tait son regard d'inhumaine."
Inhumaine, which belongs to precious vocabulary and is a traditional epithet
of the cruel beloved, is used on two levels: Annie at once cruel and literally not
human. Turning to the past, he becomes more cheerful. In the first line of
"Aubade Chant6e Laetare un an pass6"-"C'est le printemps viens-t'en
PAquette"-.-Pquette, short for paquerette or "Easter daisy," links, in light-
hearted fashion, Easter's promise of eternal salvation to the more ephemeral
promise offered by pastoral loves. In a long passage at the center of the poem,
the poet recalls "Amor vos baisers florentins," and thinks, not only of what
might be freely translated as a "French kiss" but of kisses as greedy and deceit-
ful as those mediaeval Florentines who were reputed money-lenders and
traitors. In contrast, four stanzas after, Annie is invoked as "Mon ile au loin
ma D6sirade." The stanza immediately following contains the verse: "Et les
destins damnes ou faustes." Faustes, coined by Apollinaire, suggests "Faustian"
as well as.the Latin faustus "auspicious." "Auspicious" balances the line. How-
ever, the two preceding verses have not only set up a pattern of repetition;
by an association of ideas they have suggested the will-o'-the wisp that led
Faust to Walpurgis night in Goethe's poem. Indeed Apollinaire probably had
in mind not only the two contrasting meanings "auspicious" and "damned"
but also "barely saved." At the end of this section, the poet's bitterness turns
entirely against himself and his destructive passion: "Et moi j'ai le coeur aussi
gros/Qu'un cul de dame damascene." The idiom le coeur gros is used first in
its figurative sense of "sad" and then literally as "big." (Laforgue does the same
sort of thing in "La Chanson du petit hypertrophique.") The ironic com-
ment on physical desire and on sentimental love is intensified by the violent
contrast between the two images and by the grotesque visual likeness between
them; their relationship prepares the reader for the even more grotesque image
that follows, that of the heart pierced by seven phallic swords.
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE j 319
words which have been interpreted in various ways by Apollinaire
scholars,'2 and which, by poking phallic fun at romantic love, attack
the passion which has made the poet so unhappy.
In "Les Fiangailles," an experimental poem and, in Apollinaire's
opinion, a break with his literary past, the verbal play is less varied
and less ironic than in "La Chanson." The poem is at once a confession
and an ars poetica in which the poet rejects his past life and his past
way of writing: he will cease to write of love and instead will tran-
scribe, in a new kind of verse, the kinship between life and poetry.
The puns reflect his troubled attitude towards past sufferings and
delights, the conflict between body and soul that continues to hold
him, tortures of the flesh and doubts of the spirit, his present wariness
of love and of women, his new interest in the heroic pose and in the
poem as a heroic act.
Already in the first line, a play on words, errer which can mean
both "to wander" and "to be mistaken," creates an ambiguous atmos-
phere: "Le printemps laisse errer les fianc6s parjures." Do the fore-
sworn lovers wander together or separately? Is their mistake one of
betrayal or of an attempted reconciliation? It is no coincidence that
this passage dates from that earlier period which Apollinaire is here
