The poem
Under Mirabeau Bridge runs the Seine And our loves Must I remember them Joy came always after pain Let arriving night explain Days fade I remain Arm in arm let us stay face to face While below The bridge at our hands passes With eternal regards the wave so slow Let arriving night explain Days fade I remain Love goes like this water flows Love goes Like life is slow And like hope is violent Let arriving night explain Days fade I remain The days passed and the weeks spent Not times past Nor loves sent return again Under Mirabeau bridge runs the Seine
Apollinaire was a precursor of the Surrealist movement in literature and art which sought to destabilize objects and time which in the bourgeois industrial world were seen as static, in the case of objects, and linear, in the case of time. Apollinaire does away with traditional rhyme and meter, punctuation and syntactical logic in order to force the reader to focus on the unconscious desires and fears (in this poem…
Read the whole commentApollinaire was a precursor of the Surrealist movement in literature and art which sought to destabilize objects and time which in the bourgeois industrial world were seen as static, in the case of objects, and linear, in the case of time. Apollinaire does away with traditional rhyme and meter, punctuation and syntactical logic in order to force the reader to focus on the unconscious desires and fears (in this poem lost love, nostalgia,etc.) which are never fully expressed using inadequate words and language. The hauntingly beautiful refrain reminds the reader of the relativity of time which seems linear, but which can also be cyclical, or even appear to stand still. The flowing water under the bridge moves as does time, yet preserves the eternal natural of the one moment of love experienced by the "I" of the poem who can return to the same place and experience the same emotion which might otherwise have been forever lost. This is a traditional romantic view of nature as repository of memory and human feeling, but with the modernist surrealist twist of juxtapostion of confusing images.