Selected Poems

by Guillaume Apollinaire, Oliver Bernard (Translation)

Apollinaire's poetry reflects the heady years of artistic and intellectual ferment before the First World War. The most dynamic modernist French poet and the champion of the Cubist painters, he is remembered as much for his more traditional lyric poems as for the typographical experiments of his calligrammes'. Subtle and complex, yet often direct, his poetry is still fresh and memorable. Guillaume Apollinaire was born in Rome in 1880. Educated in Monaco and Nice, he became a French citizen only in 1916, after service in the artillery and infantry. He was badly wounded in the head in 1916, and died during the Paris flu epidemic in 1918. As prose writer and art critic as well as poet, Apollinaire was the moving spirit of French modernism. Oliver Bernard, born in 1925, has worked as an advisory teacher of drama, and was a director of the Speak a Poem Competition from its inception. He has lived in Norfolk for over thirty years.

Genres: Poetry, France, French Literature, 20th Century, Classics, Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Italian-French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, originally Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, led figures in avant-garde literary and artistic circles.

A Polish mother bore Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, this known writer and critic.

People credit him among the foremost of the early 20th century with coining the word surrealism and with writing Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917), the play of the earliest works, so described and later used as the basis for an opera in 1947.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillau...

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love took absence for a bride one summer night;
And so my love for your adolescence
Walks slowly with his wife, your absence,
Who very softly leads him and, then calm, falls quiet.

And Love who came to oceanic shores
Whose sky would be Greek if the women were all nude,
Wept at being still a god, one that no one knew,
This god as jealous as all such unique gods are.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have summoned up the courage to look back
The corpses of my days
Litter my path and I mourn them
Some of them are rotting in Italian churches
Or else in little lemon groves
Flowering and giving fruit
At the same time and in all seasons
Other days wept before they died in drinking places
Where burning flowers fanned out
In the eyes of a half-caste woman who invented poetry
And the roses of the electricity still bloom
In the garden of my memory

[A L]

For me this was one of the most stupendous translation projects I've read, and Apollinaire's verse is playful yet honest.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is the first I've read by Apollinaire, and it's succeeded in making me want to read more. I don't speak or read French, so at a technical level I can't comment on Ron Padgett's translation. As far as the *effect* of Padgett's translation goes, however, he achieves a naturalness that makes the poems all sound as if they could easily have been written in English and, as a result, an admiration for his accomplishment because of how difficult translation must have been, given the rhetorical/poetic devices employed here that many contemporary poets don't even attempt.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Borges judged him as dated, as belonging only to his time, and as too wedded to it, but I still find him to be a worthy successor of Walt Whitman, but with crazier imaginative identifications, such as Bleriot's monoplane=crucifixion. And the traditional lyrical impulse largely remains intact.

[Anselm · Rating 5 out of 5]

goddamn it's about time a book of padgett trans of apollinaire was in the world....

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know people of all sorts
Unequal to their destinies
Their eyes are fires almost gone out
Or wavering like dead leaves
Their hearts open and close like doors

[Max B · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite was The Song of the Badly Loved. Appreciated the contextual notes in back of book.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up as I hadn't heard of Guillaume Apollinaire, described on the back as "France's greatest modern poet". Since reading it I have been finding out a bit about his fascinating life. He became associated with many of the most prominent artists of the late 19th/ early 20th century and is credited with coining the phrases "cubism" and "surrealism". Many of his poems gathered here speak of disappointments in love, but others deal with these artists he knew and I loved reading his epitaph to Henri Rousseau, which is now inscribed on his tomb. Another poem tells of his dread as a prisoner in La Santé, where he spent 5 nights (wrongly) accused of stealing the Mona Lisa.

During World War 1 he served in the artillery and the infantry of the French army, but his poems from this period are rather thinly represented in the book. He also created several "concrete poems", only two of which are present here and I would have enjoyed seeing more of these. In 1918, with gas-damaged lungs and a shrapnel injury to the head that had required surgery, he succumbed to the influenza outbreak at the age of 38.

The poems themselves I struggled to engage with at times. Many were referring to very specific episodes and individuals which the extensive notes at the back of the book helped with. I am always glad when foreign poetry is presented with the original and translation face to face on the page and the French words strike resonant rhythms that outshine the English at times.

An interesting book about a very interesting character.