renouncing.'3 The very inclusion of these first three stanzas in "Les
Fiangailles" is an irony. In Part II (Mes amis m'ont enfin avoud leur
mepris) the poet awakes from his dreams of love and from illusions
concerning his art and his faith to find the world about him ugly and
unrecognizable: "Etoiles de l'6veil je n'en connais aucune." In context,
I'6veil "awakening" suggests the morning stars and also, more signifi-
cantly, stars qui donnent I'Fveil "that raise the alarm" or give warning.
The stars are cruel because, knowing our future, they conceal it. The
poet has been in danger while he slept; his awakening from false
dreams is a warning both concerning dreams and the real world.
12 I have omitted a discussion of "Les sept 6p"es" because the word play
has been so thoroughly discussed by a number of distinguished scholars, namely
Leroy C. Breunig (op. cit.), James Lawler in "Les sept 6pdes" (Le Flaneur
des Deux Rives, Sept. 1954), Ren6 Louis in "Lul de Faltenin" (FDR, March,
1954) and "Encore Lul de Faltenin" (FDR, Sept. 1954), Maurice Prion in
"Sur quelques passages de la Chanson du mal-aimS" (RLM, Autumn 1953).
A useful synthesis of various interpretations of the puns appears in T. E. Mar-
shall's Composition and Structure of Guillaume Apollinaire's 'Alcools' (Berk-
eley Thesis, 1959).
13 The first three stanzas of "Les Fiangailles," with minor variations, were
lifted by the poet from his "Le Printemps" (1902) of which they formed the
opening section.
Part VI (J'observe le repos du dimanche) contains a discussion
of the senses, those monsters that appertain to the body and not to the
spirit and that furnish the latter with false reports from the real world.
(This theme, the delusion of the mind by the senses, the poet had al-
ready touched upon in "La Chanson du mal-aim6.") The monster
representing the sense of taste is a laurel: "Et le monstre le plus beau /
Ayant la saveur du laurier se d6sole." Why is the monster who tastes
of laurel the most beautiful and why is he unhappy? It seems to me
that we have here a play, of the most traditional kind, at once on
words and on associations. There is an association in Apollinaire's
mind, indicated elsewhere in his verse, between the taste of laurel
and the unhappy side to sensuality or passion or love-past loves he
has rejected, new loves he has embarked upon or that await him (he
met Marie in 1907, about the time he was writing "Les Fiangailles").14
There are also traditional associations with laurel-the fragrance of its
oil, the symbolic crown of laurel, even the poison of its berries. All
these associations may be underlined by memories of Petrarch's verse,
where laurel is both a play on words and a symbol.'1
In Part VII (A la fin les mensonges) occur the lines: "Voici mon
bouquet de fleurs de la Passion / Qui offrent tendrement deux couron-
nes d'6pines." Passion has several levels of meaning: it suggests suf-
ferings in both body and spirit, the sufferings of Christ and those of
the poorly loved poet. The two verses may describe yet another "lie"
-those consolations of religion which Apollinaire seems to reject in
Part II, and had already questioned in early poems. A little later in
the same passage he puns, as he does in "Vend6miaire," on the famil-
iar expression toute la sainte journde: "Toute la sainte journie /
Toute la sainte journ6e j'ai march6 en chantant." The damned or holy
day is probably Easter whose promise of resurrection and salvation
14 In "Corthge," right after a misogynist gibe at women, the poet uses

