Shepherdess o Eiffel Tower your flock of bridges bleats at the morning
said Apollinaire in Zone
(I'm quoting from this translation).
From the Mirabeau Bridge I could see other bridges and the Eiffel Tower
Shepherdess o Eiffel Tower your flock of bridges bleats at the morning
said Apollinaire in Zone
(I'm quoting from this translation).
Just like Jesper Svenbro
I worked out that the fountain where the musician drank must now be
inside the Centre Beaubourg
but instead of giving up on the fountain I went into the Centre Beaubourg
and in a gallery right above where the fountain must have been in Apollinaire's time
there was a Fountain
Not just any fountain
but a reconstruction of Fountain by Marcel Duchamp
The fountain from which flows all the avant-garde art of the last eighty-five years
On the gallery wall beside the Fountain there was a title plaque giving a lot of information about it
A man was standing facing the wall reading this information
His hands were in front of him
He was bending down slightly because the plaque was below his eyelevel
Like Duchamp, Apollinaire wasn't afraid to use banal or profane material
His poem La Chanson du Mal-Aimé contains the memorable image
my heart is as big as the arse of a dame from Damascus
Duchamp started doing ready-mades after going on a trip to the Jura with Apollinaire and Francis Picabia
Here is Duchamp's Apolinère Enameled
and here is a computer mockup of the
original enamel tin
After my visit to the Centre Beaubourg I continued down the route described in Apollinaire's poem
As I turned into the Rue de la Verrerie
a small clarinettist in a black poloneck jumper came out round the corner
playing as he walked
If you try following the route, tell me what you find.
Here is Rousseau's portrait of Marie Laurencin and Apollinaire
with poetic vegetation
and here is a group portrait painted by Marie Laurencin
of Picasso, another artist, Apollinaire, herself, a dog and some vegetation
Apollinaire dedicated several poems to Marie Laurencin
Apollinaire's
Dromadaire
poem has something of the naïve charm of a Rousseau
It's from Bestiaire
a book he did in collaboration with Raoul Dufy
Dufy's woodcut has vegetation that looks a bit like Rousseau's to me
Rousseau had never been to the tropics
although his paintings were frequently set there
he swotted up on tropical plants in the library
Nowadays he'd just have to saunter down the boulevard to a restaurant like La Creole
where you eat surrounded by imported vegetation.
The
Rue Guillaume Apollinaire
is right by the church of St-Germain-des-Prés
In the churchyard there's a memorial to Apollinaire
with a sculpture of Dora Maar
a substitute for Picasso's original plan
Here's a 30-inch maquette of the sculpture Picasso planned for Apollinaire's monument
The full-sized sculpture was intended to be a bit over ten feet tall
The committee planning the monument thought it too radical
too radical for a memorial to APOLLINAIRE
and turned it down
Committees
If you know exactly what you're going to do
what's the point of doing it
said Picasso
according to a postcard I bought on the Boulevard St-Michel
near Rue Guillaume Apollinaire
Apollinaire's house at number 202 Boulevard St-Michel was covered with scaffolding
A graffitist had drawn a big heart on it
I went to Rue Gros because Apollinaire lived there at one time
On the noticeboard at the front gate of the school at number 18 Rue Gros there was
a fantastic crayon drawing of a figure wearing a turban
with a star on its forehead
a row of hearts across its waist
enormous mauve feet and two pairs of eyes
I wished I'd taken a camera with me to Paris
Anagram virtuoso Richard
Grantham found this one of Apollinaire's official name
Guillaume Apollinaire de Kostrowitsky = Poem guy I know (Surrealist, a lot like
Dali)
Here is a portrait by Avida Dollars
on the slip cover to his artwork Secret Poems by Guillaume Apollinaire
We went to the grave in the Père-Lachaise graveyard where Apollinaire and his wife Jacqueline are buried
I brought a bright flame-red flower which I thought would suit him
Flowering Sage
When we reached the grave
we discovered that there's a poem carved on the tombstone that mentions a flame
the heart poem from Coeur Coronne et Miroir
Here's a translation of the poem
d F
y H
e l
M e
t
a e
a
r
m
r
e
t
v
I
n
s
I
L
n i
A k
e
Most of the visual poems I've ever seen are rubbish
Apollinaire's aren't
I think the heart poem isn't just a visual pun
on the shape of the heart being a flame shape upside-down
it's also about your heart burning inside you
because it can't send its warmth and light outwards to the one you love
It seems we were mistaken
there's a photo on the official Apollinaire site which seems to prove conclusively
that the heart on the tombstone is exactly Apollinaire's heart poem
Nevertheless he said the poem I remember seeing on the tomb ended with ren not renversée
and when I checked the copy I'd sketched quickly in my notebook in the graveyard it agreed
that the verse was cut off
like death did to Apollinaire
Here's another visual poem by Apollinaire
this
version is more readable but it's lost the original visuals
the title Il Pleut means it's raining
or he's crying
I'd like to see a slowly-scrolling Internet version of this as a virtual war memorial
I know ze rules but I dern't like to follow zem
the Parisian at Beckett's table was saying
she was talking in English
rather loudly
I know ze rules but sometimes if you follow zem you can lose your personalité
Jean Cocteau said that there are some poems by Apollinaire in which even the numbers are untranslatable Á
Travers L'Europe might be one of the ones he was thinking of
However,
the images in that poem of
the round house with a red herring flying past
the calf looking out of its mother's belly
the refugee going across Europe dressed in little multicoloured fires
all sound like translations of Chagall paintings to me
Perhaps the round house was La Ruche
the rundown building where Chagall and other artists had their studios?
La Ruche was circular
Chagall remembered cutting a herring in two when he was nearly penniless at La
Ruche
eating the head one day and the tail the next
A Travers L'Europe mentions a man in the air
but not Chagall's recurring image of lovers flying
When Chagall left Paris he left Les Amoureux behind in his studio
He saw it later in an American museum with traces of feathers on it
It had been used in La Ruche to cover the chicken coop
Apollinaire didn't write the poem with the first line Come to the Edge
despite the enormous number of websites that claim he did
Christopher Logue wrote it ABOUT Apollinaire.
How did Apollinaire do it?
How did he make so many artists come to the edge and fly
in so many genres?
How in a short life did he influence everyone I've mentioned
and also Aragon, Braque, Cendrars, Derain, Jarry, Léger and Marinetti
all of whom knew him well (according to Michel Décaudin)
and many more besides - not to mention the dance soliloquy
the Japanese café
the song by Pham Duy
and the translations by Darren Wershler-Henry?
Well I don't know
but it helped that he wasn't a purist
he cheered on any style that was new, creative
and neither realism nor unanchored fantasy
anything flying off the edge
And I'm sure it was important that Apollinaire was a good friend
Max Jacob said they laughed together enormously
that their evenings of laughter were his most beautiful memories
The Official Apollinaire website has a film of Apollinaire talking with his friend André Rouveyre
Film was a new experimental medium then
The film moves slowly
frame by frame
but you can tell they were enjoying themselves
What would Apollinaire be doing now?
Seems obvious to me:
Internet art
Creative, collaborative, international, multimedia, and at the edge.
