race of poets, too privileged, will increase in such proportions and so
rapidly that in a short time no one will want to work, invent, teach, do
dangerous feats, heal the sick and improve the lot of unfortunate men."
An enormous stir greeted this article. It was telegraphed or telephoned
everywhere, all the newspapers reproduced it. A few literary journals
followed their quotations from Tograth's article with mocking
reflections as to the scientist; there were doubts as to his mental
state. They laughed at the terror which he manifested over the lyric
laurel. However, the journals of commerce and information made great ado
about his warnings. They even said that the article in _La Voix_ was a
work of genius.
The article by Horace Tograth had been a singular pretext, admirably
fitted to fan the blaze of hatred for poetry. It made its appeal through
the traditional sense of the supernatural, whose memory lies in all well
born men, and to the instinct for preservation which all beings feel.
That was why nearly all Tograth's readers were thunderstruck, aghast,
and wanted to lose no occasion to obliterate poets, who, because of the
great numbers of prizes they received, were the subjects of the jealousy
of all classes of the population. The majority of the newspapers
advocated that the government take measures leading to the prohibition
of all poetry prizes.
In the evening, in a later edition of _La Voix_, the agricultural
chemist, Horace Tograth, published a new article, which, like the other,
telephoned or telegraphed everywhere, carried popular emotion to a
climax in the press, among the public and the governments. The scientist
concluded as follows:
"World, choose between thy life and poetry; if serious measures are not
taken, civilization is done for. Thou must not hesitate. From tomorrow
on begins the new era. Poetry will exist no longer, the lyres too heavy
for old inspirations will be broken. The poets will be massacred."
* * *
During the night, life went on just as usual in all the cities of the
globe. The article, telegraphed everywhere, had been published in the
special editions of the local newspapers and snatched up by the hungry
public. The people all sided with Tograth. Ring-leaders descended into
the streets and, mingling with the aroused mobs, excited them further.
But most governments held sittings that very night and passed
legislation which provoked an indescribable enthusiasm. France, Italy,
Spain and Portugal decreed that all poets established on their territory
should be imprisoned at once pending the determination of their lot.
Foreign poets who were absent and sought to re-enter the country risked
being condemned to death. It was cabled that the United States of
America had decided to electrocute any man who avowed his profession to
be that of poetry.
It was telegraphed that in Germany also a decree had been passed
ordering all poets in verse or prose found on the imperial territory to
be incarcerated until further orders. In fact, all of the States on
earth, even those who possessed nothing but meager little bards lacking
in all lyricism took measures against the very name of poetry. Only
England and Russia were exceptions. The laws went into effect at once.
All poets who were found on French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese
territory were arrested on the following day, while the literary
magazines appeared all garbed in black, lamenting the new terror.
Dispatches toward noon told how Aristenetius Southwest, the great Negro
poet of Haiti, had been cut into pieces and devoured by an infuriated
populace of negroes and mulattoes. At Cologne, the Kaiserglocke had
sounded all night and in the morning Herr Professor Doktor Stimmung,
author of a medieval epic in forty-eight cantos, having gone out to take
the train for Hanover, was set upon by a troop of fanatics who beat him
with sticks, crying: "Death to the poet!"
He took refuge in the cathedral and remained locked in there with a few
beadles, by the excited population of Drikkes, Hanses, and Marizibills.
These last particularly, were beside themselves with rage, invoking the
Virgin, Saint Ursula and the Three Royal Magi in _platdeutsch._ Their
paternosters and pious oaths were interspersed with admirably vile
insults to the professor-poet, who owed his reputation chiefly to the
unisexuality of his morals. His head to the ground, he was nearly dying
of fear under the big wooden statue of Saint Christopher. He heard the
sounds of masons walling up all the gates of the cathedral and resigned
himself to die of hunger.
Toward two o'clock it was telegraphed that a sexton poet of Naples had
seen the blood of Saint January boil up in the holy phial. The sacristan
had gone out to proclaim the miracle and had hastened to the harbor
front to play buck-buck. He won all that he desired at this game and a
knife thrust in the breast to the bargain.
Telegrams everywhere announced the arrests of poets, one after another,
and the electrocution of the American poets was made known early in the
afternoon.