the same image of laurel as he does here: "I1 me suffit de goiter la saveur du
laurier qu'on cultive pour que j'aime ou que je bafoue." In Le Pokte Assassind,
the faithless Tristouse Ballerinette (Marie Laurencin) has, in the opinion of
the oiseau de Benin (Picasso), the taste of laurel: "Et elle doit avoir la saveur
de la feuille du laurier." The play on words, laurier / Laurencin, is an obvious
key to Tristouse's identity. In "Anvers" [en vers] the last two lines of the poem
link the poet with Marie or, according to the editors of the Pl6iade, with Lou:
"Des noms le mien et celui qui / A la saveur du laurier femme."
15 Laura is a green laurel ("Rotta e l'alta Colonna e'l verde Lauro"),
described in terms of the senses ("Ove l'aura [pun] si sente d'un fresco ed
odorifero laureto"); and laurel as the beloved woman is linked by Petrarch as
by Apollinaire to laurel as poetic fame ("Qual vaghezza di lauro?").
he once more, as in "La Chanson du mal-aim6," casts doubt upon.
The last part of the poem strikes a note of affirmation. In the
concluding lines of Part VIII (Au tournant d'une rue)-"Les vents
ont expire couronn6s d'an6mones / O vierge signe pur du troisibme
mois"-Apollinaire uses a variety of word plays to express a mystical
experience, a discovery or rediscovery of identity. The winds are
appropriately crowned with anemones or windflowers."' The Virgin
is not only the Madonna (as was clearly indicated in the first version
of these lines).7 She is the constellation Virgo, the third sign, as
Madame Durry notes, of summer, beginning around August 26.18
Madame Durry also notes the verbal play on pur: naturally Virgo is a
pure sign; in addition, as Madonna, she purifies. However, I think
that for Apollinaire, who filled his poems with private reference, she
has a personal meaning also. The poet's birthday is August 26. In a
poem about his awakening into a new life, his own sign Virgo shines
like a promise of achievement. In addition, there is the possibility that
the homophone mois / moi may be intended. The deflating of a lovely
line into a reference to the poet's birthday: "O Virgo, pure sign of the
Io This play on the Greek word for wind alveos is comparable to those
learned jokes in "La Chanson du mal-aim6" which consist of saying the same
thing twice, once in French and once in Greek. The two lines that precede the
fauste pun at once underline the recurring theme of illusion and provide Faus-
tian associations: "Les satyrs et les pyraustes / Les 6gypans les feux follets."
The second line does little more than repeat the first line. The pyraustas, a
fabulous insect supposed to live in fire, is a kind of fire fly, while aegipan is an
epithet of both pans and satyrs. The same trick occurs several stanzas further
on in the verses: "Mort d'immortels argyraspides / La neige aux boucliers
d'argent." The Argyraspids, with their silver shields, were Alexander the Great's
bodyguard. The repetition of the epithet in new guise provides not only a joke
against the reader with little Greek but a comparison between two images of
death-armies and snow.
A verbal device not unlike these had already occurred in "Le Larron,"
when the Choros ask the thief his religion: "Ceux de ta secte adorent-ils un signe
obscur / Belph6gor le soleil le silence ou le chien." Madame Durry notes that
Belph6gor, worshipped by some of Israel's neighbors, can be identified with
Priapus, that the sun god may be Baal, and silence, Harpocrates (Alcools,
tome I, p. 227). However, Harpocrates, god of silence, is simply a Greek
misinterpretation of Horus the Egyptian sun god who is often represented as
a boy with a finger lifted to his mouth. Thus, "le soleil le silence" can be taken
as a tautology with which the poet teases his reader.
17 "Le Printemps," in Le Guetteur Melancolique (Oeuvers, P16iade, p.
560).
8s Durry, pp. 158-159.
322 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
third me," is probably accidental, but it is the sort of joke Apollinaire
delighted to insert into a serious context.
The ninth and final section of the poem contains two invoca-
tions. The last stanza begins: "Incertitude oiseau feint peint ..." Un-
certainty, the bird of the quintain, represents, in part, the snares of
flirtatious women or the state of being poorly loved by them.'9 Thus,
the bird is described by a verbal play on feint "faked," fin "end" (i.e.,
the object at which the jouster aims), and fin "clever." In contrast is
the opening line: "Templiers flamboyants je brcile parmi vous." Flam-
boyant may have several meanings, referring not only to the death by
fire of the martyred Templars but to their homosexual loves and flashy
apparel during the later years of an order originally bound by vows
of chastity and poverty. Their flesh literally burns and burns also with
desires. In somewhat the same way, the poet, having vanquished
the bird of the quintain, will burn as a martyr, not pure so much as
purified.
Several long poems, ranging from an early symbolist narrative to
two of the most experimental poems in Alcools, show Apollinaire's
ability to exploit groups of puns to establish a key image. "Le Larron,"
which is concerned with much the same themes as "L'Ermite" and
"Merlin et la Vieille," explores the nature of Christian faith, the nature
of Hellenism, and the significance of both for the artist. It contains
two groups of puns which contribute to the aura of the hero in a lively,
even witty, fashion. The only pun that does not, at least indirectly,
refer to the thief is the baisers florentins evoked by the Choros.20 In
"Le Larron," the play is on the etymological meaning of Florentine;
introduced by the image of flowers in the preceding line, the phrase
stresses the sensuality of the pagan Choros which is in opposition to
the aspirations of the Christian thief.
A key image in the poem is that of a precious stone and it is first
introduced by plays on words. "Your mother was a night," says the
Choros to the stranger whom they have just discovered stealing fruit
from their sea garden, "Qui charma de lueurs Zacinthe et les Cycla-
des." Zacinthe, an Ionian island, suggests also jacinthe which means
19 M. D6caudin cites, a propos of the reference to the quintain, Apolli-

