Un soir de demi-brume à Londres
Un voyou qui ressemblait à
Mon amour vint à ma rencontre
Et le regard qu’il me jeta
Me fit baisser les yeux de honte
More than a half-century has passed since the manuscript beginning with these lines was fished out of limbo, read and read again, and a dazzled magazine editor called across the room that here, at last, was a first-rate poem. A reader of the [1960s] might find other terms in which to express his approval, though some of Paul Léautaud's are still serviceable: "I read, read twice, three times, was carried away, dazed, delighted, deeply moved. Such melancholy, such evocative tone, such bohemianism, such rangings of the mind, and that faintly gypsy air and the total absence of that abomination of ordinary verse, la rime riche ... "
- Warren Ramsay, "Foreword" to Alcools. Trans. Anne Hyde Greet (1965)
It seems like a curious coincidence that it's now nearly fifty years since I first read the words above. Here's what I wrote about that discovery in a
previous post on this blog:
It's funny when you go snooping around in the ripped old paperbacks in the back of a bookshop (in this case, Jason Books on High Street ...) You see something there which hardly even seems to merit being picked up - a backless wodge of papers with a pasted spine and no title-page - but it turns out to be one of the finds of your life.
I see from the inscription above that it was on the 5th September, 1979 ..., and the book in question was Apollinaire's Alcools - or, rather, a complete dual-text translation of the same, which some iconoclast had ripped apart and then deposited among the other trash to be pulped. A price of 15 cents hardly seemed exorbitant even at the time, especially when I think of the amount of time I've spent leafing through those pages, reading and rereading those amazing poems: "Zone", "Le Pont Mirabeau" - above all, "La Chanson du Mal-Aimé."
There was definitely something magical about the experience. Mind you, given it was missing a title-page, I didn't know whose translation it was at the time. It wasn't till years afterwards that I was able to hunt down that information about Anne Hyde Greet and her mid-sixties translation of the whole of
Alcools (1913), probably Apollinaire's finest book of poems, which she followed up in 1980 with a similarly complete version of his technically adventurous (and hugely influential) book
Calligrammes (1918).
It turns out - from the
Santa Barbara Independent obituary I located online - that she passed away just a couple of years ago, in 2023, at the age of 94. They say of her there:
Anne received her B.A. in Greek from Bryn Mawr, her M.A. in English from Columbia and in French from the University of Colorado, as well as her Ph.D. in French. She held a scholarship in Greek at Oxford, a Fulbright grant at the University of Padua, and studied at the Middleburg School of French in Paris as well as the University for Foreigners at Perugia. At the beginning of her career, she taught classics at the Chapin School in New York and French at the University of Colorado. She finished out her career as a professor of poetry and French at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she was named professor emeritus. The love of languages came from her father and her aunt, both professors of English.
She was soft-spoken, kind, generous and loving, and she will be greatly missed ... From ”Jellyfish” in Anne’s book of poetry Musk Ox:
Is there another such dance as mine?
I journey where the currents take me.
My only harbor, death.
I certainly owe Professor Anne Greet a huge debt of gratitude - though perhaps it ought to be shared with the barbarian who ripped off the front and back cover of the book I still own (though it now has a handsome binding created by the crafty and ingenious Bronwyn Lloyd):
How should one English those five lines above, the opening stanza of Apollinaire's long poem of lost love, "
La Chanson du Mal-Aimé" [The Song of the Ill-loved]? I did make a brief
pass at it in my first novel,
Nights with Giordano Bruno (2000):
One night of spindrift fog in London
a boyo who was the dead spit
of my lost leader Shackleton
came up and took a look at it …
The protagonist of this section of my novel is an Antarctic explorer who is supposed to be collaborating with
Ernest Shackleton on his 1914 "Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition" by laying depots for "the boss" on the opposite side of the frozen continent: hence the shift in gender-match for the "
voyou qui ressemblait à / Mon amour" [bad boy who looked like my love].
