Everything about Guillaume Apollinaire totally explained
Guillaume Apollinaire (in French ) (
August 26,
1880 –
November 9,
1918) was a
French poet,
writer, and
art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother.
Among the foremost poets of the early 20th century, he's credited with coining the word
surrealism and writing one of the earliest works described as
surrealist, the
play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (
1917, later used as the basis for an
opera in
1947).
Two years after being wounded in
World War I, he died at 38 of the
Spanish flu during a
pandemic.
Life
Born
Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris Kostrowitzky / Wąż-Kostrowicki and raised speaking French, among other languages, he emigrated to France and adopted the name
Guillaume Apollinaire. His mother, born Angelica Kostrowicka, was a
Polish noblewoman born near
Navahrudak (now in
Belarus). His father is unknown but may have been Francesco Flugi d'Aspermont, a Swiss-Italian aristocrat who disappeared early from Apollinaire's life. He was partly educated in
Monaco.
Apollinaire was one of the most popular members of the artistic community of
Montparnasse in Paris. His friends and collaborators during that period included
Pablo Picasso,
Gertrude Stein,
Max Jacob,
André Salmon,
Marie Laurencin,
André Breton,
André Derain,
Faik Konica,
Blaise Cendrars,
Pierre Reverdy,
Jean Cocteau,
Erik Satie,
Ossip Zadkine,
Marc Chagall and
Marcel Duchamp. In
1911, he joined the
Puteaux Group, a branch of the
cubist movement.
On
September 7 of the same year, police arrested and jailed him on suspicion of stealing the
Mona Lisa, but released him a week later. Apollonaire then implicated his friend
Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning in the
art theft, but he was also exonerated.
He fought in
World War I and, in
1916, received a serious shrapnel wound to the temple (see photo). He wrote
Les Mamelles de Tirésias while recovering from this wound. During this period he coined the word
surrealism in the program notes for
Jean Cocteau and
Erik Satie's
ballet Parade, first performed on
18 May 1917. He also published an artistic manifesto,
L'Esprit nouveau et les poètes.
Apollinaire's status as a literary critic is most famous and influential in his recognition of the
Marquis de Sade, whose works were for a long time obscure, yet arising in popularity as an influence upon the
Dada and
Surrealist art movements going on in Montparnasse at the beginning of the twentieth century as, "The freest spirit that ever existed."
The war-weakened Apollinaire died of
influenza during the
Spanish Flu pandemic of
1918. He was interred in the
Le Père Lachaise Cemetery,
Paris.
Works
Apollinaire's first collection of
poetry was
L'enchanteur pourrissant (
1909), but
Alcools (
1913) established his reputation. The poems, influenced in part by the
Symbolists, juxtapose the old and the new, combining traditional poetic forms with modern imagery. In
1913, Apollinaire published the
essay Les Peintres cubistes on the
cubist painters, a movement which he helped to define. He also coined the term
orphism to describe a tendency towards absolute abstraction in the paintings of
Robert Delaunay and others.
In 1907, Apollinaire wrote the well-known
erotic novel,
The Eleven Thousand Rods (Les Onze Mille Verges). Officially banned in France until
1970, various printings of it circulated widely for many years. Apollinaire never publicly acknowledged authorship of the novel. Another erotic novel attributed to him was
The Exploits of a Young Don Juan (Les exploits d'un jeune Don Juan), in which the 15-year-old hero fathers three children with various members of his entourage, including his aunt. The book was made into a movie in
1987.
Shortly after his death,
Calligrammes, a collection of his
concrete poetry (poetry in which typography and layout adds to the overall effect), was published.
In his youth Apollinaire lived for a short while in
Belgium, but mastered the
Walloon language sufficiently to write poetry through that medium, some of which has survived.
Selected bibliography
Poetry
- Le bestiaire ou le cortège d’Orphée, 1911
- Alcools, 1913
- Vitam impendere amori', 1917
- Calligrammes, poèmes de la paix et de la guerre 1913-1916, 1918 (published shortly after Apollinaire's death)
- Il y a..., 1925
- Ombre de mon amour, poems addressed to Louise de Coligny-Châtillon, 1947
- Poèmes secrets à Madeleine, pirated edition, 1949
- Le Guetteur mélancolique, previously unpublished works, 1952
- Poèmes à Lou, 1955
- Soldes, previously unpublished works, 1985
- Et moi aussi je suis peintre, album of drawings for Calligrammes, from a private collection, published 2006
Prose
Mirely ou le Petit Trou pas cher, 1900
"Que faire?",
Les Onze Mille Verges ou les amours d'un hospodar, 1907
L'enchanteur pourrissant, 1909
L'Hérèsiarque et Cie (short story collection), 1910
Les exploits d’un jeune Don Juan, 1911
La Rome des Borgia, 1914
La Fin de Babylone - L'Histoire romanesque 1/3, 1914
Les Trois Don Juan - L'Histoire romanesque 2/3, 1915
Le poète assassiné, 1916
La femme assise, 1920
Les Épingles (short story collection), 1928
Plays and screenplays
Les Mamelles de Tirésias, play, 1917
La Bréhatine, screenplay (collaboration with André Billy), 1917
Couleurs du temps, 1918
Casanova, published 1952
Articles, essays, etc.
Le Théâtre Italien, illustrated encyclopedia, 1910
Pages d'histoire, chronique des grands siècles de France, chronicles, 1912
Méditations esthétiques. Les peintres cubistes, 1913
La Peinture moderne, 1913
L'Antitradition futuriste, manifeste synthèse, 1913
Case d'Armons, 1915
L'esprit nouveau et les poètes, 1918
Le Flâneur des Deux Rives, chronicles, 1918Further Information
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