Alcools

by Guillaume Apollinaire, Donald Revell (Translator)

Alcools, first published in 1913 and one of the few indispensable books of twentieth- century poetry, provides a key to the century's history and consciousness. Champion of "cubism," Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) fashions in verse the sonic equivalent of what Picasso accomplishes in his cubist works: simultaneity. Apollinaire has been so influential that without him there would have been no New York School of poetry and no Beat Movement. This new translation reveals his complex, beautiful, and wholly contemporary poetry. Printed with the original French on facing pages.

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

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1913

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

[Adina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting poems. Some were too hard for me too grasps but in general, good stuff. I've read the French/English edition which was probably the best available way to read this collection. Apparently, he is a surrealist. I have problems digesting surrealism in prose, you can imagine how harder it is in verse.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd say this is the best book of French poetry I've read since Paul Éluard's 'Capitale de la douleur'.
It's very much a collection that should be seen as a landmark in the history of not just French poetry but 20th century poetry in general.

The book features many sublime longer poems like 'Song of the Poorly Loved', The House of the Dead', 'The Betrothal', and 'Vendemiaire', but to keep things brief, I picked three of my favourite shorter poems below.

CLOTILDE

Anemone and columbine
Have sprung up in the garden
Where sleeping melancholy twines
Between love and disdain.

Here too our shadows come
Which the night will squander;
The sun that makes them somber
Will disappear with them.

The gods of running water
Let down their flowing hair
And she must fly so you pursue
Her shadow fair.

RHENISH NIGHTS

My glass is filled with wine that trembles like flame.
Listen, a boatman is singing a slow song
Of a moonlight night when seven women came
Out of the river and their hair was green and long.

Now sing and dance until the terrace whirls
And the boatman's slow song fades
And bring me all the pretty blonde-haired girls
With the still gaze and the coiled braids.

The Rhine flows drunk with vine leaves trailing after,
The trembling gold of night is mirrored there;
Like a death rattle the slow song grows softer
Of the nymphs who bewitched the summer with their green hair.

My glass has shattered like a peal of laughter.

MOONLIGHT

The honeyflowing moon is on every madman's tongue
Tonight, and makes gluttons out of orchard and town.
The stars can stand for bees who gather this
Luminous stuff that cloys the very trellises.
And look, all saccharine as they pour from the skies,
The rays of the moon are in fact honey-rays,
Hidden gold. I dream of some sugary happening,
But I fear the bee Arcturus and his fiery sting,
Who having put these slippery beams in my hands
Took his lunar honey from the rose of the winds.

[Eadweard · Rating 4 out of 5]

If she ever returns to me
I'll say to her I'll say I'm happy
I void my heart and head
Into barrels of Hades
I shit the entire sky
I'd rather be happy
I'd rather be a child
I wish never to forget her
----


O my love your florentine copulations
Left a bitter taste
Repulsive to fate
The movement of her eyes
Drew stars across the evening sky
In her look swam sirens
We fucked until we bled
----




You laugh at yourself and the laughter crackles like hellfire
The sparks gild the ground and background of your life Your life is a painting in a dark museum
And sometimes you examine it closely
----





Regret is the cornerstone of hell
Forgetfulness is heaven
----





I shiver in the death of love
I worship idols
I worship memories that resemble love
----




A thousand thousand spectral hounds
Follow a trail that leads
To my lovely wounds
----





I do not pity myself anymore
Cannot express my silent anguish
All I wanted to say has changed to stars
An Icarus climbs into my eyes
Carrier of suns I burn between nebulae
What have I done to the theological beasts of mind
Once upon a time the dead adored me
I’d been hoping for doomsday
But the doom of me arrives like a whistling hurricane
I found the courage to look behind me
The corpses of my days
Litter my road and I grieve
Some of them putrefy in Italianate churches
Or rot in lemon groves
Flowering fructifying
Simultaneous in all seasons
----





Memories are all archaic horns
Silenced by the wind

[Ulysse · Rating 5 out of 5]

La limonade d'Apollinaire

Now you’ll sing another serenade
And you’ll finish all the lemonade
And you’ll go upon an escapade
To the wild woods inside your brain
There you’ll slay the dragons that remain
Curled up around your picture frame
And exit through the door where the day ends
Where the smoke lies thick along the fence
Separating dreams from common sense

Now you wake up in some other place
Where you cannot feel or see your face
Grope along the walls with crooked hands
Feed all of the insects in your pants
For there is an undine at the door
She calls you by your name and something more
Letting her in would be a big mistake
She is complication incarnate
A cousin of the lady in the lake

