Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki is unlikely to be a name familiar to many. Born in Rome in August 1880, he was of mixed Polish-Lithuanian and (it is thought, as his father was never positively identified) Italian heritage. However, he is exceptionally well-known under the name he adopted following his emigration to France whilst a teenager: Guillaume Apollinaire.
Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, Apollinaire was an impassioned defender of the emerging art movements of the first decades of the 20th, century – particularly cubism and surrealism, both of which he is responsible for naming as such (the latter in the preface to his play The Breasts of Tiresias, itself regarded as one of the first pieces of surrealist literature.
As a poet, Apollinaire was influenced by the Symbolist movement, and it was from this that he developed a style of poetry which eschewed punctuation and sought to reflect modern times and life in form. In doing so, he would express the view that art – visual or written – should not be rooted in any particular theory, but should be born of intuition and imagination, so as to be as close as possible to life, nature and the world around us.
Both the influence of the symbolist movement and his own emerging style are perhaps best reflected in his 1913 volume of poems, Alcools. Within that volume is what is regarded as one of the most poignant poems written in his too-short life (Apollinaire died at the age of 38 due to complications from a wound received in 1916 whilst he was serving in the French infantry, and which left him weakened and vulnerable to the ravages of the 1918 Great Influenza Epidemic – aka the “Spanish flu” pandemic). That poem is Les Colchiques, which is the subject of an exhibition of digital art by Mareea Farrasco, which opened in February at her IMAGOLand Galleries in Second Life.
The poem presents a bucolic setting: cows grazing within a field as children come to play, before the cowherds come to take the cows home. It sounds idyllic – and can be taken as such. However, the overall framing of this three-stanza poem is also deeply layered, exploring ideas of the cyclic nature of life, mortality, beauty, and the passage of time. The opening stanza starts by referencing the fact that in their grazing, the cows are poisoning themselves as they are eating colchiques – aka Colchicum autumnale, the very toxic autumn crocus (although not a true crocus) – growing wild in the meadow. It then goes on to compare the colour of the flowers within the field with the eyes of the poet’s love, enfolding the idea that just as the poisonous nature of the plants lay hidden in their rich and lovely lilac colour, so too has the captivating beauty of the poet’s love come to poison his life by captivating and enthralling him.
In the second and third stanzas we have the children coming to play in the field, and within the poet’s observations of them lie the idea that the girls within the group will one day be mothers, and their daughters will one day come to play in the fields, just as their mothers did before them, thus introducing the idea of life’s cyclical nature and the passage of time; at the same time, the fleeting nature of beauty is folded into the comparison of fluttering eyelids with flower petals being lost on the wind. Finally, the cows are drawn from the field by the singing of the herdsmen, the children having also departed, leaving only the deadly flowers – a subtle commentary on mortality and the transient nature of life.
Within her exhibition, Mareea presents images that travel through the literal forms present within the poem, perhaps emphasising the themes of love and childhood innocence within the stanzas a little more than their deeper interpretations. However, the richness of the poem’s metaphors are present within many of the pictures for those who seek them . Note how, for example, Les enfants de l’ecole viennent avec fracas focuses on young girls, thus reflecting the poem’s second stanza’s observation concerning mothers and daughters; similarly, whilst Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s’empoisonne might be drawn from the final line of the first stanza, the lowered eyelids of the parasol-carrying young woman perhaps reflects the second stanza’s views on time and the fleeting nature of beauty.
Thus, and like the poem itself, these images, set within an environment designed to further reflect the more innocent and pastoral nature of the poem’s beauty, offer a simplicity and complexity of interpretation Apollinaire himself would have both recognised and appreciated.
SLurl Details
Les Colchiques, IMAGOLand Galleries (Rising Phoenix, rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 