In Paris, several young poets of the left bank, who had been spared on
account of their lack of notoriety, organized a demonstration extending
from the _Closerie des Lilas_ to the _Conciergerie_, where the "prince
of poets" was imprisoned.[15]
Troops arrived to disperse the demonstrators. The cavalry charged. The
poets drew their firearms and defended themselves but the people rushed
in and took a hand in the mêlée. The poets were strangled and so was
everyone else who came to their defense.
Thus began the great persecution which swept rapidly throughout the
entire world. In America, after the electrocution of the famous poets,
they lynched all the negro minstrels and even many persons who had never
in their lives written a rhyme; then they fell upon the whites of
literary Bohemia. It was learned that Tograth, after having personally
directed the persecution in Australia, had embarked at Melbourne.
[Illustration 05]
XVII. ASSASSINATION
Like Orpheus, all the poets felt violent death staring them in the face.
Everywhere, publishers had been pillaged and collections of verse burnt.
The admiration of all went out to Horace Tograth who, from far off
Adelaide (Australia), had succeeded in unloosing this storm which seemed
destined to destroy poetry forever. This man's knowledge, they said,
bordered on the miraculous. He could drive away clouds or bring on rain
anywhere he pleased. Women, once they had seen him, were ready to do his
bidding. For the rest, he did not disdain either feminine or masculine
virginities. As soon as Tograth had seen what enthusiasms he had evoked
in the whole world, he announced that he would visit the principal
cities of the globe, after Australia had been rid of its erotic and
elegiac poets. And indeed some time later uprisings of the population
were heard of in Tokyo, Pekin, Yakutsk, Calcutta, Buenos Ayres, San
Francisco, Chicago, upon the appearance of the terrible German, Tograth.
Wherever he went, he left an unearthly impression on account of his
"miracles" (which he called scientific), and his extraordinary healings,
all of which lifted his repute as a scientist and a thaumaturgist to
sublime heights.
On May 30, Tograth debarked at Marseilles. The people were massed along
the quays; Tograth landed from the steamer in a launch. No sooner was he
recognized than cries, shouts, toasts, from innumerable gullets mingled
with the sound of the wind, the waves and the sirens of the vessels.
Tograth, tall and thin, was standing up in the launch. As it approached
the land, the features of the hero could be distinguished more and more
clearly. His face was smooth-shaven and blue, his mouth almost lipless,
disfigured by an ugly cut; he had a receding chin which gave him the
appearance, one might have said, of a shark. His brow rose straight up,
very high and very large. Tograth was dressed in a pasty white costume,
his shoes also being white and high-heeled. He wore no hat. As soon as
he placed his foot upon the soil of Marseilles the furor of the crowd
rose to such heights that when the quays were cleared three hundred
people were found dead, strangled, trampled, crushed. Several men seized
the hero and raised him upon their shoulders while they sang and
shouted, and women threw flowers at him all the way to the hotel where a
suite had been prepared for him and managers, interpreters and bell-boys
were waiting to greet him.
* * *
On the same morning, Croniamantal coming from Brünn had arrived at
Marseilles to look for Tristouse who had been there since the evening
before with Paponat. All three mingled in the crowd which acclaimed
Tograth before the hotel where he was to stop.
"Happy tumult," said Tristouse, "You are not a poet, Paponat, you have
learned things which are worth infinitely more than poetry. Is it not
true, Paponat, that you are in no way a poet?"
"Indeed, my dear," replied Paponat, "I have rhymed at times in order to
amuse myself, but I am not a poet, I am an excellent business man and no
one knows better than I how to manage an estate."
"Tonight you must mail a letter to _La Voix_ of Adelaide; you must tell
them all that, and so you will be safe."
"I shall not fail to do that," said Paponat. "Did you ever hear of such
a thing, a poet! That goes for Croniamantal."
"I hope to God," said Tristouse, "that they will massacre him in Brünn
where he expects to find us."
"But there he is right now," whispered Paponat. "He is in the crowd. He
is hiding himself and hasn't seen us."
"I wish they would hurry up and massacre him," sighed Tristouse. "I have
an idea that that will happen soon."
"Look," exclaimed Paponat, "here comes the hero."
* * *
The cortège which accompanied Tograth arrived at the hotel, and he was
permitted to descend from their shoulders. Tograth turned to the crowd
and addressed them:
"Citizens of Marseilles, in thanking you I could employ, if I wished,
compliments that are fatter than your world-renowned sardines. I could,
if I wished, make a long speech. But words will never quite encompass
the magnificence of the reception which you have accorded me. I know
that there are maladies in your midst that I might heal not only with my
knowledge but with that which scientists have accumulated for myriads of
years. Bring forth the sick, and I shall heal them."
