See also: Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire , pseudonym of Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris de Wąż-Kostrowitcky (August 26th 1880, Rome - November 9th 1918, Paris) is one of principal the Poète S of French expression of the first decades of the 20th century, author in particular of the Pont Mirabeau . He also writes erotic news and novels. He practices the Calligramme (term of its invention). He is the cantor of all the artistic avant-gardes, in particular the Cubisme, poet and theorist of the new Spirit , and precursor of the Surréalisme of which he forged the name.

Biography

He is born in 1880 in Rome from a mother resulting from the Polish nobility, Angelica Kostrowicka, and of unknown father, perhaps an Italian officer. It arrives in 1887 at Monaco, then continues studies with the colleges of Cannes and Nice. In 1899, it spends the summer in the small Walloon village of Stavelot, a stay left with “the wood bell”: not being able to pay the hotel bill where Apollinaire resides with his brother and his mother, the family must leave the city in secrecy and at dawn. The Walloon episode durably fertilizes its imagination and its creation. Thus to this time the memory goes back from the festive dances of this region (“It is the maclotte which hops…”), in Marie , that of the High Fagnes, as well as the loan with the dialect Wallon.

In 1901 and 1902, he is tutor in a German family. He falls in love with controlling English Annie Playden, who will not cease getting rid of it. It is the “Rhenish” period whose its collections carry the trace ( Lorelei , Schinderhannes ). When Annie leaves the German family, it in vain follows it as far as England. To flee it definitively, it leaves for America in 1904. The poet will celebrate his relation with Annie and the pain of the rupture in many poems of which Annie and the Song of badly-liked .

Between 1902 and 1907, he works for various stock exchange organizations and starts to publish tales and poems in reviews. In 1907, it meets the painter Marie Laurencin, with whom it will maintain a chaotic and stormy relation. It decides to live of its feather. It binds friendship with Picasso (it had said to him besides: “you see, me also I am painter” because of his work on the calligrammes), Derain, Edmond-Marie Poullain, of Vlaminck and the customs Rousseau, is made a name of poet, journalist, lecturer and of criticism of Article In September 1911, suspected in the flight of the Joconde in Louvre, he is imprisoned during one week with the Prison of Health; this experiment will mark it. In 1913, it publishes Alcools , nap of its poetic work since 1898.

Little before engaging in the French Army in December 1914, it falls in love with Louise de Coligny-Châtillon, met in Nice, which it calls “Lou”. But the young woman will like it never, or at least, as he would like it; although it joins it with the regiment during one week (he will know in its arms a violent erotism which will mark his feather forever), they break in March 1915. It leaves with the 38e regiment field artillery for the face Champagne in April 1915. In spite of the vicissitudes of the face, he writes as soon as there it can to hold and remain poet ( Case of Futchels , and an abundant correspondence with Lou, Madeleine and its many friends of which André Salmon). The war is for him the occasion to declare “true French”, to serve his fatherland. In 1915, in a train, it meets Madeleine Pagès to whom it will become engaged. Transferred on its request to the 96e regiment from infantry with the rank from second lieutenant in November 1915, it is wounded with the head by a glare of shell on March 17th, 1916, whereas it reads the Mercure de France in his trench. Evacuated on Paris, it is trepanned on May 10th, 1916. After a long convalescence, it goes back gradually to work, makes play its part the Udders of Tirésias (subtitled surrealist drama) in June 1917 and publishes Calligrammes in 1918. He marries Jacqueline (“pretty russet-red” the éponyme of the poem) with whom one must of many posthumous publications.

Weakened by his wound, Guillaume Apollinaire dies on November 9th, 1918 of the Spanish Grippe. He is buried with the Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise in Paris whereas, in the streets, the Parisian ones celebrate the end of the war.

Its name is quoted on the walls of the the Pantheon of Paris in the list of the writers died under the flags during the war 1914-1918.

Glances on Work

Influenced by poetry Symbolist in his youth, admired of alive sound by the young poets who formed the core of the surrealist group later (Breton, Aragon, Soupault - it is it should be noted that Apollinaire is the inventor of the term “Surréalisme”), it very early revealed an originality which frees it from any influence of school and which did of him one of the precursors of the literary revolution of first half of the 20th century.

Apollinaire is characterized by a subtle play between modernity and tradition, by a constant formal renewal (verse free, monostiche, lexical creation, mythological syncretism), and by an impregnation of all this beginning of century, period of revival for arts and the writing, with the emergence of the Cubisme in the Années 1910, of the Italian Futurisme in 1909 and of the Dadaïsme in 1916. Apollinaire maintains the bonds of friendship with many artists and the assistance in their artistic course (" the phalange nouvelle").