Calligramme de guillaume apollinaire poems

The Stabbed [bleeding] Dove (top image) -- with spread wings
and the Fountain [jet of water] (bottom image), with the water coming out of a vase (and which echos the wings of the dove).

If this poem was rearranged in a conventional fashion, you would get a more conventional poem, note particularly the end syllables that rhyme.

Douces figures poignardées chères lèvres fleuries
Mya Mareye
Yette et Lorie
Annie et toi Marie
Où êtes-vous ô jeunes filles
Mais près d'un jet d'eau qui pleure et qui prie
Cette colombe s'extasie

Tous les souvenirs de naguère
O mes amis partis en guerre
Jaillissent vers le firmament
Et vos regards en l'eau dormant
Meurent mélancoliquement
Où sont-ils Braque et Max Jacob
Derain aux yeux gris comme l'aube
Où sont Raynal Billy Dalize
Dont les noms se mélancolisent
Comme des pas dans une église
Où est Cremnitz qui s'engagea
Peut-être sont-ils morts déjà
De souvenirs mon âme est pleine
Le jet d'eau pleure sur ma peine.
Ceux qui sont partis à la guerre
au Nord se battent maintenant
Le soir tombe Ô sanglante mer
Jardins où saignent abondamment
le laurier rose fleur guerrière.

The top poem begins "gentle faces stabbed dear flowered lips" & gives the names, then goes on:
Where are you O young girls
But near a fountain (jet of water) that cries and that prays (pleure/prie)
This dove is in ecstasy

The lower poem begins (word for word)--
All the memories of longing / of my friends gone to war
at the bottom: Those who left for the war in the North are fighting now
Night falls O! blood-dreched sea
Gardens where bled in abandon
the laurel rose flower of war

--Charles Bernstein 1/

Reconnais-toi 

Cette adorable personne c&#;est toi
Sous le grand chapeau canotier
Oeil 

Nez
La bouche
Voici l&#;ovale de ta figure
Ton cou exquis
Voici enfin l&#;imparfaite image de ton buste adoré
vu comme à travers un nuage 

Un peu plus bas c&#;est ton coeur qui bat

The beautiful thing about visual poetry, which you are looking at, is that you don’t have to know the language (in this case French) to enjoy it. In front of you is a representation of an elegant female wearing a wide brimmed hat. And that is what the poem is about! However, if you do speak French you should try to read it, although it can be hard to read Guillaume Apollinaire’s handwriting, especially in the oval of the woman’s face.

The present work is part of the calligrammes subtitled Poems of War and Peace (—16), a collection of poems where words are spatially arranged to create an image. The technique is an invention of Surrealism, an art historical movement invented by Guillaume Apollinaire and Andre Breton. Eventually the group grew to include Paul Éluard, Benjamin Péret, René Crevel, Robert Desnos, Jacques Baron, Max Morise, Pierre Naville, Roger Vitrac, Gala Éluard, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Georges Malkine, Michel Leiris, Georges Limbour, Antonin Artaud, Raymond Queneau, André Masson, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert, and Yves Tanguy.

Apollinaire was the inventor of the modern calligramme, or “beautiful lines” as translated from Greek. Here the image constructed through the use of letters and words serves as an aid to our imagination and when you read the poem you already have an image of this woman in your mind. Thanks to the calligramme as a means of expression, this image coincides with the one that Apollinaire had in his head when he was working on it.

Guillaume Apollinaire was an artist in a non-linear way. The medium he worked in were not paints and brushes, but letters and

Invented by Guillaume Apollinaire in , a calligram is a poem whose verses are arranged to form a drawing related to the poem.

These graphic poems are a great way to improve your spelling, grammar and vocabulary. The calligrams offer a learning of the French language in a fun and creative way.

An art that develops your creativity

The term calligram was invented by Guillaume Apollinaire, but the drawings-poems exist since ancient Greece. It&#;s a very creative way to learn French through:

1. Calligraphy because the design of letters influences the final work
2. Poetry, which gives the calligram a particular rhythm.
3. The ambigram. This discipline consists in playing between the drawing and the text to give a double meaning to the calligram.

PARTICIPATE IN ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE CALLIGRAMS COMPETITION

As part of the Fête de la Francophonie, Alliance Française Bangkok is organizing a calligram contest, free and open to anyone over 12 years old living in Thailand.

Participate whether you area fluent  French speaker or not, to experience this art and practice your French. Your calligram will be posted at the Alliance Française mediateque and the winners will receive membership cards and discounts on the courses.

To participate, send your calligramme to this address before March 5th:

c&#;nco&#;&#;s@a&#;&#;hai&#;ande.org

Find more information here &#;

Sources :

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Poetry collection by Guillaume Apollinaire

For the type of artwork, see Calligram.

Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War , is a collection of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire which was first published in Calligrammes is noted for how the typeface and spatial arrangement of the words on a page plays just as much of a role in the meaning of each poem as the words themselves – a form called a calligram. In this sense, the collection can be seen as either concrete poetry or visual poetry. Apollinaire described his work as follows:

The Calligrammes are an idealisation of free verse poetry and typographical precision in an era when typography is reaching a brilliant end to its career, at the dawn of the new means of reproduction that are the cinema and the phonograph. (Guillaume Apollinaire, in a letter to André Billy)

Notes

References

External links