Alcools
A copy from the first thousand (no. 578), issued after 23 copies on Hollande paper.
Frontispiece by Picasso: a Cubist portrait of the author.
Presentation copy inscribed by Apollinaire to Madame Lemaistre: “À Madame Lemaistre, avec les hommages et le souvenir très cordial de Guillaume Apollinaire.”
The copy includes seven corrections in ink in Apollinaire's hand, on pages 71, 77, 86, 92, 110 and 189 (two corrections) — whereas five is the usual number found, when present at all.
At the end are bound nine engravings by Marcoussis, eight of them signed by the artist: these comprise proofs of the portrait of Apollinaire, five states of plate 9 (Crépuscule), two states of plate 31 (À la santé), and the justification leaf of Marcoussis's work (copy no. 2).
A Dionysian collection tinged with Rimbaldian lyricism, this manifesto-work sought to renew poetic writing. Originally entitled “Eau-de-vie,” Alcools explores a wide range of poetic registers, from elegy to free verse. While drawing on the tradition of lyric poetry — thwarted love, the passage of time, retellings of ancient myths — Apollinaire grounded the collection firmly in modern reality. On publication, readers and critics were disconcerted by its absence of punctuation, which Apollinaire justified as follows: “I removed it only because it seemed useless to me, and it is indeed useless: the very rhythm and the cadence of the verses are the true punctuation, and no other is needed” (letter to Henri Martineau).
In 1934, Louis Marcoussis produced a series of etchings for Alcools, in a unique printing of 98 copies on Arches vellum, intended for an edition planned by the Nouvelle Revue française that was never published.
A fine copy, in a remarkable Cubist binding by Georges Leroux. The copy is catalogued in this form in catalogue no. 5 of the bookshop “Les Mains libres” run by Jean Petithory, shortly after the binding had been executed by Leroux. It subsequently appeared at auction in Bern (Kornfeld, June 1976, no. 249, sold for 16,000 Swiss francs). The copy is cited in volume 3 of the Correspondance générale (E216, binding described).
S. Millet, Marcoussis. L’œuvre gravé (1991), 110–149; J. Lafranchis, Louis Marcoussis (1961), 112–148; Apollinaire, Œuvres poétiques, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (1965), p. 1190, no. 40; Correspondance générale, Honoré Champion, III, p. 767.