Volume 1, Number 6 · November 14, 1963
Aimez-Vous Apollinaire?
By Neal Oxenhandler
Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters
by Francis Steegmuller
Farrar, Straus, 365 pp., $6.50
There is a certain kind of cultism that is encouraged by the way in which Mr. Steegmuller has chosen to write this first English biography of Guillaume Apollinaire. He begins by discussing at considerable length the question of Apollinaire's paternity. No doubt this is a legitimate subject for a biographer, yet there has always been an unfortunate tendency, reminiscent of palm-reading and astrology, to derive Apollinaire's entire character from his illegitimacy and his mixed Slavic and Italian temperament. This beginning is, to my mind, unfortunate, because it leads us at once to the Apollinaire of the cult—the mysterious Rabelaisian giant, the mal-aimé smiling through his tears, the hero and lover and practical joker, etc. This is the Apollinaire perpetuated by the countless books of memoirs and reminiscences that have emerged from the pre-world War I period, but one would hope that a biographer of Mr. Steegmuller's gifts would go beyond this stereotype. Apollinaire criticism has reached the point where new avenues of exploration are possible, and Mr. Steegmuller (who sets as his goal in this book merely the establishment of 'facts') has missed an opportunity in not giving us a new Apollinaire. Such a book might have begun, for instance, with the quite new insights into the poet's character that are to be found in Marie-Jeanne Durry's study of Apollinaire's religion.
Review, 1209 words
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