naire's introduction to selections from Aretino in which he indicates that a
sexual meaning can be attributed to the quintain: "L'homme fait de la femme
une quintaine" (D6caudin, p. 308).
20 Apollinaire uses this pun again in "La Chanson du rmal-aime." It
appears also in what is probably an earlier effort, "Adieux," in II y a (Oeuvres,
p. 333).
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE J 323
both "hyacinth" and the "jacinth" or blue sapphire. The name evokes
a fusion of images, a jewel-flower or a flowering isle, as background
for the thief's mysterious goddess-mother. (A minor association, add-
ing to the general mythological ornateness of the poem's mise-en-
scene and to the hero as a loved but doomed figure, is the fate of the
boy Hyacinthus.) In the stanza that immediately follows, the thief
replies to the Choros by invoking his mother: "Ouir ta voix ligure en
nenie o maman." The verse contains a pun on "Ligurean" and
"ligure," a precious stone mentioned in Exodus, probably once again
the jacinth. The adjective suggests both a North Italian voice heard,
perhaps, in the poet's childhood, and a jewel voice appropriate to the
starry night that charmed Zacinthe. The image reappears, again ac-
companied by word play, in the description of a wood: "La foret
pr6cieuse aux oiseaux gemmipares / Aux crapauds que l'azur et les
sources mcirirent." The phrase oiseaux gemmipares contains a double
meaning. Gemmipares "reproducing by buds" and gemme "precious
stone" both come from the same Latin root. Thus the birds bud like
trees and/or lay jewels instead of eggs. The epithet precieuse con-
tributes to the image. So too does the ripening of toads, enveloped
by an azure sky and by water, like pearls in an oyster. The bejeweled
forest is a background for the Choros, rather than for the thief, but
this passage undoubtedly prepares the way for the Choros' descrip-
tion of the thief, towards the end of the poem, as a magical and
gleaming stone, rarer than any jewel, the mysterious pantaure which
Mr. Scott Bates first identified as the pantasbe, the magnetic stone
that attracts gold. Of course, pantaure also suggests several divinities
of the Greek world whom the Choros might associate with the thief-
Pan and the bull manifestations of Dionysos and Neptune.
Three puns whose sombre connotations contrast with the jewel
image describe the thief after he reveals that he is a Christian. In
their first shock the Choros call him sinistre: "Et si tu n'es pas de
droite tu es sinistre." He is, according to their pagan viewpoint, sinis-
ter both as an ill-omened Christian, and because he is, literally, on
the left hand-that is, he will be the thief who hangs to the left of
Christ and who will be damned outright. A few stanzas later, they
elaborate their attitude with a double pun: "L'ombre 6quivoque et
tendre est le deuil de ta chair." The word ombre is by nature equiv-
ocal; here it suggests either the shadow of a solid object or a spirit,
perhaps a ghostly messenger from another world; the equivocal yet
tender shadow is, on one level, the human body; on another, it is
Christianity which denies the body's desires. The Choros say little
324 J CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
more than that the thief has renounced the world of the flesh, which
they celebrate, for the sake of an after world which they find of dubi-
ous validity. There follow two matching stanzas, in which the conflict
between the Choros' distrust and their compassion is more fully
voiced. The second one begins with a pun: "I1 6tait pale il 6tait beau
comme un roi ladre." Apollinaire undoubtedly used ladre, with its
double meaning "stingy" and "leprous," instead of lepreux, partly for
reasons of rhyme and meter. However, both meanings fit. The thief
may be considered stingy by the Choros because he refused to return
their amorous overtures or because he will not surrender himself to
those levels of existence which, in their minds, have most weight. The
Choros may call him leprous because they think of Christianity as a
sickness comparable to death in life, or because the thief's physical
pallor suggests to them this simile. At any rate, the milk-colored or
silvery king counter-balances the golden pantaure which occupies
the corresponding position in the preceding stanza. Apollinaire has
assigned to the Choros an ambivalent image whose primary function
is to surprise and mystify us, an image that unites a number of classi-
cal and Christian allusions and presents a microcosm of the poem
itself by means of a pun.21
In "Zone," Apollinaire sums up his life as he strolls through twen-
tieth-century Paris. Two unrelated puns comment on different aspects
of the major theme of the poem, that is, the essential quality of life in
general and of the poet's life in a particular moment of time. In the
line "Ils espirent gagner de l'argent dans l'Argentine" Apollinaire
lightens his description of exiles, a theme he shares with Baudelaire,
by a play on words that suggests not only the refugees' naive faith in
the New World but man's hopeless eternal quest for El Dorado.
Near the end of the poem he likens his life to an eau-de-vie, an image
which, like Balzac's Peau de Chagrin, suggests a quantity that is lim-
ited and continually dwindling.
21 If taken as a classical reference, the leprous king might suggest Orestes,

