la victoire

If you are tired of frightening the sky
Let it keep its hiccups . . .

apollinaire

THE POET ASSASSINATED by Guillaume Apollinaire

In the early days of the year 1911, a young man who was very badly dressed went running up the rue Houdon. His extremely mobile countenance seemed to be filled with joy and anxiety by turns. His eyes devoured all that they saw and when his eyelids snapped shut quickly like jaws, they gulped the universe, which renewed itself incessantly by the mere operation of him who ran. He imagined to the tiniest details the enormous worlds pastured in himself. The clamour and the thunder of Paris burst from afar and about the young man, who stopped, and panted like some criminal who has been too long pursued and is ready to surrender himself. This clamour, the noise indicated clearly that his enemies were about to track him like a thief. His mouth and his gaze expressed the ruse he was employing, and walking slowly now, he took refuge in his memory and went forward, while all the forces of his destiny and of his consciousness retarded the time when the truth should appear of that which is, that which was, and of that which is to be.

(Excerpt from Chapter X: Poetry)

De Chirico: Nostalgia of the Poet and Portrait of Apollinaire

IF GUILLAUME'S DEATH WERE CHRISTIAN by Max Jacob, Translated by Ron Padgett

I was so sure he was going to die that I wept as I did a drawing of his deathbed. I
have to admit that I also had plastic concerns. The next day he was going around
Paris, robust and sublime. One morning at Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre two large
black cats squeezed me between them. A voice said, "Don't be afraid!" Sacré-
Coeur struck me as one of those pink fortresses that decorate the tops of Italian
hills, and he, Guillaume, was like a bird with a man's head, above. Was he dead,
the dear lyric poet? My drawing wasn't finished. I ran into him as he led a group
of his disciples: was it he or Dante? Quite alive, oh for sure! Guillaume wasn't
dead. A very tall and intelligent abbot said to me, "One could not be more alive
than Guillaume Apollinaire is. But finish your drawing of his death and put my
silhouette on the lower left."