Authors: Guillaume Apollinaire, Donald Revell
ISBN-13: 9780819512284, ISBN-10: 0819512281
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Date Published: August 1995
Edition: 1st Edition
DONALD REVELL recently became Writer-in Residence and Professor of English at the University of Utah. Winner of a Guggenheim and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, his most recent Wesleyan book is Beautiful Shirt (1994).
A new translation of this complex and beautiful poetry.
Revell (Beautiful Shirt) buoyantly delivers into English the swift visions and odd, bright beauty of Alcools (originally published in 1913), arguably one of this century's most inventive and influential books of poetry. Apollinaire, writes Revell, ``introduced the century to its true self.'' He popularized the term ``surrealism'' and, in poems like the sparkling ``Zone'' and the more magisterial but no less energetic ``The Harvest Month,'' strove to bring a form of cubism to poetry through the use of verbal collage, polyphony and highly extracted urban imagery, all of which later had a profound effect on American Modernism and the Beats. In translations facing the original French, Revell has maintained the deliberate awkwardness of Apollinaire's free verse, his informal slant rhymes and assonance. Contoured and complex, Alcools has aged well, retaining its ability to illuminate the modern experience with rare force and whimsy: ``Listen to me I am the gullet of Paris/ If it pleases me I will swallow all of creation/ Listen to my songs of cosmic drunkenness...'' (Aug.)
The Alcools of Guillaume Apollinaire: Why and Why Now | ||
Translator's Note | ||
Zone / Zone | 2 | |
Le Pont Mirabeau / Mirabeau Bridge | 12 | |
La Chanson du Mal Aime / The Song of the Poorly Loved | 14 | |
Les Colchiques / Saffrons | 34 | |
Palais / Palace | 36 | |
Chantre / Singer | 40 | |
Crepuscule / Twilight | 42 | |
Annie / Annie | 44 | |
La Maison des Morts / The House of the Dead | 46 | |
Clotilde / Clotilde | 60 | |
Cortege / Procession | 62 | |
Marizibill / Marizibill | 68 | |
Le Voyageur / The Traveler | 70 | |
Marie / Marie | 74 | |
La Blanche Neige / Snow | 76 | |
Poeme lu au mariage d'Andre Salmon / Poem Read at the Marriage of Andre Salmon | 78 | |
L'Adieu / The Farewell | 82 | |
Salome / Salome | 84 | |
La Porte / The Door | 86 | |
Saltimbanques / Saltimbanques | 88 | |
Le Vent nocturne / The Wind by Night | 90 | |
Lul de Faltenin / Lul of Faltenin | 92 | |
La Tzigane / The Gypsy | 96 | |
Automne / Autumn | 98 | |
L'Emigrant de Landor Road / The Emigrant from Landor Road | 100 | |
Rosemonde / Rosemonde | 104 | |
Le Brasier / The Brazier | 106 | |
Rhenanes / Rhenanes | 112 | |
Signe / Sign | 130 | |
Un Soir / An Evening | 132 | |
La Dame / The Lady | 134 | |
Les Fiancailles / The Betrothal | 136 | |
Clair de Lune / Clair de Lune | 144 | |
1909 / 1909 | 146 | |
A la Sante / At the Sante | 148 | |
Automne malade / Sickly Autumn | 154 | |
Hotels / Hotels | 156 | |
Cors de Chasse / Hunting Horns | 158 | |
Vendemiaire / The Harvest Month | 160 |