Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) was a great French lyric poet. A leading figure in the avant-garde before World War I, he produced criticism and theortical writings that have significantly influenced esthetic movements from cubism to those of the present day.

Guillaume Apollinaire was the pseudonym of Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitsky, the illegitimate son of an Italian army officer and a young Polish noblewoman. He was born in Rome on Aug. 26, 1880, and brought up in various towns in southern France where his mother happened to be sojourning. In 1899 Apollinaire went to Paris to live and, without money or diplomas, had difficulty. However, between odd jobs as a literary hack, tutor, bank clerk, and journalist, he managed to travel on the Continent and make two trips to London. Also he had a few love affairs that later figured in his poetry.

The most important aspect of Apollinaire's first years in Paris was his encounter with writers and artists. Jovial and full of enthusiasm, he became the welcome companion of the young modernists in the Bohemia of the day. He helped found little reviews and wrote articles defending what later was dubbed cubism. He wrote fiction, too, and poems that appeared in magazines, ultimately published in 1913 in a volume entitled Alcools (Alcohols). The originality of these poems lies more in the subtle handling of image and rhythm to express emotion than in technical innovation. Yet in correcting the proofs, Apollinaire rubbed out all punctuation and placed at the head of the collection a quite recent poem called "Zone," which is a sort of manifesto of modernism and, in form, less orthodox than the others.

When war broke out in 1914, Apollinaire enlisted and found in combat new themes of poetic inspiration. Wounded in 1916, he was sent back to Paris, where the generation of future Dadaists and surrealists greeted him as a chief. In the following year the presentation of The Breasts of Tiresias, a burlesque play very much in the modern mood, and a lecture on the "new spirit" gave him considerable notoriety.

His second volume of verse, Calligrammes, appeared in 1918. Here Apollinaire demonstrates in metrical innovations the modernism which he preached for poetry in "Zone." There are poems made of snatches of conversation, of enumeration, and of simple notation which infuse daily banalities with lyrical magic. There are the "ideograms," which give the volume its title—"visual" poems which imitate, in typography and in placement on the page, the subject matter.

The year 1918 was one of fulfillment for Apollinaire as an artist and a person. Hitherto unfortunate in love, particularly with the painter Marie Laurencin, he found happiness with Jacqueline Kolb, the "beautiful redhead" of the last poem in Calligrammes. They married in May. Six months later, at the age of 38, Apollinaire died of influenza in Paris.

Further Reading

A bilingual edition of Alcools was published in 1965 by the University of California Press. Francis Steegmuller provided the fullest biography, Apollinaire, Poet among the Painters (1963). Scott Bates, Guillaume Apollinaire (1967), enhanced by a bibliography and appendixes, is primarily devoted to an analysis of the poetry but is hampered by exclusive use of English translation. See also Marcel Raymond, From Baudelaire to Surrealism (1933, trans. 1950).

Additional Sources

Adlard, John., One evening of light mist in London: the story of Annie Playden and Guillaume Apollinaire, Edinburgh: Tragara Press, 1980.

Couffignal, Robert., Apollinaire, University: University of Alabama Press, 1975.

Steegmuller, Francis, Apollinaire: poet among the painters, Boston, MA: Nonpareil Books, 1980, 1963; New York: Penguin Books, 1986. □

Apollinaire, Guillaume ( Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky) (1880–1918). French poet and art critic, a major figure in the avant-garde world of Paris in the early 20th century. He was born in Rome, the illegitimate son of a high-class Polish courtesan, Olga Kostrowitzky, whose surname he used until 1902, when he adopted his pseudonym; his father was probably an Italian nobleman, although Apollinaire liked to hint he was the offspring of a high-ranking clergyman. He was brought up in Monte Carlo and received his education in French. From about 1900 he lived in Paris, where he earned his living mainly with journalism, especially art criticism—he was, indeed, one of the prototypes of the modern journalistic critic, his writing containing much that is superficial and gossipy. His importance stems not so much from the quality of his writing as from his brilliance as a propagandist on behalf of those artists he most admired: John Golding writes that ‘no other critic has ever helped and encouraged such an impressive number of gifted and, for the most part, unknown young painters.’ In particular he championed Picasso (his first substantial articles, in 1905, were on him) and later the Cubists in general (including the Orphists, whose name he coined). Among the other artists whose reputations he either established or consolidated were Chagall, de Chirico, Derain, Matisse, and Rousseau. He was also influential on Dada (his friend Marcel Duchamp's interest in visual punning was partly inspired by Apollinaire's love of jest and linguistic acrobatics) and on Surrealism (he coined the term in 1917 and his suggestion that artists should explore ‘interior universes’ stimulated André Breton, who dedicated the first Surrealist manifesto to his memory). The less impressive aspects of his career include his failure to understand Brancusi and his overrating of Marie Laurencin (his lover), whom he placed on the same level as Picasso.