I was 16 when I started reading Apollinaire, and perhaps his insouciant, knowing manner - combined with the huge hurts he was forced to withstand throughout his life - made him the ideal poet for an adolescent. The erotic wildness of much of his work didn't hurt, either. He was Polish by birth, and the appalling frankness of his 1907 novel
Les Onze Mille Verges ou les Amours d'un hospodar [translated as "The Debauched Hospodar"] seems to combine reminiscences of his Eastern European heritage with more recent impressions of his adopted homeland France. It's hard to think of a parallel to it outside Sade's
Justine or Georges Bataille's
Story of the Eye (1928). Apollinaire's friend
Picasso allegedly referred to it as his "masterpiece".
It was the poems that appealed to me most, though. My very first book - a tiny chapbook hand-printed on an old press at the University of Edinburgh - was a translation of one of the interpolated songs in "La Chanson du Mal-Aimé,"
Aubade (1987). It's probably mainly of interest now because it contains an uncollected drawing by novelist and children's book illustrator
Mark Haddon, author of
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003):
Aubade
C'est le printemps viens-t'en Pâquette
Te promener au bois joli
Les poules dans la cour caquètent
L'aube au ciel fait de roses plis
L'amour chemine à ta conquête
Mars et Vénus sont revenus
Ils s'embrassent à bouches folles
Devant des sites ingénus
Où sous les roses qui feuillolent
De beaux dieux roses dansent nus
Viens ma tendresse est la régente
De la floraison qui paraît
La nature est belle et touchante
Pan sifflote dans la forêt
Les grenouilles humides chantent
- Guillaume Apollinaire (1913)
•
It’s Spring let’s walk out Alison
the woods are lovely though those chooks
are cackling in the yard
the sun
is not ashamed of sex
the folded sheets are red with dawn
Mars and Venus have returned
They’re kissing with open mouths
in front of a still-virgin bed
of roses
where a rout
of nymphs and satyrs dances nude
Come my love-sickness inspires
the flowers that spring at every turn
the horned god pipes with
antic fire
the bullfrogs sing in tune
the force of nature is desire
- trans.
Jack Ross (12/86)
Guillaume Apollinaire: Aubade. Trans. Jack Ross (1987)
Needless to say, I was in love at the time - with an American exchange student called Alison. Hence the shift from Apollinaire's endearingly named (and possibly allegorical) object of affection "Pâquette" to that much-easier-to-rhyme-with-in-English other name.
I feel, in a sense, as if Apollinaire has been pursuing, or perhaps I should say
prompting me ever since. Unlike his predecessor
Rimbaud, his poems seem - at least on the surface - approachable and easy to follow. His vocabulary is anything but recondite, and his subject matter clearly that of a turn-of-the-century modernist. In "
Zone" (1913), for instance, he lambasts "
ce monde ancien" [this old world] in favour of "
les livraisons à 25 centimes pleines d’aventures policières" [25-cent pulp paperbacks full of crime stories].
It's probably too long to quote here in full, but here are the opening lines:
À la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien
Bergère ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matin
Tu en as assez de vivre dans l’antiquité grecque et romaine
Ici même les automobiles ont l’air d’être anciennes
La religion seule est restée toute neuve la religion
Est restée simple comme les hangars de Port-Aviation
Seul en Europe tu n’es pas antique ô Christianisme
L’Européen le plus moderne c’est vous Pape Pie X
Et toi que les fenêtres observent la honte te retient
D’entrer dans une église et de t’y confesser ce matin
Tu lis les prospectus les catalogues les affiches qui chantent tout haut
Voilà la poésie ce matin et pour la prose il y a les journaux
Il y a les livraisons à 25 centimes pleines d’aventures policières
Portraits des grands hommes et mille titres divers ...
And here's an extract from
Donald Revell's 1995 translation of the whole poem:
At last you’re tired of this elderly world
Shepherdess O Eiffel Tower this morning the bridges are bleating
You’re fed up living with antiquity
Even the automobiles are antiques
Religion alone remains entirely new religion
Remains as simple as an airport hangar
In all Europe only you O Christianism are not old
The most modern European Pope Pius X it’s you
The windows watch and shame has sealed
The confessionals against you this morning
Flyers catalogs hoardings sing aloud
Here’s poetry this morning and for prose you’re reading the tabloids
Disposable paperbacks filled with crimes and police
Biographies of great men a thousand various titles
•
Revell's version is literal enough, but he can't help smoothing out Apollinaire's staccato French into rather less aggressive, more grammatical English. I think it gives you the general idea, though: automobiles, newspapers, the Eiffel Tower - everything throughly
modern, in other words.
