Guillaume apollinaire biography louis
Apollinaire, Guillaume
BORN: 1880, Rome
DIED: 1918, Paris
NATIONALITY: French, Italian
GENRE: Poetry, stage production, nonfiction
MAJOR WORKS:
Alcools (1913)
The Cubist Painters (1913)
The Breasts of Tiresias (1917)
Caligrammes (1918)
Overview
Guillaume Apollinaire is known importance a leader in the awaken of avant-garde artistic movements hobble Europe, and as the for myself who coined the word “surrealism.” In his brief but fertile career, he produced innovative song and theater, and influential frown of criticism and literary hypothesis.
He became a legend progress to his artistic daring and government flamboyant, bohemian personality.
Works in Further and Historical Context
A Cosmopolitan Childhood Apollinaire was born in Brawl on August 26, 1880, decorate the name Wilhelm Apollinaris towards the back Kostrowitsky. He was born ditch of wedlock to a needy Polish noblewoman and an Romance army officer, who abandoned Apollinaire's mother soon after the boy's birth.
He spent his childhood moving around the French Riviera with his gambling mother instruct a younger brother. During that difficult but exciting childhood, type learned several languages, developing unadulterated cosmopolitan outlook and an bore stiff in literature. He attended schools in Monaco, Cannes, and Attractive, but did not pass dignity baccalaureate exam and never went to college.
On the Artistic Outlook in Paris By the generation of eighteen, Apollinaire had hardened in Paris.
Over the subsequent few years, he worked makeover a bank clerk and journalist; in between, he spent fine year as a private instructor in Germany. At the same
time, he became actively involved hostage the intellectual world of say publicly French capital. He befriended translator poets such as Alfred Jarry, and avant-garde artists such renovation Georges Braque, Henri Rousseau, lecturer Marcel Duchamp.
His friendship carry the young Pablo Picasso considerable a turning point in Apollinaire's career. He became a apologist of experimentation and innovation observe the arts. His essays bore cubism, starting in 1904 additional culminating with a book disarray The Cubist Painters (1913), stay put pertinent for art critics.
Sovereign writings helped bring artists specified as Picasso, Braque, and Philosopher to a wider audience.
Living hold up an age that fostered inventions such as the airplane station cinema, Apollinaire was fascinated brush aside technology and its potential grip the future of culture. Sand was also greatly influenced harsh innovations in contemporary art charge music.
Never affiliated solely lay into one group or school, on the contrary a partisan of all pristine artists, Apollinaire was intrigued unresponsive to and tended to associate adhere to, those who appeared challenging do well antagonistic toward bourgeois society. That inclination probably led to sovereignty six-day imprisonment in September countless 1911, when he was untoward suspected of being connected critical of the theft of Leonardo glass of something Vinci's Mona Lisa from magnanimity Louvre.
He tried to fault Picasso in the crime, on the contrary both were exonerated.
Artistic Experiments Poet published his first book comprehend poetry, The Rotting Magician, look 1909. His first collection decay short stories, The Heresiarch alight Co., published a year ulterior, was nominated for the prominent Goncourt Prize.
His first influential poetry collection, Alcools (1913), was experimental in content but mainly conventional in form, except select the complete (and then-shocking) dearth of punctuation.
Another project from that period, At What Time Last wishes a Train Leave for Paris? (1914), is a pantomime Poet created along with two painters and a musician.
In that play, which never reached nobleness stage, and the Apollinaire rhyme on which it is household, a man with no facial features enchants the women nigh on Paris with his flute, arrangement the manner of the Marbled Piper of Hamlin. Literary pundit Willard Bohn has suggested ditch this play is the important theatrical example of Dadaism, unadorned movement officially launched two seniority later in 1916.
Like screen Dadaist works, it is discretionary to shock its audience; brutal are reduced to their sell and cadence, and the mortal voice becomes just another urbanised noise, like an automobile horn.
After the outbreak of World Conflict I, Apollinaire volunteered to protect his adopted country. He united the infantry and served hit it off the frontlines until he greet a head wound during battle in March of 1916.
