34 Poetry for Students
For the critic to be prophetic is even more pre-
sumptuous than for the creative writer, and yet I ven-
ture to ask what can be the utter and outer limits of
the pessimism of the more popular and distinguished
writers of today? Silence or suicide, both literary
dead ends! This brings Apollinaire’s prophecy into
the category of Pascal’s wager. He can be right or
wrong. If wrong, no matter, for the line of artists will
have extinguished itself. If he is right in believing in
the energy and creativeness of the modern mind, he
is indeed a herald of a new age of enchantment and
will loom more and more prodigious in the history
of ideas as well as of literature.
Science is never pessimistic about its powers
and is never ashamed to foretell beyond its exist-
ing limitations its capacity for tomorrow. Perhaps
art, following more and more in Apollinaire’s foot-
steps, may rid itself of its apologetic attitude and
find, as Apollinaire hoped, that after all the world
is just beginning and imagination has yet to come
of age.
Source: Anna Balakian, “Apollinaire and the Modern
Mind,” in Yale French Studies, No. 4, 1949, pp. 79–90.Sources
Apollinaire, Guillaume, “Always,” in The Self-
Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems of Guilluame
Apollinaire, translated by Donald Revell, Wesleyan Uni-
versity Press, 2004, p. 109.
Balakian, Anna, “Apollinaire and the Modern Mind,” in Yale
French Studies, No. 4, 1949, pp. 79, 81, 83–87.
Bates, Scott, Guillaume Apollinaire, Twayne Publishers,
1967, p. 111.
Davies, Margaret, Review of Calligrammes, in Modern
Language Review, Vol. 77, No. 3, July 1982, pp. 730–31.Greet, Anne Hyde, “Commentary,” in Calligrammes:
Poems of Peace and War (1913–1916), translated by
Anne Hyde Greet, University of California Press, 1980,
p. 435.
Lockerbie, S. I., “Introduction,” in Calligrammes: Poems of
Peace and War (1913–1916), translated by Anne Hyde
Greet, University of California Press, 1980, pp. 1–3.
Markus, M. B., Review of Calligrammes, in Library Jour-
nal, August 1980, p. 1639.
Revell, Donald, “Translator’s Afterword,” in The Self-
Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems of Guillaume
Apollinaire, Wesleyan University Press, 2004, p. 141.
Shattuck, Roger, “Introduction,” in Selected Writings of
Guillaume Apollinaire, translated by Roger Shattuck,
New Directions, 1971, p. 26.Further Reading
Berry, David, The Creative Vision of Guillaume Apollinaire:
A Study of Imagination, Anma Libri, 1982.
Berry traces the development of Apollinaire’s theo-
ries on creativity and their application in his poetry.
Davies, Margaret, Apollinaire, St. Martin’s Press, 1965.
Davies explores biographical information about
Apollinaire and presents analyses of his work.
Mackworth, Cecily, Guillaume Apollinaire and the Cubist
Life, Horizon, 1963.
Mackworth analyzes the cubist artists’ influence on
Apollinaire’s life and work.
Steegmuller, Francis, Apollinaire: Poet among the Painters,
Farrar, Straus, 1963.
In this study, Steegmuller outlines Apollinaire’s
relationship with the artists of his age.
Themerson, Stefan, Apollinaire’s Lyrical Ideograms,
Gaberbocchus, 1968.
Themerson concentrates on the style of Apollinaire’s
later poetry.Always