Apollinaire enlisted in the French army in 1914 and was discharged in 1916 after receiving a head wound; weakened by this, he died of influenza two years later. The only book on art he published in his lifetime was Méditations esthétiques: Les peintres cubistes (1913), but a collected edition of his criticism appeared in 1960 under the title Guillaume Apollinaire: Chroniques d'Art 1902–18 (an English translation was published in 1972 as Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews 1902–18). John Golding sums up his position in the history of art as follows: ‘no other man reflected so completely every facet of the artistic temper of his age. He was a weather-vane which responded to the slightest intellectual vibration; he was a net which caught and gathered up every new aesthetic trend. Artists loved his company, and he made them aware of themselves and of each other. Above all he was a cardinal figure in creating the artistic climate of Paris early this century—a climate in which anything and everything was thought possible. It was this belief that made the early twentieth century one of the most exciting periods in the entire history of the visual arts, and Apollinaire, for all his failings, remains its spokesman and its most representative critic’ (‘ Guillaume Apollinaire: The Painters' Friend’ in Visions of the Modern, 1994).

Apollinaire, Guillaume (b Rome, 26 Aug. 1880; d Paris, 9 Nov. 1918). French poet and art critic. The illegitimate son of a high-class Polish-Russian courtesan, he was originally called Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, but he adopted his pseudonym in 1902, about two years after he settled in Paris; his father was probably an Italian nobleman, although Apollinaire liked to hint he was the offspring of a high-ranking clergyman. In addition to being a major poet, he was ‘the most influential art critic writing in France during the decade before the outbreak of war in 1914…a cardinal figure in creating the artistic climate of Paris early in this century—a climate in which anything and everything was thought possible’ ( John Golding, Visions of the Modern, 1994). He earned his living mainly with journalism and was one of the prototypes of the modern critic, his writing containing much that is superficial and gossipy. His importance stems not so much from the quality of his writing as from his brilliance as a propagandist on behalf of those artists he most admired. In particular he championed Picasso (his first substantial articles, in 1905, were on him) and later the Cubists in general (including the Orphists, whose name he coined). Among the other artists whose reputations he either established or consolidated were Chagall, de Chirico, Derain, Matisse, and Henri Rousseau. He was also influential on Dada (his friend Marcel Duchamp's interest in visual punning was partly inspired by Apollinaire's love of jest and linguistic acrobatics) and on Surrealism (he coined the term in 1917 and his suggestion that artists should explore ‘interior universes’ stimulated André Breton, who dedicated the first Surrealist manifesto to his memory). In an entirely different artistic context, he became briefly notorious in 1911 when the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre and he spent several days in police custody on false suspicion of being involved in the crime. Apollinaire was wounded in the head serving in the French army in 1916; weakened by this, he died of influenza two years later.

Apollinaire, Guillaume (1880–1918). French poet and art critic. Apollinaire was ‘the most influential art critic writing in France during the decade before the outbreak of war in 1914… a cardinal figure in creating the artistic climate of Paris early in this century—a climate in which anything and everything was thought possible’ (John Golding, Visions of the Modern, 1994). He earned his living mainly with journalism and was one of the prototypes of the modern critic, his writing containing much that is superficial and gossipy. His importance stems not so much from the quality of his writing as from his brilliance as a propagandist on behalf of those artists he most admired. In particular he championed Picasso (his first substantial articles, in 1905, were on him) and later the Cubists in general (including the Orphists, whose name he coined). Among the other artists whose reputations he either established or consolidated were Chagall, de Chirico, Derain, Matisse, and Henri Rousseau. He was also influential on Dada (his friend Marcel Duchamp's interest in visual punning was partly inspired by Apollinaire's love of jest and linguistic acrobatics) and on Surrealism (he coined the term in 1917 and his suggestion that artists should explore ‘interior universes’ stimulated André Breton, who dedicated the first Surrealist manifesto to his memory). Apollinaire was wounded in the head serving in the French army in 1916; weakened by this, he died of influenza two years later.

Guillaume Apollinaire , 1880–1918, French poet. He was christened Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky. Apollinaire was a leader in the restless period of technical innovation and experimentation in the arts during the early 20th cent. Influenced by the symbolist poets of the previous generation, he developed a casual, lyrical poetic style characterized by a blend of modern and traditional images and verse techniques. His best-known lyrical poems are collected in Alcools (1913) and Calligrammes (1918). A friend of many avant-garde artists, including Picasso and Braque, Apollinaire is credited with introducing cubism with his book Les Peintres cubistes (1913, tr. The Cubist Painters, 1949). Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1918), his only play, was one of the earliest examples of surrealism .

Bibliography: See biographies by F. Steegmuller (1963, repr. 1971) and M. Davies (1964); studies by L. C. Breunig (1969), K. Samaltanos (1984), T. Mathews (1988), and S. Bates (1967, rev. ed. 1989).

Apollinaire, Guillaume (1880–1918) ( Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky) French experimental poet, essayist, and playwright. One of the most extraordinary artists of early 20th-century Paris, his Peintres Cubistes (1913) was the first attempt to define cubism. He also experimented with typography in his poetry collection Calligrammes (1918). His masterpiece was the wholly unpunctuated Alcools (1913), in which he relived the wild romances of his youth.