Alcools
First edition of Apollinaire’s first major poetry collection.
A very fine copy, preserved in publisher's wrappers with a portrait of the author by Pablo Picasso.
12mo of 204 pp., (1) leaf, (1) blank leaf, copy with all edges untrimmed, preserved in original wrappers.
185 x 117 mm.
Apollinaire, Guillaume. Alcools. Poems.
Paris, Mercure de France, 1913.
First edition of the author’s first major poetry collection.
Copy from the first thousand, composer-numbered (no. 638), with a Cubist portrait of the author by Pablo Picasso reproduced as a frontispiece.
This is Guillaume Apollinaire’s first collection, gathering the essence of his production over fifteen years: ambitious youthful attempts, images of Germany, love poems or rather, in his own words, of “the end of love,” major lyrical pieces, fantasies, in a fluid prosody of exceptional diversity (In French in the text).
Alcools contains some of Apollinaire’s most beautiful poems, including La Chanson du mal-aimé, Le Pont Mirabeau, and Zone.
A unique feature of these poems is that the author decided to remove all punctuation from the first proofs.
“As for the punctuation, I only removed it because it seemed unnecessary to me, and indeed it is; the rhythm itself and the division of verses are the real punctuation and there is no need for any other,” he wrote to Henri Martineau.
Michel Butor said about this: “In his hands, the verse once again becomes that ‘perfect line’ Mallarmé spoke of, the auditory, oral unit naturally translating on the page into a visual or reading unit.”
While also constituting the most complete document on the poetic activity of an entire era, Alcools is considered one of those perfect works that French literature takes pride in. Today, no one disputes the genius of a poet who brought to the poetry of his adopted country an accent at once very new and traditional. [… ] In Alcools, [… ] Apollinaire’s poetry reaches its highest and purest peak, so palpable is the sincerity and authenticity of the emotion.
A splendid copy, preserved in original wrappers.
An excellent copy, preserved in publisher’s wrappers, as issued, of this indispensable work, often described as the literary equivalent of Cubism.