Now her kisses taste like lemonade
Guzzled at some midnight serenade
When the moon’s guitar intoxicates
Every living thing including saints
And now at the far end of the lane
Something in your skin a frozen flame
Feeds upon your life that old charade
And there is neither party nor parade
And there is neither party nor parade
The inside of your heart’s a deep dark shade
Where dragons soon begin to fade and fade
And fade and fade and fade and fade

[Ken]

I've been meaning to get to Apollinaire seems like forever. From the introduction I learned that he never knew his father (or even his father's name, for that matter), was falsely arrested in 1911 for stealing the Mona Lisa, was hit by shrapnel in a WWI trench while reading (what else?) a literary magazine, coined the term "surrealism," and, when he discovered he had the Spanish Influenza that would kill him (our last pandemic), cried out, "I want to live! I have so many things to say!"

That intro alone made the book worth it. And isn't it interesting how the Spanish Influenza of 1918 no longer seems like ancient history and from a less medically-sophisticated world. We can empathize all too well after a year of reading, Netflixing, and going out dressed up as Jesse James.

As for the poems, all over the place. Some you read and get lost in. Say what? Translator Donald Revell is a "gist" translator. That is, he takes the literal gist and then gets poetic with it, aiming for language effects in English that Apollinaire pulled off in French. Alas, though the French is on left sides of each page, my French is too rusty to much judge the result.

Still, more enjoyed than not. And, in some of the longer poems, I found I really liked certain stanzas more than others. Such is the danger of long poems, non?

An example poem:


Clotilde

Anemone and columbine
Where gloom has lain
Opened in gardens
Between love and disdain

Made somber by the sun
Our shadows meet
Until the sun
Is squandered by night

Gods of living water
Let down their hair
And now you must follow
A craving for shadows

[P.E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liqueurs fortes


La puissance d'évocation formidable de Zone et de la Chanson du Mal-Aimé !...


Matching Soundtrack :

Extrait de la Chanson du mal aimé (Musical clip with English subtitles)

Lecture de Zone

Le Pont Mirabeau - lu par Guillaume Apollinaire



Lectures voisines :
Ulysses

[Mariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've lived like a fool and I've wasted my time
You dare not look at your hands I want to weep all the time

Zone

Everyone is old but you. They were here first and are still here in their stale after life. But here on this new street they are young and you are their young. Their bed time piety, your staying up late to old, Jesus is the walking away beauty of parents pedestal. He's the cool older girl with the who you want to be. Pray into everybody's age. Out of their mouths the breath to ascend. Mechanical flight plans court the birds. Time forgets the fish in the lower. Automobile biographies, concrete wombs hide the sky. I wanted to watch the rosebug apart of the rose's heart too. I know the shame and the sick in big picture too big for me. Real life, the kind inside calendars and the history book kind. The face of crocodiles history and the rosebug history. I feel ashamed in both kinds but the second kind is when I feel like real life is real (even if I don't feel real).

My pity aches along the seams of her belly
I humble my mouth to her grotesque laughter
It's always like that. On one shoulder that's not for the devil but just for them.

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

Mirabeau Bridge

Love isn't going to come back. You're not in Australia where the water flows backwards. The river under Mirabeau Bridge is gone, is night. Others will come and go. But not you. You're night inside day. This would be great sung to a Johnny Marr guitar riff. I loved the "and expectation always violent".

I void my heart and head
Into barrels of Hades
I shit the entire sky
I'd rather be happy
I'd rather be a child

Reply of the Zaporogian Cossacks to the Sultan of Constantinople

Horny animal flesh natural. Whore sweat and cheap. He's still waiting for her.
I have read different translations than Donald Revell's. I guess there are debates on best versions blah blah blah. But 'misery doubles destiny' is freaking great. Sometimes someone else would have turned a better phrase but it's all on phases of fire of Apollinaire. I can't read french either. I don't believe in you misery and I will wait in your empty kingdom. I haven't imagined myself in love/or was in love but if so it happened to someone else so I don't remember it. So I don't take the love poems on my shoulder for angels in the same way as I do other Apollinaire poems. I'm like an insect studying humankind for what it is like and this would be a head biting off/cutting off head and then you're an insect from outer space anyway, because it isn't love anymore. It's a wound infestation. So it worked for me like that.

In dust for eternity
My shadow my snake-in-the-grass
In sunlight because you loved it
There I drove you
My shadow spouse remember I love you
Being nothing you belong to me
And my shadow mourns me

LES SEPT EPEES

This was my favorite in wallowing in the was it worth it happiness misery table top spinner.

