The Poet Assassinated

Padgett's translation of the long title story appeared in a large, formal edition in 1968 (with illustration by Jim Dine); now the rest of the shorter tales included in Apollinaire's 1916 collection also arrive in Padgett's strong translations. The book as a whole is neither the choicest of Apollinaire's short fiction (L'heresiarque et Cie is far superior) nor absolutely representative of the astounding leaps his prose could make (such as in the pornographic novels). Still, every paragraph here does at least suggest the vigorous Apollinarian mix of soft metaphors and outrageous cultural exaggeration. Moreover, like the title story, the shorter pieces are frequently grounded in autobiography. "Giovanni Moroni" recalls a Roman boyhood and a close maternal bond, both based on Apollinaire's own. "The Moon King," with its then-fantastic glimpses of inflatable furniture and love-making machines, presents Apollinaire in a ragged quest for a grid involving myth, progress, cosmopolitanism, and eroticism. And elsewhere there is vivid evidence of Apollinaire's linkage of the "miraculous" to personal optimism: in "The Deified Invalid," he sees himself as a one-eyed, one-legged, one-armed man who only knows eternity, having no perspective or balance with which to judge the temporal. Though almost everything here is slight and toy-like, any translation of Apollinaire's remarkable prose - especially considering its literary-historical influence - is welcome. (Kirkus Reviews)