Extract
[...] Thus, in the three poems, flora is an image of change and melancholy, renewal or loss, death; all these motifs are intrinsically linked to the flight of time. In truth, it seems that Apollinaire detours the crossed motifs of autumn and the flight of time to the benefit of a resolutely modern poetry. Indeed, the essential components of his language are readable in these three poems: for example, as in the rest of Alcohol, there is no punctuation. This absence of connectors highlights a colorful poetry in which different types of registers or styles intersect in a composite writing. [...]
[...] Thus, we find the traditional images of the melancholic autumnal writing, as in the penultimate stanza of 'Autumn Sick' : And I love you, oh season that I love your rumors The fruits falling without being picked The wind and the forest that weep All their tears in autumn leaf by leaf Here, rain is personified, that is to say it is described through the metaphor of tears and weeping: this figure is a common literary trope3. Here, signs and signifiers are intertwined, tears also serve as an image for the leaves of the tree. In the same way, in 'Colchique', the color of autumn is evoked: 'Violet as their bark and as this autumn'. The originality lies in the association of autumn and bark through the figure of zeugma. Finally, in 'Clotilde', there is a personification of melancholy, in the first stanza, which 'sleeps in the garden'. [...]
[...] Thus, in these three poems of Alcohol, Apollinaire renews the themes of autumn and the flight of time, reversing the semantics that are usually associated with them. The poet always seeks to surprise his reader, and it is perhaps in this that he is absolutely modern: and what better way to surprise than by deviating from tradition? [...]
[...] The second, if we respect the rule of the pronounced before a consonant, is a thirteen-syllable line. On the other hand, the rhythm of the verse is composed of three parts, of then 3 and 3 syllables: it is a traditional constitution of the alexandrine, the most 'noble' verse in French. In this way, the colchicum, an autumn flower, usually associated with spleen, is aestheticized in its color and in its filiation between mother and daughter. The metaphorical reversal of the flight of time, through the aesthetics of antithesis, is also read in the second stanza of 'Clotilde'4 : the shadows disappear with the night, which is rationally correct, since there is shadow only if there is light. [...]
[...] In this sense, autumn is often supplemented by another motif, also conducive to desolation; the tempus fugit2, time flees or time passes quickly: it is the reflection on the flight of time, and therefore, the inevitable death We propose to study the treatment of crossed motifs that are autumn and the tempus fugit In Apollinaire's poetry, through three poems: 'The Colchics', 'Autumn Sick' and 'Clotilde'. The proposal will be to understand in what ways the rewriting of these great literary clichés is, in Apollinaire, resolutely modern; and particularly in the reversal of the usual associations between symbolic death and melancholy. In a first part, we will justify the coherence of our corpus, through the motif of flowers, among others; we will thus see in what way Apollinaire inscribes himself in a poetic tradition. [...]