The ground is poisonous but pretty in autumn

Saffron
Cow eyes slow eyes mute mouth thoughtlessly eating seeing mouth eyes. The Saffrons are underfoot and heart mouth eyes in bellies they eat saffrons. The color of eyes of mothers and daughters loved who were not loved back like the yellow purple irises don't see you back. I still love saffrons. They don't have to love me back. But it's a haunting, that cow grind in what isn't for them.

My barefoot brain inclined for the evening
Like a naked king the walls are waking
Beaten flesh and fresh-cut roses

Palace

Bellies are deaf and dreams blinded by the false sun prophets. King's hardened lap holds a woman's face echoing better dreams of the Orient. 'Palace' made me think of (written later) Zone's cave discoveries of last year last centuries no hope come to life in today's cold unease. Apollinaire's imagery is a brain meat. I love that when your thoughts are the you are what you eat can't save yourself. I'm going back to a lot what you made happen like that paranoia ladder to hell and what is the environment nudging the odds. I'm finding cases for both sides in these poems. The love poems that don't want to remember how to give love's empty arms another name. But the homesickness when your brain is simmering an else. I love Apollinaire's humor. His tongue is in mouth and butt cheeks. It's that curious sense of humor that doesn't chase the ghosts in the eye windows. That's my favorite kind. I'm good with that kind. It leaves a space for the homesickness.

The corpses accosted me
With otherworldly looks
Until their faces
Became undismal
Earth and sky losing
Their fantastic look

The house of the Dead

Apocalyptic memory. If everyone who has died stood up at one time. Shadows themselves, ghost themselves. Present themselves. Whenever a bell rings another corpse gets their earth flight. The living make friends with corpses and memory must remember friendships echo. If they died they only have to wait.

Nothing is so ennobling
As having loved dead men and women
You become so pure that you attain
Universal
Glaciers of memory
You are strong enough to live
You need no one

The dead cannot remember them but the living can remember the dead. What if they weren't afraid of death, if they were afraid, going to these friends. This way the death and the life must be much the same. Loving is a memory. It's sad, though, like scrying for an answer to a headstone or Alzheimer's patients or a child who doesn't know what you're talking about when you tell them about something you shared when they were much younger. If they are beyond (and so above) it all will you care about what you cared about less. Then when they leave you you've only got silent shells. 'Clotilde' says it about a "craving for shadows". I love the risk in following the living brain wants. The sun is ended and your hiding place is an incurable appetite. Maybe the past is a door that only opens some of the time. It's like a magical world in a novel. The way back that worked one time is a stranger now. You could feel like shit about it and it still won't budge. The future is a looming sky painting kind of door. It's just a picture unless you look at it in the right way or right time. If they knew you they would be with you a little. I wish they would.

Monster of my hearing you pule and roar
Thunder is your hair
Your talons sing like birds
Monstrous touch perforates poisons me
My eyes wash far away
The virgin stars are my unproven masters
The beast of stinks has a lily-head
And the loveliest monster
Tasting of laurel must despair

The Betrothal

[Jeroen Vandenbossche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si Pessoa n'avait pas écrit "Bureau de Tabac", le long poème-promenade "Zone" aurait sans doute été mon poème préféré du vingtième siècle. C'est un texte qui me fait rêver à chaque fois et, chose étonnante, à chaque relecture, ce sont d'autres vers qui me frappent.

Voici un extrait que j'ai trouvé particulièrement frappant ce matin:

"Maintenant tu marches dans Paris tout seul parmi la foule
Des troupeaux d'autobus mugissants près de toi roulent
L'angoisse de l'amour te serre le gosier
Comme si tu ne devais jamais plus être aimé
Si tu vivais dans l'ancien temps tu entrerais dans un monastère
Vous avez honte quand vous vous surprenez à dire une prière
Tu te moques de toi et comme le feu de l'Enfer ton rire pétille
Les étincelles de ton rire dorent le fond de ta vie
C'est un tableau pendu dans un sombre musée
Et quelquefois tu vas le regarder de près"

Outre ce magnifique texte, Alcools contient pas mal de poèmes entre-temps devenus classiques (et à juste titre) comme "Le Pont Mirabeau" ("Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure/Les jours s'en vont je demeure") et "La Chanson du Mal-Aimé".