Where Apollinaire really soars, though, is as a love poet. If you're trying to find the right words to send to your beloved - that necessary fusion of the sentimental and the sensual - his work is unparalled in its power and range. Take this wonderfully intricate antiphonal love poem, for instance:
Il y a
Il y a des petits ponts épatants
Il y a mon cœur qui bat pour toi
Il y a une femme triste sur la route
Il y a un beau petit cottage dans un jardin
Il y a six soldats qui s’amusent comme des fous
Il y a mes yeux qui cherchent ton image
Il y a un petit bois charmant sur la colline
Et un vieux territorial pisse quand nous passons
Il y a un poète qui rêve au ptit Lou
Il y a un ptit Lou exquis dans ce grand Paris
Il y a une batterie dans une forêt
Il y a un berger qui paît ses moutons
Il y a ma vie qui t’appartient
Il y a mon porte-plume réservoir qui court, qui court
Il y a un rideau de peupliers délicat, délicat
Il y a toute ma vie passée qui est bien passée
Il y a des rues étroites à Menton où nous nous sommes aimés
Il y a une petite fille de Sospel qui fouette ses camarades
Il y a mon fouet de conducteur dans mon sac à avoine
Il y a des wagons belges sur la voie
Il y a mon amour
Il y a toute la vie
Je t’adore
- Guillaume Apollinaire (5 avril 1915)
•
Il y a des petits ponts épatants
I There’s a big steel harbour bridge
Il y a mon coeur qui bat pour toi
crush There’s my heart beating for you
Il y a une femme triste sur la route
you There’s a woman trundling across the road
Il y a un beau petit cottage dans un jardin
against There’s a fibrolite bach in a garden
Il y a six soldats qui s’amusent comme des fous
my There’s six skateboarders crapping out like loons
Il y a mes yeux qui cherchent ton image
breast There’s my eyes searching for you
like There’s a stand of eucalyptus trees on Forrest Hill
(& an old campaigner who pisses as we pass)
the There’s a poet dreaming about his Chantal
There’s a beautiful Chantal in that big Auckland
dove There’s a pill-box on a cliff-top
There’s a farmer trucking his sheep
a There’s my life which belongs to you
There’s my black ballpoint scribbling scribbling
little There’s a screen of poplars intricate intricate
There’s my old life which is definitely over
girl There’s narrow streets near K Rd where we’ve loved each other
There’s a chick in Freemans Bay who drives her friends INSANE
strangles There’s my driver’s licence in my wristbag
There’s Mercs and Beamers on the road
without
There’s love
noticing There’s life
I adore you
- trans.
Jack Ross (10/3/1999)
I may have taken one or two liberties with the translation - inserting the bit about the little girl from a contiguous piece of writing, for instance, as well as updating a few of the references - but I still feel that my version is reasonably faithful to the spirit of Apollinaire's original.
You'll note that the poem above is addressed to "Lou" -
Louise de Coligny-Châtillon - a pioneer aviator, and the subject of some of Apollinaire's most passionate verse, mostly sent home in letters from the trenches, where he was serving in the French artillery.
Sad to say, he was also corresponding, at the same time, equally passionately, with a young schoolteacher named
Madeleine Pagès. Here's a
characteristic sample:
As for you, I adore you. I take you naked as a pearl and devour you with kisses all over from your feet to your head, so swoon from love, my darling love, I eat your mouth and your fine breasts which belong to me and which swollen with voluptuousness thrill me with endless delight.
Not only that, but sometimes virtually the same poem was sent to both women (with a few necessary adjustments to names).
It was difficult to find time and space to write at the front, and Apollinaire accordingly evolved a new approach to poetry. His "
Calligrammes" - concrete poems composed in various shapes and sizes - had a revolutionary effect on post-war writing, whether it be Dadaist, Futurist, or Surrealist. Here's one striking example, sent to Lou in 1915:
Reconnais-toi Recognise yourself
cette adorable personne c’est toi this adorable person is you
sous le grand chapeau caroline under the big Carolina hat
oeil eye
nez nose
la bouche mouth
voici l’ovale de la figure here is the oval of your face
ton cou your neck
et puis and then
un peu plus bas a bit lower down
c’est ton coeur qui bat there’s your beating heart
ni nor
ci confus should we mix with it
l’impure the impure
par le mirage through the mirage
de ton buste adoré of your loved breast
un comma a comma
à travers un nuage through a cloud
- Guillaume Apollinaire (9 février 1915)
- trans.
