for the individual from his age—old imprisonment within the limitations imposed by the dimensions of time and space. It was now becoming quite possible—given the invention of radio—to "be" in two or more countries or continents simultaneously. One could "travel" over the globe without moving through space, and without taking any time. Apollinaire wrote of the sensation created by this ability to remain in Europe whilst "walking with" a friend in America—the feeling of being everywhere on the globe at once.[1]
The "shrinking" of the globe made the Renaissance concept of the vanishing—point—in which space stretches out to infinity——quite inappropriate. Equally inappropriate was the concept of the "ego" as an isolated, static point confronting this infinity of space. The Cubists stood things on their head: the world of objects was shrunk to the proportions of a small piece of wood, a guitar or something else which could be held quite easily in the hand, while it was the "ego" which occupied all available space, being apparently everywhere at once.
The idea of the "I's" capacity to swallow the entire globe was expressed in words in a poem of Apollinaire's:
- J'ai soif villes de France et d'Europe et du monde
- Venez toutes couler dans ma gorge profonde[2]
But this extraordinary enlargement of the "I" also implied its transcendence. It was only as a “we"—only in the process of communication with others—that one could exist simultaneously
on widely separated points on the globe. And in Cubist art, the
- ↑ Quoted in: John Berger, The Moment of Cubism, London 1969, p 9. Cendrar wrote of crossing the Atlantic solo by aeroplane, feeling the Milky Way around his neck and the globe's two hemispheres on his eyes—ibid p 7.
- ↑ Vendemaire, in: Roger Shattuck, Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire, p 132. The same poet writes of "drinking" the entire universe:
- "Mondes qui vous ressemblez et qui nous ressemblez
- Je vous ai bu et ne fus pas desalteré
- Mais je connus des lors quelle saveur a l'univers
- Je suis ivre d'avoir bu tout l'univers."—ibid p 138.
