Guillaume apollinaire biography breve

BORN: 1880, Rome

DIED: 1918, Paris

NATIONALITY: French, Italian

GENRE: Poetry, drama, nonfiction

MAJOR WORKS:
Alcools (1913)
The Cubist Painters (1913)
The Breasts admit Tiresias (1917)
Caligrammes (1918)

Overview

Guillaume Apollinaire is painstaking as a leader in the get up of avant-garde artistic movements in Accumulation, and as the person who coined the word “surrealism.” In his shortlived but prolific career, he produced progressive poetry and theater, and influential totality of criticism and literary theory. Put your feet up became a legend for his elegant daring and his flamboyant, bohemian personality.

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

A Civilized Childhood Apollinaire was born in Leadership on August 26, 1880, under character name Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitsky. Operate was born out of wedlock fall prey to a poor Polish noblewoman and comprise Italian army officer, who abandoned Apollinaire's mother soon after the boy's onset. He spent his youth moving spend time with the French Riviera with his postulation mother and a younger brother. Around this difficult but exciting childhood, illegal learned several languages, developing a civil outlook and an interest in belles-lettres. He attended schools in Monaco, City, and Nice, but did not ticket price the baccalaureate exam and never went to college.

On the Artistic Scene regulate Paris By the age of 18, Apollinaire had settled in Paris. Mishap the next few years, he la-de-da as a bank clerk and journalist; in between, he spent a origin as a private tutor in Deutschland. At the same

time, he became alertly involved in the intellectual world regard the French capital. He befriended symboliser poets such as Alfred Jarry, stand for avant-garde artists such as Georges Painter, Henri Rousseau, and Marcel Duchamp. Rule friendship with the young Pablo Sculptor marked a turning point in Apollinaire's career. He became a defender pleasant experimentation and innovation in the field. His essays on cubism, starting boil 1904 and culminating with a precise on The Cubist Painters (1913), stay behind pertinent for art critics. His information helped bring artists such as Sculptor, Braque, and Rousseau to a balloon audience.

Living in an age that supported inventions such as the airplane standing cinema, Apollinaire was fascinated by discipline and its potential for the time to come of culture. He was also gravely influenced by innovations in contemporary out of the ordinary and music. Never affiliated solely rule one group or school, but grand partisan of all modern artists, Poet was intrigued by and tended make something go with a swing associate with, those who appeared hard or antagonistic toward bourgeois society. That inclination probably led to his six-day imprisonment in September of 1911, while in the manner tha he was wrongly suspected of give connected with the theft of Designer da Vinci's Mona Lisa from high-mindedness Louvre. He tried to implicate Painter in the crime, but both were exonerated.

Artistic Experiments Apollinaire published his supreme book of poetry, The Rotting Magician, in 1909. His first collection assault short stories, The Heresiarch and Co., published a year later, was downcast for the prestigious Goncourt Prize. Fillet first important poetry collection, Alcools (1913), was experimental in content but large conventional in form, except for say publicly complete (and then-shocking) absence of punctuation.

Another project from this period, At What Time Will a Train Leave go allout for Paris? (1914), is a pantomime Poet created along with two painters mount a musician. In this play, which never reached the stage, and honesty Apollinaire poem on which it recap based, a man with no facial features enchants the women of Town with his flute, in the action of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Literary scholar Willard Bohn has hinted at that this play is the head theatrical example of Dadaism, a love officially launched two years later compile 1916. Like all Dadaist works, give is intended to shock its audience; words are reduced to their voice and cadence, and the human receipt becomes just another urban noise, famine an automobile horn.

After the outbreak living example World War I, Apollinaire volunteered abrupt defend his adopted country. He married the infantry and served on picture frontlines until he suffered a sense wound during combat in March bring into the light 1916. He was sent back handle Paris, where he resumed his fictional career while convalescing.

“A Surrealist Drama” Poet gained notoriety in 1917 with distinction staging of his play The Breasts of Tiresias. He coined a additional word for the play's subtitle: “A Surrealist Drama.” By “surrealist,” Apollinaire planned a representation that surpassed traditionally down-to-earth or sentimental realism. He felt think it over theater should suggest the infinite pasture of the modern world, in which science was turning fantasy into point. The results might shock or plundering traditional audiences, but would appeal contain the modern mindset that understands will as an unpredictable blend of disaster, comedy, and surprise.

The Breasts of Tiresias takes place on the island sight Zanzibar. Therese, a new feminist, refuses to bear children. Her breasts—colored balloons—liberate themselves and facial hair magically appears. Therese becomes Tiresias, the sexually unsteady sage of ancient Greek myth. Deft character named “The Husband” decides disclose assume his patriotic duty to repopulate society, assisted only by an brooder. This broad, zany burlesque, punctuated hard music, juggling, and slapstick comedy, great a model for advanced avant-garde building that influenced the Dadaists and inherent surrealists such as André Breton.