Jack Ross (2012)
In 1916 Apollinaire requested a transfer to the infantry, in quest (he claimed) of more action. He got his wish.
In 1916 "he received a serious shrapnel wound to the temple, from which he would never fully recover." It's no accident that the last portraits his artist friends made of him - by Cocteau (above), and Picasso (below) - all show a bandage wrapped around his head.
It's hard, in retrospect, not to see something prophetic in some of the verses he wrote just before the outbreak of war. These from the longer poem "L'assassin," for instance:
from L'assassin
Je suis au bord de l’océan sur une plage
Fin d’été : je vois fuir les oiseaux de passage.
Les flots en s’en allant ont laissé des lingots :
Les méduses d’argent. Il passe des cargos
Sur l’horizon lointain et je cherche ces rimes
Tandis que le vent meurt dans le pins maritimes.
Je pense à Villequier « arbres profonds et verts »
La Seine non pareille aux spectacles divers
L’Eglise des tombeaux et l’hôtel des pilotes
Où flotte le parfum des brunes matelotes.
Les noirceurs de mon âme ont bien plus de saveur.
Et le soleil décline avec un air rêveur
Une vague meurtrie a pâli sur le sable
Ainsi mon sang se brise en mon cœur misérable
Y déposant auprès des souvenirs noyés
L’échouage vivant de mes amours choyés.
L’océan a jeté son manteau bleu de roi
Il est sauvage et nu maintenant dans l’effroi
De ce qui vit. Mais lui défie à la tempête
Qui chante et chante et chante ainsi qu’un grande poète.
- Guillaume Apollinaire (23 juillet 1913)
•
Sea’s edge
summer’s end
gulls fly
waves leave behind
glass blobs
of jellyfish
ships pass
on the horizon
wind dies in the pines
sun sinks
behind the islands
foam
bruises the sand
the sea
darkens to purple
you fool
naked alone
shout your fear into the storm
- trans.
Jack Ross (21/6-12/8/15)
Severely weakened by his wounds, Apollinaire fell victim to the great
Spanish 'flu epidemic at the end of the war:
As he lay dying in his hospital bed, he could hear the crowds outside chanting: "À bas Guillaume" - Down with Guillaume. They meant Kaiser Wilhelm, who was on the point of abdicating just before the German surrender, but to the poet himself, it seemed the final irony. It was 9 November, 1918. He died just two days before the Armistice was signed.
As I mentioned above, Apollinaire was a pioneer in his association with painters. His interest in modern art, chronicled in endless columns and newspaper articles, included virtually all the major modernists, who saw him as perhaps the only writer who understood what they were getting at.
And, of course, in the end, he transformed himself into a visual artist in his own right, in the half-drawn, half-written calligrammes, collected in book-form in 1918.
In fact, it wasn't really until the poets of the
New York School - John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch - began to emerge in the 1950s that so close a relationship between art and writing developed again. And there's little doubt that their model in this (as in so many other things) was Apollinaire.
Let's go back in time a little, then, to one of the best-known (and most frequently translated) poems from his first book,
Alcools:
Le Pont Mirabeau
- Guillaume Apollinaire (1912)
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
- Le Pont Mirabeau
- trans. Roger Shattuck (1948)
Under the pont Mirabeau flows the Seine
Our loves flow too
Must it recall them so
Joy came to us always after pain
May night come and the hours ring
The days go by and I remain
Facing each other hand in hand
Thus we will stand
While under our arms' bridge
Our longing looks pass in a weary band
May night come and the hours ring
The days go by and I remain
Love leaves us like this flowing stream
Love flows away
How slow life is and mild
And oh how hope can suddenly run wild
May night come and the hours ring
The days go by and I remain
May the long days and the weeks go by
Neither the past
Nor former loves return
Under the pont Mirabeau flows the Seine
May night come and the hours ring
The days go by and I remain
- The Pont Mirabeau
- trans. Oliver Bernard (1965)
Under the Pont Mirabeau the Seine
Flows with our loves
Must I recall again?
