Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918)

Guillaume Apollinaire is one of the most widely read and influential of modern French poets. He was born either in Rome, where he was baptized, or in Monaco, where he was educated at the Lycee Saint-Charles. Quintessentially modern, his reputation rests principally on two volumes of poems-Alcools (1913) and Calligrammes (1918), which broke with the traditions of nineteenth-century poetry in both form and content. Apollinaire introduced free verse, eliminated punctuation, and even wrote poems in the form of pictures to express the dynamism of the new twentieth century. Apollinaire wrote novels, short stories, and plays as well as poetry. He wrote The Cubist Painters (1913), which first defined the nature of cubism. In addition, he edited for the Bibliotheque des Curieux erotic books of repute and helped to catalogue the repository of forbidden books in the Bibliotheque Nationale. He became the friend of great cubists, including Picasso and Braque. He died in the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. (Bowker Author Biography) Born on August 26, 1880 in Rome, Guillaume Apollinaire epitomizes the idea of the Bohemian life. His mother led a raucous life, running up gambling debts and forcing him to assume the identity of a Russian Prince to support her lifestyle. At that time, there was much speculation regarding his unknown father's identity. Appolinaire socialized with many avant-garde artists, including Picasso and Braque, and strongly influenced many artistic styles including cubism, dadaism, and surrealism; the latter a term he invented in his play The Breasts of Tiresias. Appolinaire was imprisoned on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa in 1911. He served in the French Army from 1914 to 1916. Guillaume's works include plays, poems, and short stories. The Poet Assasinated and The Wandering Jew and Other Stories are two of his more notable works. Calligrammes, published in 1918, is a collection of cubist poetry in which the poems are written in the shape of the objects that they describe, such as a car. Guillaume Apollinaire's life was cut short by the Spanish influenza epidemic of the early twentieth century. He died in November 1918, at the age of 38. (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from Alcools… (more)