prince of Thebes, who was threatened with leprosy by Apollo. Or, since the
giving and curing of leprosy was commonly attributed to the moon, there might
be an association between the image of the leprous king and that of his gleam-
ing mother Night. A more general European reference might be to the divine
king who is killed at the end of fixed term and to the king as a healer. There
are Christian associations too with the leprous or ailing king-Christ healing
the lepers, Jehova afflicting the king with leprosy (II Kings, 15:5), and, most
significantly, the handsome though probably impotent Graal king with his
poisoned wound.
But the most remarkable verbal play in "Zone" is the use of a
series of puns to underline a key image. The invocation of Christ,
with its repetitive pattern, suggests at first the prayers of the litany
or the poems of P6guy, then gradually dissolves into a fantasy, a
charming dream in which winged creatures, many of them legendary,
gather about the Christ-plane. This dissolution is underlined by a
series of plays on words, progressively grotesque, presenting more
and more violent juxtapositions. At first the verbal ambiguities are
mild, and do little more than add an allegorical level to images in the
prayer: thus, the profondeur is adorable, Christ is "le beau lys que
tous nous cultivons," he is "l'arbre toujours touffu de toutes les
prieres," 1'arbre, that is, the gallows tree, the Christmas tree, the cru-
cified Christ with arms outstretched. In the verse that follows- "C'est
la double potence de l'honneur et de l'6ternit6"-potence is double
not only because both honor and eternity are exhibited there, but
because potence has at least two meanings in modern French, "gal-
lows" and "bracket" or "arm": other meanings are suggested by the
word's Latin origin potentia "power" and "prop" or "stay." The un-
derlying theme of suffering, which links Christ to the poet, is play-
fully suggested by the image of the tree and the verbal play in
potence. Three lines later, the description of Christ "qui monte au
ciel" suggests at once an apotheosis and a flying machine; triumph
over death is at once suggested and deflated by monter which means
any kind of ascension, spiritual or physical, natural or supernatural.
Finally, seven lines later, the devils in their famous statement-"S'il
sait voler qu'on l'appelle voleur"-make a pun on voler "to fly" and
"to steal" as they describe the Harrowing of Hell. Their diabolic
wit adds a Dantean dimension and links Apollinaire's summing up of
his life's experience with those of other poets in their thirties. The
building up of the invocation and subsequent shift to another mood
suggest the shift in a dream from one scene to another. Yet the word-
play is not the product of a dream. All three puns-potence, nionter,
voler-comment ironically on earthbound man's yearning for ultimate
power, his desire for flights physical and metaphysical. They impose
an artistic order comparable to that achieved by key words in the
Bacchae, King Lear or Phedre.
The same sort of thing, that is, the use of both incidental and
"key" puns, can be observed in "Vend6maire," an earlier, more opti-
mistic comment upon life, in which the poet, the gullet of Paris, har-
vests not only Europe but the universe and thus becomes a gigantic
figure, fusing microcosm with macrocosm. Several puns, in the manner
of oxymorons, juxtapose opposites. The two words raison and raisin
are used almost interchangeably to describe the wine offered to Paris.
In the song of the industrial cities of the North, the line "Les m6tal-
liques saints de nos saintes usines" contains at least one pun on saint
which pokes fun at futuristic exaltation of smokestacks. A long unani-
mistic passage at the conclusion puns on "les bons vers immortels,"
the worms and the verses that feed on human flesh. Two puns com-
ment on their own immediate context. Rennes and the cities of Brit-
tany offer Paris an ethic, a systematic "mystery" that comprehends
both the code of courtly love and the quest of the Graal: "Double
raison qui est au dela de la beaut6." Double raison has two meanings:
the twofold allegiance to woman and to a religious ideal (or symbol)
and a reason that is twice as precious as la raison. Again, the entire
passage about Coblenz, with the image of the two rivers like two
hands joined in prayer or like a pair of scissors, may have been sug-
gested to the poet not only by the beautiful site of the city, on the left
bank of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, but by its name,
which is a corruption of Confluentes.
Paradoxically Apollinaire can ennoble a theme by underlining
its fantastic and grotesque possibilities. In "Vend6miaire" he makes
fun of kings and heroes that are traditionally venerated, with the
result that not only they but the poet himself loom huge on the hori-
zon of the poem. In the opening lines he plays once more on the mean-
ing of trismegiste. In "Vend6miaire" the epithet is linked with courage