A man whose cranium was as bald as that of an inhabitant of Mycona
cried:
"Tograth! god-like mortal, all puissant _savantissimo!_ Give me a
luxuriant mane of hair."
Tograth smiled and asked that the man approach him: then he touched the
denuded head, saying:
"Thy sterile pate shall be covered with an abundant vegetation, but
remember always this favor by hating the laurel."
At the same time as the bald man, a little girl approached. She implored
Tograth:
"Sweet man, sweet man, look at my mouth, my lover with a blow of his
fist has broken several teeth. Return them to me."
The scientist smiled and put his finger into her mouth, saying: "Now
thou canst chew, thou hast excellent teeth. But in return, show us what
thou hast in thy bag."
The girl laughed, opening her mouth in which the new teeth gleamed; then
she opened her bag, excusing herself:
"What a funny idea, before everybody! Here are my keys, here an
enamelled photograph of my lover; he really looks better than that."
But the eyes of Tograth were greedy; he had perceived all folded up in
her bag several Parisian songs, rhymed and set to Viennese airs. He took
these papers and after having scrutinized them, asked:
"These are nothing but songs, hast thou no poems?"
"I have a very lovely one," said the girl. "It was the bell-boy of the
Hotel Victoria wrote it for me before he left for Switzerland. But I
never showed it to Sossi."
And she proffered Tograth a little rose sheet of paper on which was
written a pathetic acrostic.
_My dear beloved, ere I go away,
And thy love, Maria, I betray,
MARIA Rail and sob, my sweet, once more--again,
If you'd come with me to the woods, we twain,(!)
All would be sweeter; our parting would not pain._
"It is not only poetry," exclaimed Tograth, "it is idiotic."
And he tore up the paper and threw it into the ditch, while the girl
knocked her teeth in fright and cried:
"Sweet man, good man, I did not know that it was bad."
Just then Croniamantal advanced close to Tograth and apostrophized the
crowd:
"Carrion, assassins!"
They burst into laughter. They yelled:
"Into the water with him, the rat."
And Tograth, looking Croniamantal in the face, said:
"My good brother, let not my affluence disturb you. As for me, I love
the people, even though I stop at hotels which they do not frequent."
The poet let Tograth talk, then he continued to address the crowd:
"Carrion, laugh at me, your joys are numbered, each one of them will be
torn from you one by one. And do you know, o people, what your hero is?"
Tograth smiled and the crowd became all attention. The poet continued:
"Your hero, o populace, is Boredom bringing Misery."
A cry of astonishment issued from all the throats. Women crossed
themselves. Tograth wanted to speak, but Croniamantal seized him
suddenly by the neck, threw him to the ground and held him there with
his foot on the man's chest, while he spoke:
"He is Boredom and Misery, the monstrous enemy of man, the Behemoth
glutted with debauchery and rape, dripping the blood of marvellous
poets. He is the vomit of the Antipodes, and his miracles deceive the
clairvoyant no more than the miracles of Simon the Magi did the
Apostles. Marseillais, Marseillais, woe that you whose ancestors come
from the most purely lyrical land, should unite with the enemies of
poetry, with the barbarians of all the nations. What a strange miracle,
this, of the German returned from Australia! To have imposed it upon the
world and to have been for a moment stronger than creation itself,
stronger than immortal poetry."
But Tograth who was able to extricate himself at last, arose, soiled
with dust and drunk with rage. He asked:
"Who are you?"
"Who are you, who are you?" cried the crowd.
The poet turned toward the east and in exalted tones said:
"I am Croniamantal, the greatest of living poets. I have often seen God
face to face, I have borne the divine rapture which my human eyes
tempered. I was born in eternity. But the day has come, and I am here
before you."
Tograth greeted these last words with a terrible burst of laughter, and
the first ranks of the crowd seeing Tograth laugh, took up his laughter,
which, in bursts, in rolls, in trills, was soon communicated throughout
the entire populace, even to Paponat and Tristouse Ballerinette. All of
the open mouths yawned at Croniamantal, who became ill at ease.
Interspersed with the laughter were shouts of:
"Into the water with the poet!... Burn him, Croniamantal!... To the dogs
with him, lover of the laurel!"
