Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I The Great War in British literary culture
- Part II The world war: Pan-European views, transatlantic prospects
- 6 The Great War and the European avant-garde
- 7 French writing of the Great War
- 8 The Great War and modern German memory
- 9 American writing of the Great War
- Part III Postwar engagements
- Guide to Further Reading
- Index
- Series List
6 - The Great War and the European avant-garde
from Part II - The world war: Pan-European views, transatlantic prospects
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I The Great War in British literary culture
- Part II The world war: Pan-European views, transatlantic prospects
- 6 The Great War and the European avant-garde
- 7 French writing of the Great War
- 8 The Great War and modern German memory
- 9 American writing of the Great War
- Part III Postwar engagements
- Guide to Further Reading
- Index
- Series List
Summary
In 1915, the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had enlisted in the cavalry in late 1914, wrote a poem called “Guerre” (”War ”), which begins:
Rameau central de combat
Contact par l’écoute
On tire dans la direction “des bruits entendus”
Les jeunes de la classe 1915
Et ces fils de fer électrisés
Ne pleurez donc pas sur les horreurs de la guerre
Avant elle nous n’avions que la surface
De la terre et des mers
Apres elle nous aurons les abîmes
Le sous-sol et l’espace aviatique . . .
Central combat sector
Contact by sound
We’re firing toward “noises that were heard”
The young men of the class of 1915
And those electrified wires
Then don’t weep for the horrors of war
Before the war we had only the surface
Of the earth and the seas
After it we’ll have the depths
Subterranean and aerial space . . .
To Anglophone readers, whose touchstone for the poetry of the GreatWar is the lyric of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, or Siegfried Sassoon, the apocalyptic sentiments expressed in Apollinaire’s “War” must seem all but incomprehensible. Did les jeunes de la classe 1915 really believe that the war would provide entrance to a Brave New World in which the heights of the heavens and depths of the earth would be sounded?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War , pp. 141 - 165Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
- 1
- Cited by