Joy always used to follow after pain
Let the night come: strike the hour
The days go past while I stand here
Hands holding hands let us stay face to face
While under this
Bridge our arms make slow race
Long looks in a tired wave at a wave's pace
Let the night come: strike the hour
The days go past while I stand here
Love runs away like running water flows
Love flows away
But oh how slow life goes
How violent hope is nobody knows
Let the night come: strike the hour
The days go past while I stand here
The days pass and the weeks pass but in vain
Neither time past
Nor love comes back again
Under the Pont Mirabeau flows the Seine
Let the night come: strike the hour
The days go past while I stand here
•
Guillaume Apollinaire: Alcools. Trans. Anne Hyde Greet (1965)
- Mirabeau Bridge
- trans. Anne Hyde Greet (1965)
Past Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine
And our love
Must I remember
Joy followed always after pain
Let night come sound the hour
Time draws in I remain
Hand in hand let us stay face to face
While past the
Bridge of our embrace
Flows one long look's weary wave
Let night come sound the hour
Time draws in I remain
Love creeps by like the flowing tide
Love slips by
How slow is life
And expectation how violent
Let night come sound the hour
Time draws in I remain
Days creep by and the weeks creep by
Neither past
Time nor loves return
Past Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine
Let night come sound the hour
Time draws in I remain
- Mirabeau Bridge
- trans. Richard Wilbur (1987)
Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine
Must I recall
Our loves recall how then
After each sorrow joy came back again
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay
Hands joined and face to face let's stay just so
While underneath
The bridge of our arms shall go
Weary of endless looks the river's flow
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay
All love goes by as water to the sea
All love goes by
How slow life seems to me
How violent the hope of love can be
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay
The days the weeks pass by beyond our ken
Neither time past
Nor love comes back again
Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay
- Mirabeau Bridge
- trans. James Kirkup (1989)
(tanka sequence with haiku refrain)
The Seine keeps flowing
under the Mirabeau Bridge -
and our loves also -
I need to remember that
joy always follows sorrow.
And when night's bell tolls
the days take their departure -
I alone remain
Holding hand in hand,
let us sit face to face while
underneath the bridge
of our arms pass eternal
gazings on such weary waves.
And when night's bell tolls
the days take their departuure -
I alone remain
Love is flowing fast
away, just as these flowing
waters flow away
slow as life itself flows by -
how violent Hope becomes.
And when the night's bell tolls
the days take their departure -
I alone remain
The days passing by,
the weeks passing by - and yet
neither our past time
nor our loves return - under
Mirabeau Bridee flows the Seine -
And when night's bell tolls
the days take their departure -
I alone remain
•
Guillaume Apollinaire: Alcools. Trans. Donald Revell (1995)
- Mirabeau Bridge
- trans. Donald Revell (1995)
Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away
And lovers
Must I be reminded
Joy came always after pain
The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I
We’re face to face and hand in hand
While under the bridges
Of embrace expire
Eternal tired tidal eyes
The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I
Love elapses like the river
Love goes by
Poor life is indolent
And expectation always violent
The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I
The days and equally the weeks elapse
The past remains the past
Love remains lost
Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away
The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I
- Le pont Mirabeau
- trans. Charles Bernstein (2013)
Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine
And our love
Comes back to memory again
Where always joy came after pain
Comes night, the hours sound
Days go round in which to drown
Hand in hand, face to face
While underneath
The bridge of our embrace
Eternal gazes, weary waves
Comes night, the hours sound
Days go round in which to drown
Love goes away like the water flows
Love goes away
Like life is slow
And like Hopefulness is violent
Comes night, the hours sound
Days go round in which to drown
Pass the days, pass the nights
Neither time past
Nor love comes back
Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine
Comes night, the hours sound
Days go round in which to drown
A little bit of online exploration will provide numerous other versions, many of them reprinted on the page dedicated to the subject on the
UPenn website. The translators in question include
Peter Dean, the indefatigable
A. S. Kline,
Philip Nikolayev, and
William A. Sigler.
However, I suspect that a sample set of seven is quite enough to be going along with.
