Le calligramme guillaume apollinaire biography

1918 poetry collection by Guillaume Apollinaire

For the type of artwork, see Calligram.

Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War 1913–1916, is a collection of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire which was first published in 1918. Calligrammes is noted for how the typeface and spatial arrangement of the words on a page plays just as much of a role in the meaning of each poem as the words themselves – a form called a calligram. In this sense, the collection can be seen as either concrete poetry or visual poetry.

Apollinaire described his work as "an idealisation of free verse poetry and typographical precision in an era when typography is reaching a brilliant end to its career, at the dawn of the new means of reproduction that are the cinema and the phonograph".

Gallery

• Cheval

• La Colombe poignardée et le Jet d’eau

• Cœur, couronne et miroir

• L'oiseau et le bouquet

• La Mandoline, l’œillet et le bambou

• Voyage

• Venu de Dieuze

• Il pleut

• A calligram from Calligrammes

• A calligram from Calligrammes

Notes

References

External links

Summary of Guillaume Apollinaire

The name of Guillaume Apollinaire is synonymous with the rise of the early-twentieth-century avant garde. A fixture of Parisian café society, he rubbed shoulders with other young bohemians, making friends with numerous artists including Raoul Dufy, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Pablo Picasso. Though not a painter himself, nor formally schooled in art history (unlike, say, Vasari or Greenberg, writers who brought their own indominable influence to bear on Renaissance Art and Abstract Expressionism respectively), he was an enthusiastic, infatigable, champion of the modernists, and is credited with alerting these kindred spirits to the new artistic horizons opened up by studying African masks and the "naïve" paintings of Henri Rousseau. Through his lyrical art criticism, for which he remains best remembered, Apollinaire did more than any other writer of his generation in establishing the legends of some of the most important artists of the century.

Accomplishments

• Apollinaire set himself the task of defining the key principles of the burgeoning Cubist movement. His one full-length book, Peintures cubistes (Cubist Painters) was published in 1913 and was at that time considered the most authoritative book on the movement and its aesthetics. Though his poetic style was considered by some to be a little verbose, the book confirmed Apollinaire's reputation as a modern art critic to be reckoned with.
• Through his poetry, Apollinaire set out to disorient his reader by means of incredulous verbal associations. Indeed, Apollinaire's poetry was considered daringly experimental and this was especially true of his so-called "calligrammes" which featured an ingenious typographic arrangement whereby the words of his poem were arranged in a way that formed an image (the Eifel Tower, for example).
• Apollinaire's enthusiasm for modern art saw his words matched by actions. It was he who instigated one of the most significant partners

Calligrammes, Untertitel: poèmes de la paix et de la guerre 1913–1916, ist eine Gedichtsammlung des französischen Schriftstellers Guillaume Apollinaire, die im Jahre 1918 veröffentlicht wurde. Die Sammlung enthält einige namensgebende Kalligramme, d. h. Figurengedichte.

Inhalt

Der Band enthält mehrheitlich typografisch konventionell gesetzte Gedichte; daneben Gedichte, deren typografische Form – teils mit Drucklettern, teils handschriftlich ausgeführt – verschiedene Figuren erzeugt bzw. abbildet und somit eine vom Text unabhängige, mit ihm jedoch eine in inhaltlicher Beziehung stehende Bedeutung enthält. Damit können diese Figurengedichte als konkrete oder visuelle Poesie angesehen sowie einerseits der Dichtkunst, andererseits der bildenden Kunst zugeordnet werden.

Der Untertitel, Gedichte über Frieden und Krieg 1913–1916, steht im Zusammenhang mit Apollinaires Kriegserfahrungen als Artillerist und Infanterieoffizier, von denen viele der Gedichte handeln. Er wurde 1916 durch eine Schrapnellwunde an der Schläfe schwer verletzt.

Das Frontispiz ist ein Holzschnitt von R. Jaudon in Reproduktion eines Porträts, das Apollinaire darstellt und von Pablo Picasso signiert ist.

Apollinaire widmete die Sammlung seinem Jugendfreund René Dalize, der im Krieg gefallen war, und erinnerte an ihn in dem Gedicht La Colombe poignardée et le Jet d'eau (Die erstochene Taube und der Wasserstrahl):

In einem Brief an André Billy ordnete der als Vorläufer des Surrealismus angesehene Apollinaire selbst das Werk in die Geschichte der Poesie und Typografie ein:

Guillaume Apollinaire (France, 1880-1918) was the author of a variety of different texts: prose fiction, drama, librettos etc., yet it could be argued that he published only two significant works during his lifetime: Alcools: Poèmes 1898-1913 (1913) and Calligrammes: Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre 1913- 1916 (1918).

As well as having a keen eye for the visual arts, the visual dimension of writing was extremely important to Apollinaire. Apollinaire took great care over the typographical layout of his work. Technical developments such as the phonograph, the telephone, radio and cinema had provided new ways of storing and diffusing language without recourse to the written word. For Apollinaire, writing no longer had the same role, its status had changed and Apollinaire was one of the first to interrogate this. I say `one of the first’, since the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé published his Un Coup de dès jamais n’abolira le hasard (1897) sixteen years before Alcools which included typography carefully orchestrated into a symbolic pattern with different sized words twisted into strange shapes performing a ballet-like movement within the monochrome limits of the printed page. For Apollinaire, as for Mallarmé before him, language was something to be experienced for its concrete and graphic shapes, for its potential to convey meanings in other ways. Apollinaire insists on the `materiality’ of language, that is to say, its existence as visual marks of white on black or as patterns of sound. Michel Butor claims that Apollinaire’s significance as a poet resides in:

“… la conscience aiguë qu’il a toujours gardée de la réalité physique du langage; on peut dire qu’il a fait retomber la poésie sur la terre dans son admirable incapacité d’oublier que les mots c’est d’abord quelque chose que l’on entend, et que l’on voit.”
M. Butor, Monument de r