in the face of death and so suggests greatness on a figurative level:
the assassinated kings undergo a kind of apotheosis. Trismegiste sug-
gests also that their shadows swell, now that they are shades, and it
is this contrast between literal and figurative which, added to the
obscurity of the adjective, becomes a source of amusement and sets
the tone of the poem.
Later, in the joking hearty song of the Northern cities which
pokes fun at futurism, the Priapean image of Ixion is introduced: "Nos
cheminees a ciel ouvert engrossent les nu6es / Comme fit autrefois
l'Ixion mecanique." Apollinaire may think of Ixion in Hades, revolv-
ing forever on his flaming (and smoking)wheel. Or, more likely, he
thinks of Ixion's affair with Nephele, a cloud, by whom the hero be-
came father to the Centaurs. Ixion is le mecanique, that is, the one
who makes things and, thus, a persona of the poet. The ambiguous
epithet, in the context, spoofs artistic creation. Ixion reappears in the
song of Sicily, accompanied by another ambiguous epithet:
... sous le ciel
Obscurci de nu'es fam'liques
Que caresse Ixion le createur oblique
Once more the hero is described in terms of phallic symbols and
obscure references to Greek myth. The adjective oblique, which can
mean "indirect," suggests the indirect lover who thought Nephele the
cloud was Hera the queen goddess, and so, in a sense made love by
proxy. The phrase createur oblique suggested to Apollinaire's rabel-
aisian imagination the problems involved in making love to a cloud.
And, since oblique can mean "underhanded" or "crooked," createur
oblique evokes Ixion's clever murder of his father-in-law (in order
to save paying a dowry for his bride) by luring him onto a bed of
burning coals.
Underlying the image of the poet-hero, snared by illusions of his
own making, is that of a lively satyr or a creature from one of the
rowdier Etruscan frescoes. Comparable dilemmas of the flesh and
the spirit are propounded more seriously in "Les Fiangailles," more
ironically in Le Po&te Assassins. But Croniamantal is assassinated by
others. Ixion is condemned by his own nature.
The main point I would like to make is that, even in the more
experimental poems, the poet only seems to be irrational. His is essen-
tially a classical mind, and even the search for adventure (embodied
by his splendid ability to embrace everything as grist to his mill) is
motivated by a desire to impose order, to establish a balance.
In contrast to his contemporary Max Jacob who consciously
prophesied some of the nightmares of modern life, Apollinaire (I
think) conceals behind his irony and his verbal wit the sentimental
optimism of an age relatively untouched by war. Humor mingles with
and tempers his moods of melancholy and unrest. His verbal devices
contribute to their context a needed equilibrium. The very associations
and juxtapositions that startle or mystify, the wild departures into
nonsense or fantasy, bring to autobiographical and protesting verse
an objective attitude, a change in mood and pace, the saving grace
of irony. Accordingly, techniques in themselves typical of modern
verse serve a classical function-they restore a balance instead of de-
stroying it. Apollinaire does not laugh in order to conquer; such defi-
ance, according to Andr6 Breton's somewhat Freudian theories, is the
hallmark of I'humour noir. For Apollinaire the mocking tone of voice
is a counterbalance to sentiment, an escape from romantic protest,
an attempt at reconciliation with the terms of one's existence. It seems
to me that we value Apollinaire for just those qualities of courage and
328 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
sanity wherein he differs from some of his contemporaries and suc-
cessors, those attitudes towards life and art which he has expressed
both at the end of one of his saddest poems "Zone" and one of his
merriest "Vend6miaire."
The last brief lines of "Zone" suggest withdrawal into sleep or
death. As the poet exits, the sun rises. The sun's slit throat cou coup6
is comparable to those nineteenth-century images of a sick or dying
sun, contained in poems of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Laforgue, which
imply a mystical correspondence between onlooker and landscape.
However, in Apollinaire's poem the image of the sun affirms not only
the violence of life but its continued renewal. Even in a poem about
disillusion the twentieth-century poet seems more ebullient, more
reconciled to the terms of his existence than do his predecessors.
In "Vend6miaire" also the poet exits at sunrise. But how different
his mood. He has forgotten the sorrows of life. He is drunk on a vision.
The universal wine becomes increasingly universal; it is composed
now of action and time, expressions of desire, definitions of being.
Towering above the image of the dying stars is that of the poet. He is
the link between worlds, the magician who gives a name and a sense
to things, the interpreter of the universe, the inspired prophet who
will never feel a hang-over.

