Guillaume Apollinaire – whose writings ranged from plays to experimental poetry, from art criticism to erotica – was at the heart of literary and artistic life in early 20th-century Paris. Both his work and his flamboyant personality had a defining influence on the development of Surrealism, Dadaism and other artistic movements. In late 1914 Apollinaire swapped the high life of avant-garde Paris for the mud and desolation of war in the trenches. But his poems of this period are wholly different from those that for English readers have come to define the genre of war poetry: exploding shells are compared to champagne bottles, and juxtaposed with the orgy of destruction are nostalgia for antiquity, impatience for the future, melancholy and exuberance. Apollinaire died in 1918. The new translations in this bilingual edition, entitled The Little Auto
I’ve dreamed of you so much you’re losing your reality.
Is there still time to reach that living body and kiss
on that mouth the birth of the voice that’s dear to me?
I’ve dreamed of you so much that my arms, used to crossing on my chest
as I hug your shadow, couldn’t fold themselves around the shape of your body, maybe.
And faced with the actual appearance of what’s haunted me and ruled me for days and years,
I would probably turn into a shadow.
O what a sentimental pair of scales.
I’ve dreamed of you so much there’s probably no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep standing up, my body exposed to all the appearances of life and love and you,
the only thing that counts for me today. I’d probably reach for the first lips and face that came along,
than your face and your lips.
I’ve dreamed of you so much, walked so much, talked, slept with your phantom
that maybe there’s nothing left for me to do but be a phantom among the phantoms
and a hundred times more shadow than the shadow
that strolls and will go on strolling cheerfully over the sundial of your life.