At first sight, the poem looks easy enough to translate. The French is not difficult - the sentence structures straightforward. But that refrain has a nursery rhyme insistence about it which turns out to be quite difficult to reproduce in English:
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
[
Comes the night - or perhaps:
let the night come -
sounds the hour /
The days go by I remain - or:
I'm stuck here].
This is what our various poets do with it:
Roger Shattuck:
May night come and the hours ring
The days go by and I remain
Oliver Bernard:
Let the night come: strike the hour
The days go past while I stand here
Anne Hyde Greet:
Let night come sound the hour
Time draws in I remain
Richard Wilbur:
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay
James Kirkup:
And when night's bell tolls
the days take their departure -
I alone remain
Donald Revell:
The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I
Charles Bernstein:
Comes night, the hours sound
Days go round in which to drown
Each of them struggles to come up with something as pithy as the original. I guess Anne Hyde Greet's still sounds best to me. It's accurate, as well as giving something of the feeling of the original. James Kirkup's haiku version is also strangely effective.
Perhaps the most original is Charles Bernstein's. I'm not quite sure I'm on board with that final phrase "in which to drown," but the rest is bang on. And of course I can see his point: the water is moving but not the poet. He's "drowning" in the tedious passage of time.
To be honest, I'm not sure that any of them give me quite the same feeling as Apollinaire's poem, so obviously reminiscent of the classic French folksong "
Sur le pont d'Avignon / On y danse tous en rond." The equally antique rhyme "
London Bridge is Falling Down" would probably be the closest thing to that in English, but it doesn't have quite the same air of lost felicity about it.
All in all, I'd say that virtually all of our poets - both the literalists (Oliver Bernard, Anne Greet) and the experimentalists (Charles Bernstein, James Kirkup) - have done a good job, in their distinct but various manners. They do tend to draw you back to the original, though.
Whether that's what poetic translation is
meant to do is beside the point. Apollinaire seems to me to be one of the poets whose effects can genuinely cross the language barrier. You can read him in any mood - or idiom - and still get a pretty clear idea of what he's on about. I see that as a strength in him. It's certainly an advantage. He's a poet, I'd say, whom you either fall in love with or determine to avoid completely.
There's really no middle ground. I guess it's fairly obvious which school of thought
I belong to.
Books I own are marked in bold:
Poetry:
- Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d'Orphée (1911)
- Included in: Alcools: suivi de Le Béstiaire illustré par Raoul Dufy et suivi de Vitam impendere amori. 1920. Collection Poésie. Paris: Gallimard, 1972.
- Alcools (1913)
- Included in: Alcools: suivi de Le Béstiaire illustré par Raoul Dufy et suivi de Vitam impendere amori. 1920. Collection Poésie. Paris: Gallimard, 1972.
- Alcools: Poems 1898–1913. Trans. Walter Meredith. New York: Doubleday, 1964.
- Alcools. 1913. Trans. Anne Hyde Greet. Foreword by Warren Ramsey. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965.
- Alcools: Poems. Trans. Donald Revell. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1995.
- Vitam impendere amori (1917)
- Included in: Alcools: suivi de Le Béstiaire illustré par Raoul Dufy et suivi de Vitam impendere amori. 1920. Collection Poésie. Paris: Gallimard, 1972.
- Calligrammes, poèmes de la paix et de la guerre 1913–1916 (1918)
- Calligrammes: Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre (1913-1916). 1918. Préface de Michel Butor. 1966. Collection Poésie. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.
- Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War (1913-1916): A Bilingual Edition. 1918. Introduction by S. I. Lockerbie. Trans. Anne Hyde Greet. 1980. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.
- Calligrammaire, les calligrammes de Guillaume Apollinaire / Kalligrammatika, Guillaume Apollinaire kalligrammái [Bilingual French–Hungarian edition] (2025)
- Il y a ... (1925)
- Included in: Poèmes à Lou, Précédé de Il y a. Préface de Michel Décaudin. 1969. Collection Poésie. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.
- Julie ou la rose (1927)
- Ombre de mon amour [Poems for Louise de Coligny-Châtillon] (1947)
- Poèmes secrets à Madeleine (1949)
- Le Guetteur mélancolique (1952)
- Included in: Le Guetteur mélancolique, suivi de Poèmes retrouvés. 1952 & 1956. Notice de Michel Décaudin. 1970. Collection Poésie. Paris: Gallimard, 1989.
