Reading Order
L'Enchanteur pourrissant Reading Order
L'Enchanteur pourrissant (The Rotting Enchanter, 1909) by Guillaume Apollinaire is the prose poem that was Apollinaire's first major published work — a text about the enchanter Merlin, imprisoned in the trunk of an oak tree by the fairy Viviane (Morgan le Fay), slowly decomposing while supernatural beings of all traditions (Christian, classical, Celtic, folkloric) visit him, converse with him, and pass on. The text is one of the strangest and most distinctive pieces of early twentieth-century French prose: it mixes medieval legend, Christian apocrypha, pagan mythology, and entirely invented supernatural figures in a language that alternates between archaic grandeur and modern simplicity. It was originally published with woodcuts by André Derain, and this illustrated version is the most beautiful way to read it — the integration of primitive-style illustration and modernist prose anticipates the Surrealist artists' books of the 1920s and 30s. L'Enchanteur pourrissant is not widely read outside France but is essential for understanding the mythological and folkloric dimension of Apollinaire's imagination that coexists with the Cubist-modernist dimension of the major poetry.
Where to start
Read the complete text straight through (it is not long — about sixty pages) in an edition that preserves the Derain woodcuts, if possible. The archaic prose of the opening, with its medieval-chronicle cadences, soon gives way to a more freely associative and fantastic mode; the best approach is to surrender to the strangeness rather than trying to follow a conventional narrative.
Complete L'Enchanteur pourrissant Book List
- 1Buy
L'Enchanteur pourrissant (1909)
Guillaume Apollinaire·1909·In the Gallimard collection of Apollinaire's prose, with the Derain woodcuts if possible (the Kahnweiler first edition of 1909 is the ideal text but now a collector's item; facsimile editions are available). In the Pléiade Œuvres en prose complètes, vol. 1. - 2Buy
Alcools (1913)
Guillaume Apollinaire·1913·The poetry that shares the same mythological imagination as L'Enchanteur pourrissant — 'Merlin et la Vieille Femme' in Alcools is a short verse treatment of the same Merlin subject, and reading both together shows the same imagination working in two different forms. - 3Buy
Le Poète assassiné (1916)
Guillaume Apollinaire·1916·The later prose fiction — reading L'Enchanteur pourrissant and Le Poète assassiné together gives the full range of Apollinaire's prose imagination, from mythological fantasy to semi-autobiographical modern fable. - 4Buy
La Mort le roi Artu
Anonymous (13th century)·1230·The thirteenth-century French prose account of Arthur's death and Merlin's role in the Arthurian tradition — the medieval source material that Apollinaire is reworking in L'Enchanteur pourrissant. - 5Buy
Les Chants de Maldoror
Comte de Lautréamont·1869·The most direct predecessor of L'Enchanteur's fantastic prose mode — both are works of extravagant, violent, supernatural excess that were discovered by the Surrealists as foundational texts.
L'Enchanteur pourrissant — Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Viviane (the Lady of the Lake) in the Arthurian tradition?
Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, is the enchantress who imprisons Merlin in the Arthurian tradition — she uses his own magic against him, sealing him in a tower of air or a rock or (as in Apollinaire) the trunk of an oak tree. Different versions of the legend offer different motivations: she was Merlin's student who turned the master's knowledge against him; she was protecting herself from his attempted seduction; she was fulfilling a larger magical necessity. In Apollinaire's version, the imprisonment takes on an almost existential quality — Merlin decomposes but does not die, speaking to visitors from inside his tree like an oracle, his rotting an image of consciousness persisting without a functioning body.
What is the significance of the Derain woodcuts?
André Derain (1880-1954) was a Fauvist painter and close friend of Apollinaire, part of the same Parisian bohemian circle as Picasso and Braque. The Derain woodcuts for L'Enchanteur pourrissant (1909) are primitive, stylized, and violent in their line — representing the supernatural figures of the text in a way that echoes African and Oceanic art, which the Fauvist and early Cubist painters were discovering at the same time. The combination of Derain's woodcut primitivism and Apollinaire's mythological-modernist prose is one of the first artist's books of the modern period and a preview of the Surrealist livres d'artiste tradition.
How does L'Enchanteur pourrissant relate to Apollinaire's later work?
L'Enchanteur pourrissant introduces themes and images that recur throughout Apollinaire's career: the dead or dying male figure whose consciousness persists (Merlin, Orpheus — who also appears in the text, singing in the underworld); the female enchantress who both imprisons and preserves; the mixture of supernatural traditions; the sense of poetry as an essentially magical activity. The text can be read as Apollinaire's manifesto of the poetic vocation — the poet as enchanter who decomposes without dying, speaking from inside his medium.
Is L'Enchanteur pourrissant available in English?
No complete English translation is currently in print. The text remains primarily available to French readers, or to English readers who can manage the French. The prose, while unusual in its mythological content, is generally more accessible than the more compressed verse of Alcools, and intermediate French readers can usually manage it. Several individual passages have been translated in anthologies of Apollinaire's prose.
What is the significance of the oak tree as Merlin's prison?
The oak has a long tradition of sacred significance in Celtic and druidic culture (the word 'druid' may derive from a Celtic root for 'oak'), and Apollinaire almost certainly chose the oak as Merlin's prison to emphasize the druidic-Celtic roots of the Arthurian legend that Christian and medieval retellings often suppress. Merlin imprisoned in an oak also suggests the classical tradition of the dryad — the tree-spirit — and more generally the idea of consciousness trapped in matter, spirit imprisoned in body. The 'rotting' of the enchanter is not death but a slow decomposition while consciousness persists, which makes the oak-prison a figure for the body that cannot simply die.
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