Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

[KALKI]

Guillaume Apollinaire (French: [ɡijom apɔlinɛʁ]; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918), born Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.

He is considered one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, as well as one of the forefathers of surrealism. He is credited with coining the word "surrealism", and writing one of the earliest works described as surrealist, the play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917, used as the basis for a 1947 opera).

Two years after being wounded in World War I, he died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 at age 38.


Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki was born in Rome, Italy and raised speaking French, Italian and Polish.[1] He emigrated to France in his late teens and adopted the name Guillaume Apollinaire. His mother, born Angelika Kostrowicka, was a Polish noblewoman born near Navahrudak, Grodno Governorate (present-day Belarus). His maternal grandfather was a general in the Russian Imperial Army, killed in the Crimean War. Apollinaire's father is unknown but may have been Francesco Costantino Camillo Flugi d'Aspermont (born 1835-), a Graubünden aristocrat who disappeared early from Apollinaire's life. Francesco Flugi von Aspermont was a descendant of Conradin Flugi d'Aspermont (1787-1874) a poet who wrote in ladin puter (the language spoken in Engiadina ota), and perhaps also of the Minnesänger Oswald von Wolkenstein (born ~1377, died 2 August 1445) [see Les ancêtres Grisons du poète Guillaume Apollinaire, Généanet].

Apollinaire eventually moved from Rome to Paris and became one of the most popular members of the artistic community of Paris (both in Montmartre and Montparnasse). His friends and collaborators in that period included Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Max Jacob, André Salmon, André Breton, André Derain, Faik Konica, Blaise Cendrars, Pierre Reverdy, Alexandra Exter, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Ossip Zadkine, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp and Jean Metzinger. He became romantically involved with Marie Laurencin, who is often identified as his muse.

Late 1909 or early 1910, Metzinger painted a cubist portrait of Apollinaire. In his Vie anecdotique, 16 October 1911, the poet proudly writes: "I am honoured to be the first model of a Cubist painter, Jean Metzinger, for a portrait exhibited in 1910 at the Salon des Indépendants." It was not only the first Cubist portrait, according to Apollinaire, but it was also the first great portrait of the poet exhibited in public, prior to others by Louis Marcoussis, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso and Mikhail Larionov.

Apollinaire wrote the preface for the first Cubist exposition outside of Paris; VIII Salon des Indépendants, Brussels, 1911. In an open-handed preface to the catalogue of the Brussels Indépendants show, Apollinaire stated that these 'new painters' accepted the name of Cubists which has been given to them. He described Cubism as a new manifestation and high art [manifestation nouvelle et très élevée de l'art], not a system that constrains talent [non point un système contraignant les talents], and the differences which characterize not only the talents but even the styles of these artists are an obvious proof of this


Jean Metzinger, 1911, Etude pour le portrait de Guillaume Apollinaire, graphite on paper, 48 x 31.2 cm, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
In 1911, he joined the Puteaux Group, a branch of the cubist movement.

On 7 September 1911, police arrested and jailed him on suspicion of aiding and abetting the theft of the Mona Lisa and a number of Egyptian statuettes from the Louvre, but released him a week later. These thefts were committed by Vincenzo Peruggia, born in Italy, to whom Apollinaire gave shelter, and Apollinaire voluntarily surrendered a number of stolen statuettes left behind by him. Apollinaire implicated his friend Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of Mona Lisa, but he was also exonerated. He once called for the Louvre to be burnt down. Apollinaire was active as a journalist and art critic for Matin, Intransigeant, and Paris Journal.

He fought in World War I and, in 1916, received a serious shrapnel wound to the temple, from which he would never fully recover. He wrote Les Mamelles de Tirésias while recovering from this wound. During this period he coined the word surrealism in the programme notes for Jean Cocteau's 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 Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.

[KALKI]

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) French poet, novelist, dramatist, and art and literary critic. He became a leader of the avant-garde in Paris in the early 20th century and is believed to have coined the term surrealist. He was christened Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky.

He used the Shakuntala theme in his poem in La Chanson du Mal-Aime:

" L'époux royal de Sacontale
Las de vaincre se réjouit
Quand il la retrouva plus pâle
D'attente et d'amour yeux pâlis
Caressant sa gazelle mâle."

"The royal spouse of Sacontale (Shakuntala)
Weary of victories, rejoices
When he finds her paler
From waiting and eyes pale from love,
Petting her male gazelle."


(source: The India I Love - By Marie-Simone Renou p. 45-46).