J'ai aussi un petit faible pour le petit poème mélancolique que voici, intitulé "Cors de chasse" et qui illustre toutes les qualités de la poésie d'Appolinaire: le sens musical, la théâtralité et la métaphore surprenante (dans l'avant-dernier vers):

Cors de Chasse

Notre histoire est noble et tragique
Comme le masque d'un tyran
Nul drame hasardeux ou magique
Aucun détail indifférent
Ne rend notre amour pathétique

Et Thomas de Quincey buvant
L'opium poison doux et chaste
À sa pauvre Anne allait rêvant
Passons passons puisque tout passe
Je me retournerai souvent

Les souvenirs sont cors de chasse
Dont meurt le bruit parmi le vent

Si vous êtes à la recherche d'un album de poésie qui peut servir de livre de chevet cet automne, ne cherchez pas plus loin.

Bonne lecture!

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have drunk you and my thirst survives
But now I know the flavor of the cosmos

Consecutive revelations (along with Capital of Pain) despite the torrents of phlegm which incapacitate and often enrage. Yes, Jon, please tell us of your corporeal Occupation. Tell us how you resisted. Forget the trespasses of Cop28 and the morass of our mental Gaza Strips. Wait, what? It is that particular time when my penchant for self-loathing appears rampant. Despite my stress and empathy, it is an existence which is materially comfortable and endlessly lost. There are far worse fates, poetry of this caliber is ballast. Such are the essentials: bring Alcools to the culling.

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you were never quite sure what the word "lyricism" meant, read this book. Apollinaire pays his due to formal constraints such as meter and rhyme, yet never gets bogged down by them. Like wily Hermes with his winged sandals, Apollinaire leaps athletically from image to image as though following the directives of some wild angelic muse, rather than obeying the dictates of ordinary terrestrial logic. The result is an exciting, spontaneous, unpredictable poetry whose substance it would be impossible to render as mere prose. None of it makes logical explainable sense in the way that newspapers and textbooks do, and yet it all *feels* perfectly right, the way that dreams and drunkenness do. Moreover, Apollinaire is such a master of his medium that his heart-wringingly romantic vision is never obscured by the poetic techniques he uses to express it. In other words, his shadow-puppets are so masterfully crafted that their puppet-nature doesn't get in the way of the breathtaking show.

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection, translations seems legit (my French is rather rudimentary so I'm not the best judge), and the notes were fair and balanced. Apollinaire's imagery is always competent, often startling and very clever. I loved the blending of modern/ism with mythology and even Christianity (although my relationship with the religion itself is complex and dysfunctional). At least here in the verse the mix of symbolism, mythologies (classical, Christian, and personal), with wool-gathering and a surprising and even thrilling sense of free-association, creates some extremely satisfying poetic frisson. It's a big collection too, really gives you the opportunity to get to know the poet; gonna have to give it the old 5 stars for sheer competency, consistent beauty, and scope, although I can't really honestly put the whole of it on my favorites shelf, a few poems here and there though did really hit the mark for me.

[Marie-aimée · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mon recueil de poésie préféré. Des couleurs, des rimes, des émotions : de la poésie pure !!! A lire !

"NUIT RHÉNANE

Mon verre est plein d'un vin trembleur comme une flamme
Ecoutez la chanson lente d'un batelier
Qui raconte avoir vu sous la lune sept femmes
Tordre leurs cheveux verts et longs jusqu'à leurs pieds

Debout chantez plus haut en dansant une ronde
Que je n'entende plus le chant du batelier
Et mettez près de moi toutes les filles blondes
Au regard immobile aux nattes repliées

Le Rhin le Rhin est ivre où les vignes se mirent
Tout l'or des nuits tombe en tremblant s'y refléter
La voix chante toujours à en râle-mourir
Ces fées aux cheveux verts qui incantent l'été

Mon verre s'est brisé comme un éclat de rire"

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

And turning my eyes from all the empty future
I see the whole past growing in myself.

Nothing is dead but what has not become:
*
I have had the courage to look backward.
The cadavers of my days
Mark the way I’ve come and I weep for them.
[…]
In the garden of my memory.

[Suzanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

J'ai trouvé ça très nul mais j'ai lu jusqu'au bout par respect

[Zorua64 · Rating 3 out of 5]

enivrant

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
"Si vous avez la chance d'avoir vécu à Paris en tant que jeune homme, alors où que vous alliez pour le reste de votre vie, cela reste avec vous, car Paris est une fête mobile."
Ernest Hemingway

Ce petit volume m’a fait chaud au chœur. Je n’ai pas été à Paris depuis vingt ans mais au moins j’ai pu lire ce petit volume qui a suscité en moi de très beaux souvenirs. J’ai trouvé le tout dernier poème “Vendémiaire” très à propos.

