Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) created ›Il Pleut‹ as part of a larger collection of works that were later published in 1918. He was a polish / french artist, writer and poet that is known for his visual poetry (he called them calligrammes) from the early 20th century. He fought in the first world war and it is said that he processed his experience in this poem.
›Il Pleut‹ by Guillaume Apollinaire
›Il Pleut‹ takes shape in the form of a rain shower – exploring the theme of rain in the poem itself and in its form. Each letter is a droplet (›gouttelette‹) and every stream of rain is one of the five verses that make up the poem. My goal was to find a new reinterpreted form that makes the poem accessible for a modern medium and audience.
This rendition of Apollinaire’s visual poem is an attempt at translating the rain metaphor into the web. It lets the user become the rainmaker who laboriously has to click through the poem letter by letter, word for word and verse by verse. As each word is complete the letters fall from the screen like the rain drops in the original poem, feeding the body of water at the bottom of the viewport.