A man who was in the first ranks and carried a heavy club gave
Croniamantal a blow, causing him to make a painful grimace which doubled
the merriment of the crowd. A stone, accurately thrown, struck the nose
of the poet and drew blood. A fish merchant forced his way through the
mob and, confronting Croniamantal, said:
"Hou! the raven. I remember you, all right, you're a policeman who
wanted to pass for a poet; there, cow; take that, story teller."
And he gave him a terrific slap, spitting in his face. The man whom
Tograth had cured of _alopecia_ came to him and said:
"Look at my hair, is it a false miracle or not?"
And lifting his cane, he thrust it so adroitly that he gouged out
Croniamantal's right eye. Croniamantal fell over backward, women threw
themselves upon him and beat him. Tristouse jumped up and down with joy,
while Paponat tried to calm her. But she went over and with the end of
her umbrella stuck out Croniamantal's other eye, while he, seeing her in
this last moment of sight, cried:
"I confess my love for Tristouse Ballerinette, the divine poesy that
consoles my soul."
"Shut up, vermin!" cried the crowd of men, "there are ladies here."
The women went away soon, and a man who was balancing a large knife on
his open hand threw it in such a way that it landed right in the open
mouth of Croniamantal. Other men did the same thing. The knives stuck in
his belly, his chest, and soon there was nothing more on the ground than
a corpse bristling with points like the husk of a chestnut.
XVIII. APOTHEOSIS
Croniamantal dead, Paponat brought Tristouse Ballerinette back to the
hotel, where she relapsed into nervous fainting-spells. They were in a
very old building and by chance Paponat discovered, wrapped up in
cardboard, a bottle of water of the Queen of Hungary which dated from
the 17th Century. This remedy worked rapidly. Tristouse recovered her
senses and immediately went to the hospital to claim the body of
Croniamantal which was turned over to her without delay.
She arranged a decent burial for him and placed over his tomb a stone on
which there was engraved the following epitaph:
_Walk lightly and your silence keep,
To leave untroubled his good sleep._
Then she went back to Paris with Paponat who soon left her for a
mannikin of the Champs-Élysées.
Tristouse did not regret him very long. She went into mourning for
Croniamantal and climbed up to the Montmartre, to the Bird of Benin's
who began to pay court to her, and after he had what he desired they
began to talk of Croniamantal.
"I ought to make a statue to him," said the Bird of Benin, "For I am not
only a painter but also a sculptor."
"That's right," said Tristouse, "we must raise a statue to him."
"Where?" asked the Bird of Benin; "The government will not grant us any
ground. Times are bad for poets."
"So they say," replied Tristouse, "but perhaps it
isn't true. What do you think of the Meudon woods?"
"I thought of that, but I dared not say it. Let's go to the Meudon
woods."
"A statue of what?" asked Tristouse, "Marble? Bronze?"
"No, that's old fashioned. I must model a profound statue out of
nothing, like poetry and glory."
"Bravo! Bravo!" cried Tristouse clapping her hands, "A statue out of
nothing, empty, that's lovely, and when will you make it?"
"Tomorrow, if you wish; we shall go and dine, pass the night together,
and in the morning we shall go to the Meudon woods where I shall make
this profound statue."
* * *
No sooner said, than done. They went and dined with the élite of the
Montmartre, returned to sleep at midnight and on the next morning at
nine o'clock, after having armed himself with a pick-axe, a spade, a
shovel and some boasting-chisels, they took the road for the pretty
Meudon woods, where they met the Prince of Poets, accompanied by his
little friend, quite happy over the pleasant days he had spent in the
City-prison.
In the clearing, the Bird of Benin set to work. In a few hours he had
dug a trench of about a meter and a half in breadth and two in depth.
Then they had lunch on the grass.
The afternoon was devoted by the Bird of Benin to sculpturing the
interior of the monument to Croniamantal.
On the following day, the sculptor came back with workingmen who fixed
up an armed cement wall, six inches broad on top, and eighteen inches
broad at the base, so that the empty space had the form of Croniamantal,
and the hole was full of his spectre.
