11 
what-not. The innovations of the past generation, have 
been astounding. The recent conquests of man over 
nature have in many cases realized the fables of an 
cient times. It is for the modern poet to create the 
myths and fables which are to be realized in suc 
ceeding ,ages. 
„Is there nothing new under the sun ?“ asks Apolli 
naire. «Nothing — for the sun, perhaps. But for man — 
everything !“ The poet is to stop at nothing in his 
quest for novelty of shape and material; he is to take 
advantage of the possibilities for infinite combinations, 
the new equipment afforded by the cinema, phonograph, 
dictaphone, airplane, wireless. What he creates out 
of these new conditions, these new instruments, or the 
re-percussions which these things have had on our life, 
will be the material the folk-elements, if you will, of 
the myths and fables for the future. 
Touching definitely on the form or technique of 
poetry Apollinaire regards vers libre as only a fraction 
of the possible contributions to the media of poetry. 
There is an infinite amount of discovery to be made, he 
suggests, with alliteration, with assonance, with typo 
graphical arrangements such as give new visual and 
auditory sensations to the reader. 
Has anything more immediate been offered with 
reference to the ways and means of modern art than 
these enunciations of Apollinaire? He goes even 
farther than the suggestions I have quoted. There is 
the forecast of possibly some poet or super-artist, who 
like a modern orchestra conductor will have at his 
baton a hundred or a thousand different instruments, 
or sciences, or mechanisms. This enormous army of 
symphony (as I have always dreamed it, at least) would 
fill a prodigious amphitheatre, against which the Grosses 
« Schauspielhaus of Berlin would shrink in the comparison. 
The audience of course would be one man, on 
the stage . . . 
We shall not discuss these bewildering possibilities 
for the moment. It suffices that proceeding with the 
conception of a modern folk-lore we are justified in 
traversing all the ramifications of modern man, all the 
far flung discordant exigencies of the present spectacle, 
whether they be in an office building of New York,