In the late nineteenth century the Russian painter Ilya Repin depicted the scene of these cossacks in 1676 writing their reply of refusal to Sultan Mehmed IV’s ultimatum that they submit to his rule.

Decalogue: In the Bible, the Ten Commandments.

the Crescent: The symbol of the Ottoman Empire and, by extension, of the Muslim faith.

Barrabas: In the Gospels of the Bible, the criminal who was saved from crucifixion. When given the choice of who was to be pardoned, the crowd chose him instead of Jesus.

Beelzebub: A Semitic deity worshipped by the Philistines. His name later became synonymous with Satan.

Podolia: Podolia was a large area mostly in what is now called Ukraine. The Ottomans occupied it from 1672 to 1699.

beautiful as a tiger: The original says panthère (panther), which by the nineteenth century in France also meant a wild, volatile woman. The English tiger seemed a decent equivalent.

Florentine kisses: What we call French kisses. Some commentators suggest that Apollinaire might have felt them to be untrustworthy ones, the derivation coming from plot-crazed Florence during the Renaissance. (See the note on Ghibelline below.)

Danaids: In Greek mythology, the fifty daughters of Danaus who were condemned to fill up a cask. In some versions of the story they used jugs with holes in them, in others the cask itself had the holes. Thus their task could never be completed.

Désirade: A small island off the coast of Guadeloupe. The name echoes the French word désir.

pyrausts: Mythological insect-size dragons that lived in fire, dying when they left it.

aegipans: In Greek and Roman mythology, these creatures, in some versions, were half goat and half man, like satyrs, and in other versions were combinations of various creatures.

ignis fatuus: Literally “foolish fire” in Latin and commonly called will-o’-the-wisp, the ignis fatuus is a weird glow seen in remote places at night. All sorts of legends have grown up around this phenomenon, which might be due to the spontaneous combustion of methane gas.

faust: Coined by Apollinaire, this word might refer to Faust (who was damned when he sold his soul) or to the Latin word faustus (fortunate, blessed, lucky).

Calais: During the seige of Calais (1347), Edward III ordered the starving populace to surrender six prominent citizens, who were to exit the city’s walls wearing ropes around their necks. Surprisingly, their lives were spared. Rodin sculpted a statuary group based on this event, Burghers of Calais.

Burned are the beehives: Michel Décaudin says that the winter of 1902 was so long and cold that the bees died in their hives, which had to be burned. Apollinaire, who lived in Germany that year, could well have seen these burned hives.

Argyaspides: A group of highly trusted soldiers (the Silver Shields) of Alexander the Great, known for their silver-plated shields. Perhaps “immortal” because their number always remained at forty.

dendrophoi: Most likely the earliest perennial flowers, which the French call the perce-neige (snow-piercers), such as the snowdrop, seen in this poem as little spears or swords. Apollinaire uses this word one other time, in an early poem he never published, “Les Poètes,” in which dendrophores figure as lances.

Seven swords: The seven swords of melancholy, stuck in the poet’s heart, are reminiscent of those depicted in iconography as stuck in the Virgin Mary’s heart, symbolizing her Seven Sorrows.

Paline: This seems to be a name coined by Apollinaire from pâle (pale) and câline (coaxing, caressing). André Durand suggests that Paline might be a variant of Playden.

Ghibelline: As with Florentine (see note above), Apollinaire might be suggesting that the changeable factions in late-medieval Florence were not to be trusted. Also suggested is Mount Gibel (Etna), where Vulcan had his forge. Incidentally, Vulcan’s wife, Venus, was unfaithful.

Noubosse: One scholar, P.-P. Gossiaux, thought this name was derived from noue-bosses (humps knot), a girdle worn by Venus around her breasts. Anne Hyde Greet speculated that it might be derived from faire la nouba and/or se donner une bosse, both of which mean “to go on a spree.”

Bérieux: Décaudin suggested that this refers to the Berruyeurs, a group of hotheaded medieval knights.

Carabosse: A wicked fairy godmother who sometimes confers rather spooky gifts. The name became attached to such a character in Sleeping Beauty.

Lul de Faltenin: A name Apollinaire gave to the phallus, perhaps from the Latin phallum tenans (holding the phallus). He also wrote a poem entitled “Lul de Faltenin.”

Hermes Ernest: Hermes was the god of luck and the messenger of the gods. The name Ernest suggests serious.

Malourene: Apparently coined by Apollinaire, the name might be a combination of malheur (misfortune, unhappiness) and reine (queen).

Saint-Fabeau: Apparently coined by Apollinaire. Margaret Davies (Davies, 116) felt that it was a sexual reference, made from beau phallus (handsome phallus).

Luitpold: The Prince Regent of Bavaria who lived from 1821–1912 and was the de facto ruler of Bavaria due to the mental conditions of his two nephews, King Ludwig II and King Otto, though the case for Ludwig’s insanity is debatable. Ludwig appears in Apollinaire’s short story “The Moon King” playing a subterranean organ that brings in sounds from all over the world as they are happening.

castle with no Lady: Ludwig, who tried to suppress his sexual feelings for men, never married.

the king was drowned: Ludwig, the day after he was deposed and interned at Castle Berg, was found dead of drowning in the adjacent Lake Starnberg, under unexplained circumstances. Sometimes referred to as the Swan King, he was a patron of Wagner and built fantastical castles, such as Neuschwanstein.

THERE ↩

Written on a train between Bar-sur-Aube and Troyes in northeastern France, as Apollinaire was returning to the front on April 5, 1915, and included in a letter to his lover Louise de Coligny (1881–1962). This poem is not to be confused with another of Apollinaire’s catalogue poems bearing the same title, which begins “There is a ship that has carried away my beloved,” which was written on the battlefield and mailed to Apollinaire’s new infatuation, Madeleine Pagès, in September of the same year.

lil Lou: Little Lou, his affectionate name for Coligny, his girlfriend at the time, with whom he had a brief but adventurous erotic relationship.

Menton: A town next to Monaco, known as “the pearl of France.”

Sospel: A small town near Monaco.

horsewhip: As a soldier in the artillery, Apollinaire had been trained in horsemanship. The subject of being whipped alludes to Coligny’s masochism.

TO ↩

The text of the poem is an anagram of the name of Linda Molina da Silva, a girl Apollinaire had a crush on, around the turn of the century. It was published in 1914 in the Italian futurist magazine Lacerba as part of a group of poems that he decided to call Quelconqueries (Whatnots).