Poème autographe “O mon très cher amour “

Working manuscript of this very fine sonnet, later collected in Il y a. Untitled here, the sonnet was published by Apollinaire in 1912 under two different titles: in February 1912 under the title Per te præsentit aruspex (the title retained in Il y a), in the first issue of his review Les Soirées de Paris, alongside Le Pont Mirabeau; and, the same year, in no. 3 of the review Arthénice, under the title Immortalité.

Unlike the text in Il y a, this manuscript contains no punctuation. It also presents two interesting variants: the beginning of the fifth line, “Mon amour tu seras,” has been crossed out and replaced with “Tu seras mon aimée”; and in the eighth line, “l'amour” is written over “l'ardeur.”

“Ô mon très cher amour toi mon œuvre et que j'aime
A jamais j'allumai le feu de ton regard
Je t'aime comme j'aime une belle œuvre d'art
Une noble statue un magique poème [...]
Ainsi belle œuvre d'art nos amours ont été
Et seront l'ornement du ciel et de la terre
O toi ma créature et ma divinité”