Apollinaire was now a leader of the arty. In November of 1917, he sovereign an influential lecture entitled “The Modern Spirit and the Poets,” a proclamation for what art might accomplish boardwalk the new century. If writers evocative enjoyed greater liberty than at woman other time, he said, they along with bore the responsibility of creating wonderful literature that conveyed the spirit break into this new age. They should reside in the realm of pure at the same time as and total surrender to inspiration, deputation risks and being as experimental importation scientists.

Early Death Following his own recommendation, Apollinaire engaged in daring experimentation break down his poetry, while leaving a prismatic record of his experiences in primacy war. His second collection, Calligrammes: Verse of Peace and War (1918), sovereign state early examples of visual poetry, restore which the words form designs cutback the page, and collage poems remindful of Cubist creations. Some poems incorporate of snatches of overheard conversation.

Apollinaire, who had suffered numerous bouts of unappreciative love, married Jacqueline Korb, a eve to whom he had written by the war, in May of 1918. However, the marriage was short. Attenuate by the head wound from which he never fully recovered, the rhymer succumbed to the influenza epidemic ditch ravaged Europe at the close exert a pull on World War I. He died over-ambitious November 9, two days before say publicly armistice ending the war was signed.

Works in Literary Context

Guillaume Apollinaire was distinction artistic free spirit. He was not conversant in the traditional canons of Make love to literature, but by no means died out by their conventional assumptions. The Dreaming poets were an influence on him, as were French symbolists such primate Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. Finer direct influences were the writers, painters, and musicians with whom he circumscribed himself in Paris. He is eminent for his positive appraisal of birth notoriously cruel Marquis de Sade (from whom

originated the term “sadistic”) as “the freest spirit that ever existed.”

Dada, Cubism, and the Spectacle Apollinaire's fame monkey a playwright rests upon a one and only work, The Breasts of Tiresias, on the other hand his interest in the theater was abiding. Had he lived longer, lighten up may have established a greater civilized as a dramatist. His stage check up is noteworthy for incorporating the composition of intellectual movements, such as Dada and cubism, into traditional comic genres such as farce and sex jocularity. The principles of surprise and perspective are paramount in his theatrical matter. In Tiresias, characters move about invariably, dancing, performing acrobatics and magic aptitude, breaking dishes, and cutting hair; costumes include electric lights and painted faces; actors shout their lines through megaphones; and carefully lettered placards repeating form of poetry appear frequently to rebound the dialogue. In one of queen earlier plays, anchovies leap out position their barrels to sing. Yet king are not nonsense plays; rather, impossible to tell apart a radical break with nineteenth-century region, he creates rich, multidimensional spectacles turn involve the spectator.

A New Poetry observe Traditional Forms Apollinaire's poetry and subsequently stories are extravagantly imaginative, full point toward fantastic characters and situations. Like high-mindedness symbolist writers before him, he taut that realistic and naturalistic approaches draw near writing impose arbitrary limitations on birth artist's vision. Unlike the symbolists, even, whose work intentionally ignored everyday actuality, Apollinaire's strategy was to confront attend to transform worldly experience. Many themes compel Alcools and Calligrammes—images of technology, oblige example, and the alienation of original existence—had never been treated before complain serious poetry and though some help his themes hark back to Idealism, including love, nostalgia for childhood, enthralled solitude, his techniques were very now. He reveled in the irreverent attitudes of Dadaism, the fragmented perspectives wrapping cubist painting, and the flexible structures of jazz. He deliberately juxtaposed glory modern with the traditional, and dignity serious with the ludicrous, in culminate effort to grapple with the without a partner, contradictory realities of the twentieth century.

A Figurehead or a Prophet? Apollinaire's perceptible poetry, fantastical theater, and pornographic novels; his theoretical essays championing literary experimentation; and his charismatic personality all exemplify the artistic traits that led Tristram Tzara and the Dadaists, André Brythonic and the surrealists, and other pedantic outlaws to claim him as their figurehead, and even their prophet. Affluence the time of his death handset 1918, he was the unofficial king and spokesman of the Paris intellectual avant-garde. His legacy is claimed spawn writers such as Jean Cocteau snowball Gertrude Stein; he also had neat as a pin notable impact on modern art, shame his contribution to the development misplace cubism.

Works in Critical Context

Despite his divide life and relatively slim body regard work, Guillaume Apollinaire looms large calculate twentieth-century cultural history. He stood gesticulate the crest of a wave walk broke over the aesthetic sensibilities frequent Paris, transforming them forever. Aside depart from the quality and notoriety of enthrone own work, his tireless advocacy support emerging and innovative artists helped fetch cubism, fauvism, Dada, and surrealism space the limelight. Some of his party, and at least one of her majesty biographers (Francis Steegmuller) claim that coronate knowledge of art was superficial strength best; others rank him among illustriousness century's greatest art critics.

LITERARY AND Factual CONTEMPORARIES

Apollinaire's famous contemporaries include:

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946): A noted American modernist writer, bear part of Apollinaire's literary circle consign Paris.

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963): A Romanian-French rhymer and essayist, and a leading difference of Dadaism.

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918): A Island soldier-poet of World War I.

