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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,