* * *
On the next day, the Bird of Benin, Tristouse, the Prince of Poets and
his little friend came back to the statue which was heaped up with earth
which they had gathered here and there, and at nightfall they planted a
fine laurel tree, while Tristouse Ballerinette danced and sang:
_No one loves thee thou art lying
Palantila Mila Mima
When he was lover to the queen
He was king while she was queen_
_'Tis true, 'tis true that I love him
Croniamantal way down in the pit
Can that be right
Let us gather the sweet marjoram
At night._
THE END
NOTES
[Footnote 1: The French language at the end of the nineteenth century
had reached a certain fixation, chiefly through the influence of
Mallarmé, whose literary artifice was consternating. Apollinaire, a
bizarre scholar, and yet a "lord of language," was more of a freebooter.
Many of his exoticisms came from the market-place or from other tongues.
Their sources were fair and false. But at bottom, there is the sincere
desire to free modern literature from romantic sentiment, and artifice,
to use words as directly and freely as in conversation.]
[Footnote 2: Here Apollinaire's frivolous playing with the language can
scarcely be rendered. The original runs: "...en me réfugiant dans _mon_
ou _ma_ 'bedroom' _du_ ou _de la_ 'family house' ou j'étais
descendue."]
[Footnote 3: Among these towns we may cite, Naples, Adrianople,
Constantinople, Neauphle le-Chateau, Grenoble, Pultawa,
Pouilly-en-Auxois, Pouilly-les-Fours, Nauplie, Seoul, Melbourne, Oran,
Nazareth, Ermenonville, Nogent-sur-Marne, etc.]
[Footnote 4: Wilhelm de Kostrowitzki was baptized in Rome, September 29,
1880, at the _Sacrosancta Patriarcalis Basilica Santa Mariae Maioris._
His father is said to have been a high prelate of the Catholic Church.]
[Footnote 5: "Let the seven countries and four continents dispute the
honor of his birthplace"--Mme de Kostrowitzka (who had never opened but
one of his books, and found that "idiotic") exclaimed one day:
"O Poland, thou wilt remember thy great son!"]
[Footnote 6: Apollinaire wrote to his friend André Billy: "Was I not
too a master of rhymed verse?" This brief couplet, paraphrased from:
Luth!
Zut!
marked a point of departure toward _Calligrammes._]
[Footnote 7: This "absolute" poem, "freed from the restrictions of even
language" may be profitably studied for its positive suggestions. The
Dadaists, whose godfather Apollinaire was, took up this form with a
passionate conviction that terrified the populace after the war. "Is not
every art-theory, every school, only the triumph of an individual's
taste, the imposition of a stronger mind upon the weaker ones?"
Nonsense-poems, were the reductio ad absurdum of all literary artifice.
The final word, the ultimate bankruptcy. Apollinaire's intense desire to
negate literary precedent and to innovate, led through the stimulus of
the Cubist painters to _Calligrammes_, which contains his calligraphic
poetry. The typography is arranged most intricately, with regard to its
pictural or abstract effect. Apollinaire hoped ultimately to unite
poetry and painting, in fact his last critical writings in the Mercure
de France are filled with amazing conjectures as to the future of art.
The "poèmes conversations" of Calligrammes, as André Billy relates,
may well have originated in the following manner:
"He, Dupuy, and I are sitting at Crucifixe with three glasses of
vermouth. Suddenly Guillaume bursts out laughing--he has completely
forgotten to write the preface to Robert Delaunay's catalogue, which he
promised to mail that evening. 'Quick waiter, pen and ink. Three of us
will get through with this in a jiffy.' Guillaume's pen is off already:
'Of red and green all the yellow dies.'
His pen stops.
But Dupuy dictates:
'When the arras sing in our natal forests.'
The pen starts off again transcribing faithfully.
It is my turn:
'There is a poem to be written about the bird with but one wing.'
A reminiscence from _Alcools_--the pen writes without a stop.
'A good thing to do if there is any hurry,' I said, 'would be to send
your preface over the telephone.'
And so the next line became:
'And we shall send this by the telephone.'
I no longer remember all the details of this singular collaboration, but
I can state that the preface to the catalogue of Robert Delaunay came
out entire."]
[Footnote 8: This chapter is obviously written in an entirely different
period. The Poet Assassinated, composes, if we choose to believe so,
Apollinaire's vision of his own life. The book was collated from many
fragments, many beginnings, and published in 1916, by "_l'Édition_,"
for the so-called "_Librairie des Curieux._" In the opening passage of
this chapter part of the influences of the Cubist painters, and their
inventions are particularly apparent.]