Some speak as if all cubism had been a mode of showing an object from four sides.
Apollinaire saw more deeply: 'The canvas should present that essential unity which
alone can elicit ecstasy.' He understood that the unity of a work depends on its in-
ternal relations, and consequently why the cubists were led to deny the claims of
representation in favor of structure. His own sense of poetical structure had been
liberated by reading Mallarmé, especially perhaps by A Throw of Dice -- published
in 1897, the year before Apollinaire arrived in Paris at the age of 18 -- a subtle, intri-
cate, inexhaustible poem, in which words tumble down the page typographically
as though thrown in a game of dice. The cubists' adventure was understood by
Apollinaire; he moved among them as an equal -- experimental, 'modern,' lyrical
-- animated by feelings identical with their own: 'O inventive joy, there are men
who see with these eyes!' Whatever its faults, The Cubist Painters still breathes,
nearly forty years later, with the immediacy of life. But Apollinaire's enthusiasm
was not blind; he saw cubism's inner structure with great clarity for his time; he
wrote his book after discussions with the painters; and many of his generalizations
hold true, not only of cubism, but of the various modes of 'abstract' painting that
keep appearing again and again, in 'waves,' as a scholar has recently noted. Apolli-
naire was able to say, for instance, that cubism was 'the art of painting new structures
borrowed not from the reality of sight [réalité de vision], but from the reality of in-
sight [réalité de connaissance].' He adds, 'All men have a sense of this interior re-
ality.' Another passage finds him speaking of 'a pure art,''a structure which is self-
evident,' anticipating an aesthetic notion of A. N. Whitehead's. Certainly The
Cubist Painters might have been more perfect, perhaps as beautiful as Apollinaire's
own poetry, if he seemingly had not been in a hurry to record the moment, before it

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