[Des Bladet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really great. Letting Padgett assemble a volume out of only those translations that really worked results in a set of translations that *really work* - the facing page originals don't come across as a crib they are more of a boast "see?", the translations boast and why shouldn't they "I got that bit too!". Apollinaire is not just well-served, though, his poetry is also fantastic modernist poetry, built out of a command of register and gleeful alternation between loose-limbed free-verse bounce and strident rhymes for swagger or bathos.

It doesn't hurt that the NYRB imprint has mojo out the wazoo and the book is a lovely object, just the old, small paperback size that paperbacks sadly often aren't anymore, and with exemplary typesetting. (It's an imprint of Penguin Random House, which is nothing short of mindblowing given that Penguin has been treading overpriced mojoless water for decades and you can tell them I said so.)

[Mark Noack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strongly prefer Donald Revell's translations.

[Dave Nichols · Rating 5 out of 5]

many of these gods have perished / it's for them the willows weep / the great Pan Venus Jesus Christ / are surely dead and the cats keep / yowling in the courtyard I weep in Paris

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read nothing of Apollinaire's work until I read this, translated by Martin Sorrell who also provides a useful introduction and notes. I think I might have found a new favourite poet. Admittedly Sorrell might have collected only the best and what remains outside this selection may not match the quality of the work within it. Sorrell hints this might be the case in his introduction.

This edition has the French original opposite the English translation, which I like. And though my French is rusty and almost forgotten it did allow me to look at the original whenever I felt the need to check.

Apollinaire was an early proponent of modernism in French. I am still uncertain about what modernism actually means. I have a vague idea but sometimes I think these terms are sent to try us. Often having as broad an application as to be meaningless. That though is a discussion for another time.

His two most famous collections are Alcools and Calligrammes*, although he's also known for his war poetry. He served as in both the artillery and infantry in the French army during World War One. He was severely wounded in the head in 1916 by shrapnel and the consequences of that wound would kill him in 1918. His war poetry is very different to English war poetry. They mix love, sex and war together in a way that English war poets mostly don't. It's almost as if they want to be the Frenchest of French war poems - if you're looking at it from an English point of view. But there is a real beauty to them.

But this whole collection is filled with gems, especially some of the longer poems. I'd probably say more but it is late and I am tired. Perhaps I'll tweak this in the morning. Perhaps I won't.



*Calligrammes are poems that use the topography of the page to be both poems and illustrations. Although not all the poems in Calligrammes are actually calligrammes.

[Quiver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tranquil bird that flies backwards
And nests on high air
Earth’s become a gleam
Lower your second eyelid the world blinds you
When you lift your head
(from "Cortege")

This collection covers a large part of the two most important eras in Apollinaire's poetry, Alcohols and Calligrams, as well as some other assorted poems. Alcohols are topically varied, dreamlike, and appeal to a more general sensibility (as in the quoted excerpt). Calligrams, titled after the form of picture-poem, are focused on the specific themes of war and peace; about half of the poems included are arranged in some visually nonstandard fashion (like a star, like a coffin) that matches the content of the words. I was looking forward to Calligrams, primarily for its famed interplay of shape and meaning, but ended up enjoying Alcohols more.

This review is part of a series that includes:
- Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil ,
- Stéphane Mallarmé’s Collected Poems ,
- Arthur Rimbaud’s Collected Poems ,
- Paul Verlaine’s Selected Poems ,
- and Paul Valéry’s Selected Writings .

[Eran · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't really know how to read poetry. This is the only collection I've ever completed and it took me a good decade. I struggle to describe what I liked, but I definitely felt some connection with several of the poems. I like the urban nature of the poems, for example the walk he takes in Zone. He is driven mad by the city but can't seem to escape it. In Hunting Horns, "memories are sweet hunting-horns that die on the wind", alcohol is used to enhance and to forget. The enhanced moment is fleeting and quickly forgotten. If we look back for too long, we search in vain for something that no longer exists and are a slave to a memory. That's the parable of Lot's wife. Contrast this with The Hills where prophecy isn't necessarily a gift. If you can see that the future is filled with destruction, would you want to look? Maybe I felt this poem recently because of the general state of the world, with AI, climate change, wars in Europe and the Middle East, and a general lack of order.

