'Les onze mille verges', livre secret, livre ouvert

A study of Apollinaire's 1906 pornographic novel 'Les Onze mille verges', his first published book, showing how the book's genre, its extreme and graphic subject matter and under-the-counter distribution were used by Apollinaire to keep readers at bay, then to dazzle us with tales of sex and violence. Under the mask of pornography and black humour, he wrote a privately coded angry and confessional text on his own upbringing and identity. For these reasons, the novel forms a dark diptych with his other rebel text, 'L'Enchanteur pourrissant'.