Letters to Madeleine: Tender as Memory

by Guillaume Apollinaire, Laurence Campa (Editor), Donald Nicholson-Smith (Translator)

Letters to Madeleine collects for the first time in English the remarkable letters and poems sent by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire to his fiancée Madeleine Pagès during World War I. Stationed in the trenches of Champagne, this man of letters who had been at the forefront of the surrealist movement was transformed overnight into an artilleryman. 

The fascinating correspondence bears witness to the typical yet deeply idiosyncratic experience of Apollinaire at an especially crucial moment of his existence as man and artist. Apollinaire shares with Madeleine his thoughts on art and literature from Racine to Tolstoy, and at the same time he uniquely documents the daily life of a soldier at the front during the Great War. As well, the letters reveal intimate and little-known aspects of Apollinaire’s personality—from his childhood and tastes to his grandest aesthetic ideas.

Writing about the letters in his biography of Apollinaire, Francis Steegmuller noted, “Nowhere, is there a more ‘living picture’ of a poet in a war . . . or, outside of Stendhal, a more vivid picture of war itself.” Letters to Madeleine is a moving portrait of a poet facing one of humanity’s starkest realities, and it will be of interest to not only fans of Apollinaire but those interested in personal accounts of World War I as well.

Genres: Poetry, Literature, France, Nonfiction

615 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

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

[mpdg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a lot to say about this.
First of all, I hated him. I know I shouldn’t think about it in modern terms, it was the 1910s after all, but still... jeez, what a guy. First of all - I didn’t buy it. Maybe he really did love her that much, but I suspect the writing and receiving of letters were more of a game/entertainment for a bored and horny soldier slash poet. Plus she sends him all kinds of expensive shit to which he says “thank you for your gifts, here’s an old bullet I found on a field, hope you like it”. Second of all - ouch that was toxic. I’m not even sure I want to unpack all of this, but that guy is really creepy at times. Maybe in French it doesn’t sound that harsh, but calling her a slave multiple times in one letter was surely cringe-worthy. I’m also laughing a bit because all those loving and erotic long letters stopped once he met her again (I know, war, but let’s face it, he clearly changed his attitude). Also, he just stopped writing, married another woman (what the fuck, their love supposed to be eternal?) and died of influenza (not his fault but what a rollercoaster of an ending). I also cannot stop thinking about how accurately the whole story translates to modern terms - he’s asking for her nudes photos all the time, sexts her and asks to sext him back, because war, you know, he’s very bored, and finally ghosts her, big time. And finally - he’s a terrible poet. Lemme treat you to this magnificent line:

Your breasts are the only bullets I love*

Call me uncultured, but I refuse to find something even remotely romantic about his letters. The story, however, is beautiful, and some of the letters are too. I would love to read her letters to paint the whole picture, because I am pretty certain she must have been like ew, what? most of the time.

(*loosely translated from Polish to English by me)

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real pleasure to read the terribly personal letters of a passionate poet. A quixotic man, hopefully he would consent to their being read, if only to inspire us all with his ideals of perfect love.
His poetry and sentiments stand alone, testaments to these ideals. Every girl should hope for a man as persistent in his attention and consumed in his thoughts; Apollinaire has perhaps transcended the state of being "in love" by his loving. And yet his letters are marked with demands and assumptions so rash as to give any girl a fright, despite their warmth and flattery. Madeleine surely complains of it, though we never see her words, only her affect on him, which is a pleasurable way of imagining for the reader. Though his conception of women's/couples' behaviour is amusingly-dated, his projection of eternal love is made pristine by his attempt to unify two minds, and to be sure, he does elicit her opinion/input/participation. So perhaps I'm forgetting we've all a right to be carried away in love -- the man was a poet, the man was at war. All good reasons to take a pen and paint castles in the sky.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t often read something that brings so much history and ambience to its poetry. Set inside the trenches of France in WWI, this is an epic love story told in the letters of Appollinaire. And who could better set the boundaries of romance than a man once arrested for the theft of the Mona Lisa, who led a band of artists that included Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Andre Briton and Erik Satie, who coined the word ‘surrealism’, and called for the Louvre to be burnt down! This is some of the most wonderful, fulfilling reading one can do, satisfying on so many levels. The soul becomes wiser as we carry our shovels along side the great poet, and dump the mud from our boot; a gas mask is on our belt and the love of a woman, met briefly on a train a short while ago, is in these bones that fight for France!

[TinHouseBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heather Hartley (Paris Editor): “Write me at length, my charming little vision,” wrote French poet Guillaume Apollinaire to his bien-aimée, Madeleine Pagès. “Little fairy, we had the same notion . . . neither of us must let too much time pass before sending news.” It was the First World War and Apollinaire was writing from the trenches of the Western Front about longing, artillery and an ardent request for Madeleine’s ring size. Some of his letters were written on birch bark and others included sketches or drawings. Tender, darling and daring, these Letters to Madeleine make the end of summer last a little bit longer.

[Derek Fenner · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was great to see many of GA's poems in the original epistolary context. And the letters are really full of love and intent on exposing the language of a poet in war.