Laetitia Rutherford
Love on the Front
Letters to Madeleine
By Guillaume Apollinaire (Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith)
Seagull Books 615pp £20.50
In January 1915 Madeleine Pagès, a 22-year-old schoolteacher, shared a carriage on the train from Nice with Guillaume Apollinaire. The poet had been visiting his mistress, Lou de Coligny-Châtillon, and was returning to train with his artillery unit in Nîmes before deployment on the front line. Strangers, they talked avidly for most of the journey. He wrote to her in April from the front, with his relationship with Lou on the wane, and Madeleine promptly replied with a gift of cigars. So began a passionate correspondence that lasted for a year. The letters were published in full for the first time in 2005 (a bowdlerised edition appeared in 1952), and are here translated into English.
Apollinaire came back from his Christmas leave – during which he and Madeleine had their second and final meeting – changed and distanced. By this point, the two were five months into their engagement, and had been liberally stoking fantasies about their eventual physical union. There was not
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm