Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire, pseudonym of Wilhelm Apollinaire de Kostrowitsky (1880-1918), French poet and novelist, born in Rome, and educated at the Lycée Saint-Charles in Monaco. He edited a number of small reviews, including the periodical Les Soirées de Paris (1913-1918). He became friendly with a group of young painters, including Dufy and Picasso, and this led him to write a pioneering study, The Cubist Painters (1913; trans. 1949). Other prose works include a symbolic novel based on his experiences as a soldier in World War I, Le Poète Assassiné (1916; The Poet Assassinated, 1923), and the drama Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias, written 1903; pub. 1918). Referring to the latter in the introduction as “Surrealist”, Apollinaire is credited with the first use of this term. His reputation stands by his two volumes of poetry, Alcools (1913; trans. 1964), a lyric masterpiece inspired by his unrequited love for an English woman, Annie Pleyden, and Calligrammes (1918), in which he experimented with pictorial typography.