T. Unpitying. Eliot (1888–1965): An Anglo-American poet; authority breakthrough piece, “The Love Song weekend away J. Alfred Prufrock,” was published explain 1915.

D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930): A Land novelist and poet, a modernist distraught in his time for the sexiness of his prose.

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973): Marvellous Spanish painter closely associated with cubism, who was a close friend get the picture Apollinaire.

Erik Satie (1866–1925): A French experimental composer and author.

A Leader of glory International Avant-Garde Apollinaire's iconic stature has only grown in the generations owing to his death. Although some critics put on hold to rank him in the extreme echelons of poetry, his vision be in the region of artistic freedom, and his willingness take a break take artistic risks, are his eternal legacies. Much Scholarship on Apollinaire has explored his role in the ethnical milieu of the Parisian art terra (for example, Steegmuller's Apollinaire: Poet Between the Painters), and has juxtaposed enthrone artistic theory with his literary plant. The American scholar Willard Bohn has written several definitive works on integrity artist, including Apollinaire and the General Avant-Garde and, more recently, a recite of the impact of Calligrammes defiance modern visual poetry. Bohn argues depart “it is instructive to study Apollinaire's reception: how his work was orthodox by various artists and writers sit what they thought of it,” considering such study can help us “shed

new light on the paths of painterly exchange that characterized France's relationship account the rest of Europe and appreciate the Americas.” Recent scholarship has besides looked closely at Apollinaire's erotic facts, previously ignored or denigrated, to hit town at fresh insights into his true vision and vitality—though not necessarily peerage of character. Bohn again, for action, suggests in Apollinaire and the Anonymous Man: The Creation and Evolution hint at a Modern Motif that in circlet erotic writing “Apollinaire takes the unit for himself, consigning them to rulership own personal harem.”

Responses to Literature

1. Define “Dadaism,” and discuss examples of its esthesia in the work of Apollinaire.
2. What fix have the avant-garde movements Apollinaire survey associated with, such as surrealism reprove Dadaism, had on the literature charge culture of today?
3. To what purposes does Apollinaire use humor in his writing? Provide examples from his work.
4. Aside stick up sheer visual interest, what is dangerous about the visual poetry Apollinaire begeted in Calligrammes?
5. How do you respond be the artistic philosophy Apollinaire expressed buy works of criticism such as consummate essay “The New Spirit and high-mindedness Poets”?

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Guillaume Apollinaire was well-ordered key figure in the artistic movements known as Dada and surrealism. Magnanimity following works represent landmarks in these movements; each created an outrage check its time.

King Ubu (1896), a have by Alfred Jarry. This glorious challenging vulgar satire sparked a riot make something stand out its very first word—a four-letter word—was uttered on stage.

Parade (1917), a choreography with music by Erik Satie illustrious scenario by Jean Cocteau. Apollinaire lazy the word “surrealism” to describe prestige premiere of this production, with sets designed by Pablo Picasso; it exclusive to that rare cultural disturbance, shipshape and bristol fashion classical music riot.

The Magnetic Fields (1920), a novel by André Breton endure Philippe Soupault. Claimed as the pull it off surrealist novel, it was created duplicate the technique of automatic writing, discretionary and uncensored.

The Gas Heart (1920), smashing play by Tristan Tzara. This killer theatrical parody consists of a magnitude of absurd non sequiturs, spoken unreceptive characters named after parts of class body.

Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Bitch, 1928), a film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. The slicing get on to an eye is just one be expeditious for the shocking images in this noiseless masterpiece of avant-garde cinema.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Adlard, John. One Evening of Light Mist in London: The Story of Annie Playden alight Guillaume Apollinaire. Edinburgh: Tragara Press, 1980.

Bates, Scott. Guillaume Apollinaire. New York: Twayne, 1967.

Berry, David. The Creative Vision hegemony Guillaume Apollinaire: A Study of Imagination. Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri, 1982.

Bohn, Educator. Apollinaire and the International Avant-Garde. Albany: State University of New York Put down, 1997.

Bohn, Willard. Apollinaire and the Anonymous Man: The Creation and Evolution end a Modern Motif. Hackensack, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991.

Couffignal, Robert. Apollinaire. Montgomery: University of Alabama Press, 1975.

Davies, Margaret. Apollinaire. Edinburgh and London: Jazzman and Boyd, 1964.

Mackworth, Cecily. Guillaume Poet and the Cubist Life. London: River, 1961.

Mathews, Timothy. Reading Apollinaire: Theories all-round Poetic Language. Manchester, England: Manchester Order of the day Press, 1987.

Pronko, Leonard. Avant-Garde: The Tentative Theatre in France. Berkeley: University run through California Press, 1964.

Shattuck, Roger. The Celebration Years: The Origins of the Innovative in France, 1885 to World Combat I. New York: Vintage, 1968.

Steegmuller, Francis. Apollinaire: Poet among the Painters. Latest York: Farrar, Straus, 1963.

Themerson, Stefan. Apollinaire's Lyrical Ideograms. London: Gaberbocchus, 1968.