Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire (Jan Kostrowicki)

Photograph of Guillaume Apollinaire in spring 1916 after his shrapnel wound to the temple.
Born Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki
26 August 1880
Rome, Italy
Died 9 November 1918 (aged 38)
Paris, France
Occupation Poet, Writer, Art critic
Signature

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.

Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, as well as one of the most impassioned defenders of Cubism and a forefather of Surrealism. He is credited for adopting the term Cubism (1911) to describe the new art movement, and for coining the terms "Orphism" (1912) and "Surrealism" (1917). He wrote 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.

Life

Kostrowicki family's coat-of-arms
Apollinaire (left) and André Rouveyre in 1914.
Apollinaire, 1902, Cologne

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[2] 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, Henri Rousseau, 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.[3]

In 1911, he joined the Puteaux Group, a branch of the Cubist movement soon to be known as the Section d'Or. The opening address of the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or—the most important pre-World War I Cubist exhibition—was given by Apollinaire.[4][5]

La Joconde est Retrouvée (Mona Lisa is Found), Le Petit Parisien, Numéro 13559, 13 décembre 1913

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,[1][6] 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.[7] Apollinaire was active as a journalist and art critic for Matin, Intransigeant, and Paris Journal. He once called for the Louvre to be burnt down.

Cubism

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

Apollinaire wrote the preface for the first Cubist exposition outside of Paris; VIII Salon des Indépendants, Brussels, 1911.[8] 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.[9][10]

Orphism

The term Orphism was coined by Apollinaire at the Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912, referring to the works of František Kupka. During his lecture at the Section d'Or exhibit Apollinaire presented three of Kupka's abstract works as perfect examples of pure painting, as anti-figurative as music.[11]

In Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques (1913) Apollinaire described Orphism as "the art of painting new totalities with elements that the artist does not take from visual reality, but creates entirely by himself. [...] An Orphic painter's works should convey an untroubled aesthetic pleasure, but at the same time a meaningful structure and sublime significance. According to Apollinaire Orphism represented a move towards a completely new art-form, much as music was to literature.[12]

Surrealism

The term Surrealism was first used by Apollinaire concerning the ballet Parade in 1917. The poet Arthur Rimbaud wanted to be a visionary, to perceive the hidden side of things within the realm of another reality. In continuity with Rimbaud, Apollinaire went in search of a hidden and mysterious reality. The term "surrealism" appeared for the first time in March 1917 (Chronologie de Dada et du surréalisme, 1917) in a letter by Apollinaire to Paul Dermée: "All things considered, I think in fact it is better to adopt surrealism that supernaturalism that I first used" [Tout bien examiné, je crois en effet qu'il vaut mieux adopter surréalisme que surnaturalisme que j'avais d'abord employé].[13]

He described Parade as "a kind of surrealism" (une sorte de surréalisme) when he wrote the program note the following week, thus coining the word three years before Surrealism emerged as an art movement in Paris.[14]

World War I

Apollinaire fought in World War I and, in 1916, received a serious shrapnel wound to the temple, from which he would never fully recover.[2] 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.[2] He was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.

Works

A Calligramme by Guillaume Apollinaire[15]

In 1900 he wrote his first pornographic novel, Mirely, ou le petit trou pas cher, which was eventually lost.[2] 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, Méditations Esthétiques 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.

Muse Inspiring the Poet. Portrait of Apollinaire and Marie Laurencin, by Henri Rousseau, 1909
Apollinaire's grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery

In 1907, Apollinaire wrote the well-known erotic novel, The Eleven Thousand Rods (Les Onze Mille Verges).[16][17] 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.[18][19] Apollinaire's gift to Picasso of the original 1907 manuscript was one of the artist's most prized possessions.[20] The book was made into a movie in 1987.

Shortly after his death, Mercure de France published Calligrammes, a collection of his concrete poetry (poetry in which typography and layout adds to the overall effect), and more orthodox, though still modernist poems informed by Apollinaire's experiences in the First World War and in which he often used the technique of automatic writing.

In his youth Apollinaire lived for a short while in Belgium, mastering the Walloon dialect sufficiently to write poetry through that medium, some of which has survived.

Poetry

Prose

Plays

Articles

References and sources

References
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Газетные "старости" (Архив)". Starosti.ru. 1907-01-09. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 John Baxter (10 February 2009). Carnal Knowledge: Baxter's Concise Encyclopedia of Modern Sex. HarperCollins. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-06-087434-6. Retrieved 24 December 2011.
  3. ↑ Jean Metzinger, 1910, Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire, Christie's Paris, 2007
  4. ↑ La Section d'Or, Numéro spécial, 9 Octobre 1912
  5. ↑ The History and Chronology of Cubism, p. 5
  6. ↑ Un homme de lettres connu est arrêté comme recéleur, Le Petit Parisien, 9 September 1911 (in French)
  7. ↑ Time Magazine, Art's Great Whodunit: The Mona Lisa Theft of 1911, Richard Lacayo, April 27, 2009
  8. ↑ Préface, in Catalogue du 8e Salon annuel du Cercle d'art Les Indépendants, Musée moderne de Bruxelles, 10 June - 3 July 1911
  9. ↑ The Cubist Epoch, Douglas Cooper, 1971, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y.
  10. ↑ Chronique d'un musée: Musée royal des beaux-arts de Belgique, Bruxelles, Françoise Roberts-Jones
  11. ↑ The Cubist Painters (Les Peintres Cubistes: Méditations Esthétiques), Guillaume Apollinaire, 1913, translation by Peter Read, University of California Press, 25 oct. 2004
  12. ↑ Hajo Düchting, Orphism, MoMA, From Grove Art Online, 2009 Oxford University Press
  13. ↑ Jean-Paul Clébert, Dictionnaire du surréalisme, A.T.P. & Le Seuil, Chamalières, p. 17, 1996
  14. ↑ Hargrove, Nancy (1998). "The Great Parade: Cocteau, Picasso, Satie, Massine, Diaghilev—and T.S. Eliot". Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 31 (1)
  15. ↑ Action: Cahiers Individualistes De Philosophie Et D’art, October 1920, Blue Mountain Project, Princeton University
  16. ↑ Patrick J. Kearney, A History of Erotic Literature, 1982, pp.163-4
  17. ↑ Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, The last taboo: women and body hair, Manchester University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-7190-7500-9, p.94
  18. ↑ Neil Cornwell, The absurd in literature, Manchester University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-7190-7410-X, pp.86-87
  19. ↑ Roger Shattuck, The banquet years: the arts in France, 1885-1918: Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie, Guillaume Apollinaire, Doubleday, 1961, p.268
  20. ↑ Golding, John (1994). Visions Of the Modern. p. 109. ISBN 0520087925.
Sources

See also

External links

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