Igre Reči U Apolinerovim Alkoholima

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Igre Reči U Apolinerovim Alkoholima

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

Puns in Apollinaire's "Alcools"

University of Wisconsin Press, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin

Anne Hyde Greet

308 f CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

One finds Apollinaire using puns in his first volume of verse to

Oui, j'irai dans I'ombre terreuse,

GUILLAUMIE APOLLINAIRE 309

L'aveugle berce un bel enfant

The epithet trismdgiste, which in Apollinaire's often esoteric vocabu-

310 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 311

1 Attention on va jeter l'ancre

312 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

La tzigane savait d'avance

4 In even briefer contexts Apollinaire exploits the pun as fuser of mean-

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 1 313

314 ! CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

In the longer, more experimental poems, puns play a less dominant

7Durrv, Alcools, p. 220.

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 1 315

Mes yeux ce sont des flammes et non des pierreries

Je flambe dans ces flammes 6 belle Loreley

The troubadour preciosity of these lines stresses the bishop's unex-

316 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

Les aigles ...

In concluding the section, Apollinaire uses an ambiguous epithet that

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 1 317

9 M. D6caudin suggests, in regard to the flying Christ of "Zone," that

318 f CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

11 "Le Roman du mal-aim6," La Table Ronde (Sept. 1952). The poet is

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE j 319

320 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

14 In "Corthge," right after a misogynist gibe at women, the poet uses

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 1 321

322 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

19 M. D6caudin cites, a propos of the reference to the quintain, Apolli-

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE J 323

324 J CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

21 If taken as a classical reference, the leprous king might suggest Orestes,

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 1 325

326 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 327

328 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 329

Potrebbero piacerti anche