Noble Paris seule raison qui vis encore
Qui fixes notre humeur selon ta destinée
Et toi qui te retires Méditerranée
Partagez-vous nos corps comme on rompt des hosties
Ces très hautes amours et leur danse orpheline
Deviendront ô Paris le vin pur que tu aimes

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take a clean sheet of paper, add some serious heliotropes for uplift, but damp down with the melancholy of almonds and gypsies and sad hotels. Note the pallor roseying, the radiance, the soar that switches to hover with the discreet scent of violets and leather. Some rainy alleyways. Paris. Wit an poignancy and spontaneity with an aftertaste you'd have to be an idiot not to appreciate.

[Myriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnifique hommage au bateau ivre de Rimbaud.

[Parnian · Rating 4 out of 5]

شب‌های راین

لیوانم پر از شرابی است که چون شعله لرزان است
گوش بسپار به آواز آرام قایقران
می‌گوید زیر ماه هفت زن را دیده
گیسوان سبز رنگشان را که تا پاهایشان می‌رسید می‌پیچاندند

برخیز و حلقه بزن برقص و بلندتر بخوان
تا دیگر آواز قایقران را نشنوم
تمام دختران بور با نگاه خسته و گیسوی بسته را نزد من بگذار

راین راینی که بر آن تاک‌ها باز می‌تابند مست است
تمام طلای شب‌ها لرزان می‌افتد تا بر آن انعکاس یابد
صدا هنوز رو به مردگی آواز می‌خواند
این پریزادگانِ سبز گیسوىْ تابستان را افسون می‌کنند

لیوانم چون قهقهه‌ای شکست

[Elora · Rating 1 out of 5]

On a positive note: there were some nice metaphors I guess, but that doesn’t make up for the time I wasted in analyzing that ENTIRE thing.

God I hate French sometimes.

[Justine Buhl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Soit les poèmes nous touchent, soit ils défilent juste lentement sous nos yeux. Désolée, Guillaume.

[Jlawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apollinaire is a fascinating poet because he synthesized or presaged several early 20th-century movements (cubism, futurism, surrealism, modernism) with his own unique vision. A few of these poems are like knotty puzzles that can only be decoded via footnotes, but overall this collection is solid, and the best poems (Zone, Song of the Poorly Loved, Rhenanes, The Bethrothal, The House of the Dead, Vendemiaire) are sublime. This edition's translator (Anne Hyde Greet) offers copious, helpful notes on the poems, but those same notes reveal that she sometimes leaves out portions of lines (or entire lines!), seemingly not for translation clarity, but simply personal preference! That makes me want to try another translation for comparison.

[Mays · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Et tu bois cet alcool brûlant comme ta vie
Ta vie que tu bois comme une eau-de vie"
-Zone


NUIT RHENANE

Mon verre est plein d'un vin trembleur comme une flamme
Écoutez la chanson lente d'un batelier
Qui raconte avoir vu sous la lune sept femmes
Tordre leurs cheveux verts et longs jusqu'à leurs pieds

Debout chantez plus haut en dansant une ronde
Que je n'entende plus le chant du batelier
Et mettez près de moi toutes les filles blondes
Au regard immobile aux nattes repliées

Le Rhin le Rhin est ivre où les vignes se mirent
Tout l'or des nuits tombe en tremblant s'y refléter
La voix chante toujours à en râle-mourir
Ces fées aux cheveux verts qui incantent l'été

Mon verre s'est brisé comme un éclat de rire

[Noureads · Rating 4 out of 5]

« Alcools » est un recueil de poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) paru en 1913. 
Le recueil nous exposr un poète déchiré par ses ruptures amoureuses, déchirement perceptible dans de célèbres pièces telles que « La Chanson du mal-aimé ». 
Avec 'les fleurs du mal' de Baudelaire lu il ya quelques mois, je metais découverte une passion pour les anciens poèmes français, c'est alors qu'avec un immense enchantement que j'aie lu Alcools. J'ai savouré chaque mot de chaque poème y figurant.
Je recommande !

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best French poetry ever.

[Maurine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Et j’espérais la fin du monde, mais la mienne arrive en sifflant comme un ouragan »

[kler · Rating 3 out of 5]

J’ai beaucoup aimé certains mais pas aimé d’autres. Recueil très éclectique qui ne peut pas laisser indifférent-e.

[daphné · Rating 1 out of 5]

à relire car j'ai été forcée par l'éducation nationale (cause : baccalauréat). je n'avais pas été convaincue par les vers de guillaume

[Pauline · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5
les deux étoiles que pour le début qui était beau le reste était long pas beau et chiant :)