"All is sadder than before / All Earth's gods are aging"

[Denis Bukin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Текстовские" билингва хороши все б��з исключения, что тут говорить. Этот сборник хорош тем, что он от Михаила Яснова – всё, что он делает для французской поэзии на русском превосходно. Собственно про стихи Аполлинера, то по мне в них заключена тройная польза. Во-первых, он участвовал во всех значительных явлениях в искусстве (а может и ментальности) 1910-х. Читать Аполлинера значит быть сопричастным всему сразу – очевидная экономия в тратах на книги с интеллектуальной радостью заодно. Во-вторых, наивный и до смерти юный Аполлинер помогает вернуть юношескую свежесть ощущений. С ним доступны и первая влюбленность, и светлая подростковая печаль. Не его, Аполлинера, печаль и любовь – свои собственные. В-третьих, превосходные стихи с комментариями переводчика.
P.S. Тому, кто полюбил Аполлинера по переводам Михаила Кудинова, придется преодолеть инстинктивное отторжение – уж слишком силен импринтинг от "Под мостом Мирабо тихо Сена течет". Преодолейте. Это ненадолго и усилия того стоят

[Shane Ha · Rating 5 out of 5]

One Evening (from Alcools sect. of book translated)

An eagle descends from this sky white with archangels
And you sustain me
Let them tremble a long while all these lamps
Pray pray for me
The city’s metallic and it’s the only star
Drowned in your blue eyes

When the tramways run spurting pale fire
Over the twittering birds
And all that trembles in your eyes of my dreams
That a lonely man drinks
Under flames of gas red like a false dawn
O clothed your arm is lifted

See the speaker stick his tongue out at the listeners
A phantom has committed suicide
The apostle of the fig-tree hangs and slowly rots
Let us play this love out then to the end
Bells with clear chimes announce your birth
See
The streets are garlanded and the palms advance
Towards thee

[Colin Cloutus · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Apollinaire... isn't very *good* (and that's somewhat regularly I have to admit), the surrealism keeps it interesting, pulling you along with all the shifting images, not without charm and humour.

*
[...]
Many of those gods are dead
It is for them the willows weep
Pan Eros Jesus Christ all dead
The cats miaow I sit and weep
In Paris how the gods are dead
...
I tremble love is dead for I
Have worshipped idols all my life...

- The Song of the Ill-Loved
*
My room's shaped like a cage the sun
Puts his arm right through the window
But I who wish to smoke and dream
Use it to light my cigarette
I don't want to work I want to smoke.
- Hotel

[Piotr Piątek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tylko Polako-Francuzo-Włoch mógł napisać wiersz analizujący od brodawek swojej ukochanej po ruchliwość jej pośladków- ale to nie moja mentalność, ni mojego gustu poezja, choć po Morsztynie już nic w poezji mnie nie obrzydzi. Może to wyższy stopień uwielbienia czyjegoś ciała ale skutecznie zmniejsza libido.
Plus to klimat owych czasów i techniczność. Dobrze, że poetyckość tych wierszy nie przenosi się na praktyke życia.

[Doug Snyder]

i'm sick of hearing the cheerful banalities
the love that i suffer's a shameful disease
and you live in pain and insomnia, you whom the image possesses
it's always beside you, this image that passes.

[actually i read 'selected poems,' trans. by oliver bernard, but goodreads doesn't have that one and the NYRB version is the closest thing to it]

[Harrison Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Playful, mostly style over substance - which for my personal taste isn’t a criticism. Speaks of the general creative consciousness present in the years preceding the First World War.
I think Apollinaire’s biggest contribution to art / literature is the greats he inspired in the latter half of the century.

[karina · Rating 5 out of 5]

have been wanting to read more apollinaire for so long because obviously zone is amazing. i am so glad i read it while traveling. also enjoyed: the pont mirabeau, la grenouillere, hunting horns, the traveler, the women, vendemiarire, + there.

[7thTrooper · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nej, det verkar onekligen som att fransmänn inte är min grej.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

His life is more interesting than his poetry I would have to say. A rather uneven collection of his work.

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bridge between the 19th and 20th centuries.

[Belle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Father of Surrealism

[fotostazione · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.5

[laudine · Rating 4 out of 5]

June your sun an ardent lyre
Burns my aching fingers even darker

[Micaela *CLONAZINE* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vine buscando cobre y encontré oro. Me encantó el estilo de APOLLINAIRE, me lo leí en dos sentadas.

[Jack Malik · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was alright. There were 47 poems in this collection. I liked 18 and out of that, there were 10 bangers.