- Poèmes à Lou (1955)
- Included in: Poèmes à Lou, Précédé de Il y a. Préface de Michel Décaudin. 1969. Collection Poésie. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.
- Poèmes retrouvés (1956)
- Included in: Le Guetteur mélancolique, suivi de Poèmes retrouvés. 1952 & 1956. Notice de Michel Décaudin. 1970. Collection Poésie. Paris: Gallimard, 1989.
- Soldes (1985)
- Et moi aussi je suis peintre [Album of drawings for Calligrammes] (2006)
Novels:
- Mirely ou le Petit Trou pas cher [unpublished] (1900)
- Que faire ? (1900)
- Les Onze Mille Verges ou les Amours d'un hospodar (1907)
- Les onze mille verges, ou les amours d’un hospodar. Préface de Michel Décaudin. Paris: Editions J’ai lu, 1989.
- Included in: Debauched Hospodar and Memoirs of a Young Rakehell. Los Angeles, California: Holloway House, 1967.
- Included in: Flesh Unlimited: Three Erotic / Surrealist Novellas, by Guillaume Apollinaire & Louis Aragon. Trans. Alexis Lykiard. Creation Classics. London: Creation Books, 2000.
- L'enchanteur pourrissant (1909)
- Les Exploits d'un jeune Don Juan (1911)
- Les exploits d’un jeune Don Juan. Préface de Michel Décaudin. Paris: Editions J’ai lu, 1978.
- Included in: Classiques de la littérature amoureuse. [Crébillon fils: Le Sopha; John Cleland: Fanny Hill; Vivant Denon: Point de lendemain; Sade: Les Infortunes de la vertu; Pierre Louÿs: La Femme et le Pantin; Octave Mirbeau: Le Journal d’une femme de chambre; Hugues Rebell: Les Nuits chaudes du Cap français; Guillaume Apollinaire: Les Exploits d’un jeune Don Juan]. Ed. Claude Aziza. Paris: Omnibus, 1996.
- Included in: Debauched Hospodar and Memoirs of a Young Rakehell. Los Angeles, California: Holloway House, 1967.
- Included in: Flesh Unlimited: Three Erotic / Surrealist Novellas, by Guillaume Apollinaire & Louis Aragon. Trans. Alexis Lykiard. Creation Classics. London: Creation Books, 2000.
- La Rome des Borgia (1914)
- La Fin de Babylone (1914)
- Les Trois Don Juan (1915)
- La Femme assise (1920)
Short story collections:
- L'Hérèsiarque et Cie (1910)
- The Heresiarch and Co. [aka "The Wandering Jew and Other Stories" (1967)]. Trans. Rémy Inglis Hall (1965)
- Le Poète assassiné (1916)
- The Poet Assassinated. Trans. Matthew Josephson (1923)
- The Poet Assassinated and Other Stories. 1916. Trans. Ron Padgett. 1984. Grafton Books. London: Collins Publishing Group, 1988.
- Les Épingles (1928)
Plays:
- Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917)
- [with André Billy] La Bréhatine [screenplay] (1917)
- Couleurs du temps (1918)
- Casanova (1952)
Non-fiction:
- Le Théâtre italien (1910)
- La Vie anecdotique : Chroniques dans Le Mercure de France (1911–1918)
- Pages d'histoire : Chronique des grands siècles de France (1912)
- Les Peintres Cubistes : Méditations Esthétiques (1913)
- La Peinture moderne (1913)
- L'Antitradition futuriste, manifeste synthèse (1913)
- Case d'Armons (1915)
- L'esprit nouveau et les poètes (1918)
- Le Flâneur des Deux Rives (1918)
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade:
- Oeuvres poétiques. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (1956)
- Oeuvres poétiques. Ed. Marcel Adéma & Michel Décaudin. Préface d’André Billy. 1956. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 121. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1966.
- Oeuvres poétiques. Ed. Marcel Adéma & Michel Décaudin. Préface d'André Billy. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 121. 1956. Paris: Gallimard, 1990.
