Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) was a French writer whose work inspired the surrealist movement and credited for coining the word "surrealism." He was famous for Alcools, considered to be his masterpiece.
Early Life of Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzki was born in Rome on August 26, 1880, with Polish descent. Little is known about him and his family, mainly because he deliberately kept the facts about his life vague. From his own accounts his father was an Italian church official and his mother a Polish aristocrat. When he migrated to Paris, he adopted the name Guillaume Apollinaire.
Apollinaire and the Cubist Movement
When he was 20 years old, Apollinaire became known as an outspoken supporter of new 'modernist' ideas rejecting traditional forms of poetry and literature. In 1911, he joined a group involved in the Cubist movement. His work often reveals a basic lyricism at its roots, however, its bizarre and Symbolist elements have affinities with the influence of the Cubist school in painting, and a move toward more spontaneous art forms.
Paris Artistic Community
Apollinaire was one of the most popular members of the artistic community of Montparnasse in Paris. His friends and collaborators during that period included prominent artists and writers of the period like Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Faik Konica, Jean Cocteau, Mark Chagall, Eric Satie and Marcel Duchamp.
Apollinaire the Writer
Apollinaire's first literary success came with the prose poem "The Decaying Magician," published when he was 29. The poem features fantastical elements for which his work became known. His masterpiece, Alcools, followed four years later. It contains his famous poem 'Song of the Poorly Loved."
Apollinaire enlisted during the First World War. He was wounded several times and eventually discharged, but while recuperating he wrote some of his best work, including The Poet Assassinated, a partly autobiographical novel.
In 1917 Apollinaire wrote the play The Breasts of Tirésias, which he coined the term 'surrealist' – an attempt to express the workings of his mind. His Modernist manifesto L'Esprit nouveau et les poètes was published after his death.
He died of influenza during the Spanish Flu pandemic at the age of 38, on November 9, 1918. He was interred in the Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Works by Guillaume Apollinaire
- L'Enchanteur Pourissant, 1909 (The Decaying Magician), 1909
- The Heresiarch and Co., 1910
- Le Bestiare, 1911
- Alcools, 1913
- Cubist Painters, 1913
- The Poet Assassinated, 1916
- Les Mamelles de Tirésias, 1918 (The Breasts of Tirésias)
- Calligrammes, 1918
- L'Esprit nouveau et les poètes, 1946 (The New Spirit and the Poets)
Sources:
Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002
Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994
Illustrated Biographical Dictionary, edited by John Clark, Chancellor Press, 1994
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