Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) was born Guillelmus Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky. He worked as a bank employee in Paris, founded the review journal Le festin d’esope, and served as art critic for Le petit bleu. He served in the French army infantry beginning in 1914, until he was wounded in 1916. He passed away in 1918.

Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire

by Guillaume Apollinaire

Translated from the French by Roger Shattuck

When Guillaume Apollinaire died in 1918 at the age of thirty-eight, as the result of a war wound, he was already known as one of the most original and important poets of his time. He had led the migration of Bohemian Paris across the city from Montmartre to Montparnasse; he had helped formulate the principles of Cubism, having written one of the first books on the subject, and coined the word “Surrealist”; and he had demonstrated in his own work those innovations we have come to associate with the most vital investigations of the avant-garde.…
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The leader of the Parisian avant-garde, the champion of cubism, simultaneism, futurism and every other -ism, the poet who embraced the new technologies and exploded poetic form and figure…
—Stephen Romer, The Guardian
The young and very ferocious are going to ‘understand’ Guillaume Apollinaire.
—Ezra Pound
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