Le Pont Mirabeau

Written by the author of La Chanson du mal-aimé, this poem by Guillaume Apollinaire is once again inspired by the unhappy loves of this early 20th-century author. Here, it is the break-up with the painter Marie Laurencin that gave rise to this poem, the lament of an unhappy lover, centered on the theme of time passing and a love that is going away.

Built on the basis of four quatrains, this poem is interspersed with as many refrains. This fourfold repetition of the same two lines during the poem increases the accents of lament that this poem already bore, marking even more, if possible, the sadness of its author.

But beyond the use of this repetition, it is indeed the use of water, flowing under the Mirabeau Bridge that underscores the major theme of this poem. Indeed, all of Apollinaire's despair comes from the fact that, left aside by his love, even the passing of time does not manage to erase the pain he endures.
Thus, in each stanza, we find the use of words marking movement ("flows", "goes away", "go by"), and the immobility of the author's feelings in the face of this movement ("let us stay", "weary", "slow", "I remain").

A poem with a classical theme in poetry, the originality of its construction reveals and increases the empathy the reader feels for the pain endured by its author.