Light and Darkness of Guillaume Apollinaire's Poetic Narration in Alcools

Abstract

The paper is focused on analysis of the motifs of light and darkness in the poetic narration of the compilation Alcools written by Guillaume Apollinaire. These motifs are surveyed in the context of sequential events composing the stories of poems. The diminishing of opposition “light-darkness” in Alcools poems as well as the replacement of these notions by changing connotative meanings are demonstrated in the paper. Contradictory motifs of light and darkness are not in the position of confrontation in the compilation; on the contrary, they compose a specific unity. The diminishing of “light-darkness” opposition is implemented via the introduction of the categories of “colorlessness” and “greyness”. In Alcools the motifs of darkness quantitatively prevail over the motifs of light. Moreover, lyrical speaker/narrator expresses his attitude towards these categories, thus expressing his explicitness.