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The beauty of life and the variety of signs

Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘lyrical ideogram’ La Cravate et la montre
  • Peter Gahl
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Insistent Images
This chapter is in the book Insistent Images

Abstract

This article offers a close reading of Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘lyrical ideogram’ La Cravate et la montre (The Tie and the Watch, 1914): an analysis of the poem’s specific form of interaction between words and images which shows how the author probably intended it to be read, and a systematic approach to the semantic structure. ‘Time’ and ‘the human body’ are identified as the main isotopies and ‘life’ vs. ‘death’ and ‘linear’ vs. ‘circular’ conception of time as the most prominent oppositions, the latter being reflected also by the poem’s graphical structure which ‘quotes’ Marc Chagall’s Hommage à Apollinaire. A second important topic is the co-presence of different modes of signification – iconic and symbolic – which corresponds to Apollinaire’s metasemiotical reflections of that period, namely to his conception of ‘surréalisme’.

Abstract

This article offers a close reading of Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘lyrical ideogram’ La Cravate et la montre (The Tie and the Watch, 1914): an analysis of the poem’s specific form of interaction between words and images which shows how the author probably intended it to be read, and a systematic approach to the semantic structure. ‘Time’ and ‘the human body’ are identified as the main isotopies and ‘life’ vs. ‘death’ and ‘linear’ vs. ‘circular’ conception of time as the most prominent oppositions, the latter being reflected also by the poem’s graphical structure which ‘quotes’ Marc Chagall’s Hommage à Apollinaire. A second important topic is the co-presence of different modes of signification – iconic and symbolic – which corresponds to Apollinaire’s metasemiotical reflections of that period, namely to his conception of ‘surréalisme’.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface and acknowledgements vii
  4. List of Contributors ix
  5. Introduction: Insistent Images 1
  6. PART I. Iconicity and grammaticalization
  7. Putting grammaticalization to the iconicity test 17
  8. Iconic thumbs, pinkies and pointers 37
  9. PART II. Iconicity and the aural
  10. The physical basis for phonological iconicity 57
  11. Reading aloud and Charles Dickens’ aural iconic prose style 73
  12. Iconicity and the divine in the fin de siècle poetry of W.B. Yeats 91
  13. Is lámatyáve a linguistic heresy? 103
  14. PART III. Iconicity and the visual
  15. The beauty of life and the variety of signs 113
  16. Forms of restricted iconicity in modern avant-garde poetry 129
  17. Eco-Iconicity in the poetry and poem-groups of E.E. Cummings 155
  18. The language of film is a matrix of icons 173
  19. Liberature 191
  20. PART IV. Iconicity and conceptualization
  21. Meaning on the one and on the other hand 211
  22. Iconic text strategies 229
  23. ‘Damn mad’ 247
  24. PART V. Iconicity and structure
  25. Iconicity and the grammar–lexis interface 269
  26. Iconicity in the coding of pragmatic functions 289
  27. Double negation and iconicity 301
  28. PART VI. Iconicity and multimedia / intertextuality
  29. Iconicity in multimedia performance 323
  30. Author index 347
  31. Subject index 353
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.5.13gah

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface and acknowledgements vii
  4. List of Contributors ix
  5. Introduction: Insistent Images 1
  6. PART I. Iconicity and grammaticalization
  7. Putting grammaticalization to the iconicity test 17
  8. Iconic thumbs, pinkies and pointers 37
  9. PART II. Iconicity and the aural
  10. The physical basis for phonological iconicity 57
  11. Reading aloud and Charles Dickens’ aural iconic prose style 73
  12. Iconicity and the divine in the fin de siècle poetry of W.B. Yeats 91
  13. Is lámatyáve a linguistic heresy? 103
  14. PART III. Iconicity and the visual
  15. The beauty of life and the variety of signs 113
  16. Forms of restricted iconicity in modern avant-garde poetry 129
  17. Eco-Iconicity in the poetry and poem-groups of E.E. Cummings 155
  18. The language of film is a matrix of icons 173
  19. Liberature 191
  20. PART IV. Iconicity and conceptualization
  21. Meaning on the one and on the other hand 211
  22. Iconic text strategies 229
  23. ‘Damn mad’ 247
  24. PART V. Iconicity and structure
  25. Iconicity and the grammar–lexis interface 269
  26. Iconicity in the coding of pragmatic functions 289
  27. Double negation and iconicity 301
  28. PART VI. Iconicity and multimedia / intertextuality
  29. Iconicity in multimedia performance 323
  30. Author index 347
  31. Subject index 353
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