For the Record: Voice and Orality in Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Lettre-Océan”

Markina, Irina. "For the Record: Voice and Orality in Guillaume Apollinaire’s 'Lettre-Océan.'" Modernism/modernity, vol. 7, cycle 2, 2022.

The poet Guillaume Apollinaire was for the record. Between 1913 and 1914, he wrote repeatedly about the impact of recording technology on lyric poetry. Like a number of fellow poets, Apollinaire believed that within one to two centuries the record would replace the book as the preferred method for the dissemination of poetic texts.[1] However, for Apollinaire, the gramophone was not merely exterior or tangential to the poetic enterprise, a stance adopted by many Symbolist poets who nevertheless continued to view technology and lyric poetry as diametrically opposed. As Apollinaire’s theoretical writings illustrate, he also viewed the gramophone as a generative metaphor which encouraged him to take a fresh look at the concept of the voice at the heart of lyric poetry since its inception.

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