Apollinaire and the Whatnots

Chapter 2 Apollinaire and the Whatnots Born and raised in Rome, where he spent the first eight years of his life, Apollinaire harbored a permanent affection for Italy. Aided by his ability to speak the language, he also developed extensive relations with a number of Italian artists and writers over the years.1 His involvement with Italy reached its highest point in 1914, when the Italian Futurists visited Paris in the spring. During their stay, they clustered around Apollinaire and his journal Les Soirées de Paris, whose office even housed several of them for a while. During this period Apollinaire discussed artistic matters with his guests on a daily basis. In addition, he published texts by Ardengo Soffici and Giovanni Papini in Les Soirées de Paris and collaborated on their journal Lacerba. Following repeated requests for some poetry, Soffici later recounted, Apollinaire allowed him to look through his papers and choose whatever he liked.2 The twenty-two short texts that he discovered appeared in four issues of Lacerba published between April 1914 and February 1915.3 Although the first batch was entitled “Banalités,” Apollinaire asked Soffici to call the remainder “Quel- conqueries” (“Whatnots”) because he found the title more amusing.4 After he returned to Florence, Soffici received another poem entitled “Arrivée du paquebot” (“The Arrival of the Steamship”), which for some reason was never published. Since it concluded with the naked 1 Although the bibliography has become quite lengthy, the basic text is still P. A. Jannini’s La fortuna di Apollinaire in Italia, 2nd ed. (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Cis- alpino, 1965). 2 Letter from Ardengo Soffici to Alfred Vallette, Mercure de France, May 15, 1920. Repr. in Guillaume Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Marcel Adéma and Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1965), pp. 1147-48. 3 See Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques, pp. 370, 516, 562, 590-92, 594, 656-73. “Arrivé du paquebot” is reprinted on p. 735. 4 Letter from Guillaume Apollinaire to Ardengo Soffici dated April 30, 1914. Repr. in Apollinaire, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Michel Décaudin (Paris: Balland-Lecat, 1965- 66), Vol. IV, p. 762. 46 Apollinaire on the Edge poet sucking a prostitute’s breasts, he may have feared the issue would be confiscated.5 Wishing to defend the dead poet’s reputation in 1920, Soffici insisted that Apollinaire attached no importance to these pieces, which he had simply written to amuse himself. Privately, one suspects that Soffici did not know what to make of the “Quelconqueries,” which as late as 1960 he described as “curiose bizzarrie inedite” (“curious unpublished oddities”).6 To be sure, many critics would doubtless agree with him today. Others would probably agree with Antoine Fongaro that the texts are completely worthless.7 By contrast, the “Quelconqueries” elicited vociferous support from the Dadaists and the Surrealists, who admired their persistent iconoclasm. Citing the Whatnots and the conversation poems in the Second Surrealist Manifesto, André Breton declared that Apollinaire deserved to be ranked with Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and the Comte de Lautréamont. In contrast to all the other writers, he explained, “ils ont voulu vraiment dire quelque chose” (“they really tried to say something”).8 By 1914, the Belle Epoque was drawing to a close and with it the Symbolist mode that had dominated French letters for so many years. Although it was a time of intense intellectual ferment, readers were not prepared for the “Quelconqueries,” whose audacity caught them by surprise. As a result, the texts were greeted largely with silence. Since then, the world has witnessed numerous literary and artistic movements, which have become increasingly radical over the years. Readers and viewers have been affected by this aesthetic revolution as much as artists and writers. We have become more accustomed to works that challenge the intellect in new and unforeseen ways. The time has come to rehabilitate the “Quelconqueries,” therefore, many of which were written with publication in mind. One of the things that make them so remarkable is their incredible diversity, which is unprecedented in a single collection by a single author. Four texts 5 The original version was even bawdier. See Michel Décaudin, “Autour de Stavelot: deux cahiers et un agenda,” Que vlo-ve?: Bulletin International des Etudes sur Apollinaire, 3rd ser., No. 21 (January-March 1996), p. 19. 6 Ardengo Soffici, “Apollinaire poeta e amico,” Omaggio ad Apollinaire, ed. Giovanni Sangiorgi and Jacopo Recupero (Rome: Ente Premi Roma, 1960), p. 26. 7 Antoine Fongaro, “Un Poème retrouvé d’Apollinaire,” Studi Francesi, Vol. I, No. 2 (May-August 1957), p. 252. 8 André Breton, Second Manifeste du surréalisme in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Marguerite Bonnet et al. (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1988), Vol. I, p. 815. .

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