- Le Bestiaire
- Alcools
- Vitam impendere amori
- Calligrammes
- Il y a
- Poèmes à Lou
- Le Guetteur mélancolique
- Poèmes à Madeleine
- Poèmes à la marraine
- Poèmes retrouvés
- Poèmes épistolaires
- Poèmes inédits
Théâtre
- Les Mamelles de Tirésias
- Couleur du temps
- Casanova
- Oeuvres en prose complètes I. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (1977)
- Oeuvres en prose complètes I. Ed. Michel Décaudin. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 267. 1977. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.
Contes et récits
- L'Enchanteur pourrissant
- L'Hérésiarque et Cie
- Le Poète assassiné
- Contes écartés du «Poète assassiné»
- La Femme assise
- Contes retrouvés
- La Fin de Babylone
- Les Trois Don Juan
- La Femme blanche des Hohenzollern
Théâtre
- La Température
- Le marchand d'anchois
- Jean-Jacques
- La colombelle
- Fragments divers
Cinéma
- La Bréhatine
- C'est un oiseau qui vient de France
- Oeuvres en prose complètes II. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (1991)
- Oeuvres en prose complètes II. Ed. Pierre Caizergues & Michel Décaudin. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 382. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.
Écrits sur l'art
- Méditations esthétiques
- Les Peintres cubistes
- Fragonard et l'Amérique
- Chroniques et paroles sur l'art
Critique littéraire
- La Phalange nouvelle
- Les Poèmes de l'année
- Les Poètes d'aujourd'hui
- [Sur la littérature féminine]
- L'Antitradition futuriste
- L'Esprit nouveau et les Poètes
Chroniques et articles
- Théories et polémiques
- Portraits et silhouettes
- Critique
- Variétés
Échos sur les lettres et les arts
- Oeuvres en prose complètes III. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (1993)
- Oeuvres en prose complètes III. Ed. Pierre Caizergues & Michel Décaudin. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 399. Paris: Gallimard, 1993.
- Le Flâneur des deux rives
- La Vie anecdotique
- Les Diables amoureux
Appendices
- Essai sur la littérature sotadique au XIXᵉ siècle
- L'Arétin et son temps
- [Les Fleurs du Mal]
- Lettre à Louis Chadourne
Textes érotiques
- Les Onze Mille Verges
- Les Exploits d'un jeune don Juan
Compléments : théâtre
- Un buveau d'absinthe qui a lu Victor Hugo
- À la cloche de bois. Pièce en un acte
- Revue de l'année : la Vérité sur la vie et le théâtre
Compléments : contes
- [Projet de contes]
- Un vol à la cour de Prusse
- Le Roi Lune
- Héloïse ou Dieu même
Chroniques et échos
Letters:
- Lettres à Lou. Ed. Michel Décaudin (1969).
- Lettres à Lou. Ed. Michel Décaudin. 1969. Collection L’Imaginaire. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1990.
- Lettres à Madeleine : Tendre comme le souvenir. 1952. Ed. Laurence Campa (2005)
- Letters to Madeleine: Tender as Memory. Ed. Laurence Campa. 2005. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. The French List. London: Seagull Books, 2010.
Translations:
- Selected Writings. Trans. Roger Shattuck. New York: New Directions Press, 1948.
- Selected Poems. Trans. Oliver Bernard (1965)
- Selected Poems. Trans. Oliver Bernard. Penguin Modern European Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
- Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews, 1902–1918. Ed. LeRoy C. Breunig. Trans. Susan Suleiman. New York: The Viking Press, 1972.
- Zone. Trans. Samuel Beckett. Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1972.
- The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems. Trans. Donald Revell. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004.
- The Little Auto. Trans. Beverley Bie Brahic. UK: CB editions, 2012.
- Zone: Selected Poems. Trans. Ron Padgett. New York: New York Review Books, 2015.
- Selected Poems. Trans. Martin Sorrell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Secondary:
- Steegmuller, Francis. Apollinaire: Poet among the Painters. 1963. Penguin Literary Biographies. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
- C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933)
- Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)
- Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)
- Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
- Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)
- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
- Paul Celan (1920-1970)
- Eugenio Montale (1896-1981)
- Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968)
- Federico García Lorca (1898-1936)
- Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)
- Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)
![Louise de Coligny-Châtillon ["Lou"]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lou_Louise_de_Coligny_Chatillon.jpg){kind=link}