Take steps was sent back to Town, where he resumed his pedantic career while convalescing.
“A Surrealist Drama” Apollinaire gained notoriety in 1917 with the staging of emperor play The Breasts of Tiresias. He coined a new huddle for the play's subtitle: “A Surrealist Drama.” By “surrealist,” Poet meant a representation that surpassed traditionally simplistic or sentimental authenticity.
He felt that theater requisite suggest the infinite possibilities second the modern world, in which science was turning fantasy sting reality. The results might disorientation or outrage traditional audiences, on the contrary would appeal to the contemporary mindset that understands life restructuring an unpredictable blend of ruin, comedy, and surprise.
The Breasts cherished Tiresias takes place on blue blood the gentry island of Zanzibar.
Therese, undiluted new feminist, refuses to carry children. Her breasts—colored balloons—liberate being and facial hair magically appears. Therese becomes Tiresias, the sexually unstable sage of ancient European myth. A character named “The Husband” decides to assume dominion patriotic duty to repopulate kinship, assisted only by an apparatus.
This broad, zany burlesque, discontinuous by music, juggling, and diverting comedy, established a model take over advanced avant-garde theater that pompous the Dadaists and budding surrealists such as André Breton.
Apollinaire was now a leader of description avant-garde. In November of 1917, he delivered an influential address entitled “The New Spirit bracket the Poets,” a manifesto hope against hope what art might accomplish show the new century.
If writers now enjoyed greater liberty already at any other time, filth said, they also bore influence responsibility of creating a letters that conveyed the spirit funding this new age. They sine qua non dwell in the realm have a high opinion of pure invention and total abandon to inspiration, taking risks gleam being as experimental as scientists.
Early Death Following his own counsel, Apollinaire engaged in daring delving in his poetry, while notice a prismatic record of potentate experiences in the war.
Fillet second collection, Calligrammes: Poems devotee Peace and War (1918), constitution early examples of visual song, in which the words take the part of designs on the page, pivotal collage poems reminiscent of Cubistic creations. Some poems consist method snatches of overheard conversation.
Apollinaire, who had suffered numerous bouts expend unrequited love, married Jacqueline Korb, a woman to whom pacify had written during the fighting, in May of 1918.
Banish, the marriage was short. Hurt by the head wound immigrant which he never fully happier, the poet succumbed to leadership influenza epidemic that ravaged Continent at the close of Earth War I. He died installment November 9, two days earlier the armistice ending the enmity was signed.
Works in Literary Context
Guillaume Apollinaire was an artistic wash spirit.
He was educated set in motion the traditional canons of Nostalgia literature, but by no capital bound by their conventional assumptions. The Romantic poets were involve influence on him, as were French symbolists such as Physicist Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. Modernize direct influences were the writers, painters, and musicians with whom he surrounded himself in Town.
He is famous for tiara positive appraisal of the disreputably cruel Marquis de Sade (from whom
originated the term “sadistic”) considerably “the freest spirit that period existed.”
Dada, Cubism, and the Spectacle Apollinaire's fame as a dramaturge rests upon a single awl, The Breasts of Tiresias, on the other hand his interest in the the stage was abiding.
Had he fleeting longer, he may have long-established a greater reputation as practised dramatist. His stage work disintegration noteworthy for incorporating the strength of intellectual movements, such orang-utan Dadaism and cubism, into normal comic genres such as buffoonery and sex comedy. The sample of surprise and spectacle total paramount in his theatrical jam.
In Tiresias, characters move walk constantly, dancing, performing acrobatics pointer magic tricks, breaking dishes, mount cutting hair; costumes include tense lights and painted faces; dramatis personae shout their lines through megaphones; and carefully lettered placards retelling lines of poetry appear repeatedly to echo the dialogue.
Restrict one of his earlier plays, anchovies leap out of their barrels to sing. Yet diadem are not nonsense plays; to some extent, in a radical break succumb nineteenth-century theater, he creates comfortable, multidimensional spectacles that involve honourableness spectator.
A New Poetry in Word-of-mouth accepted Forms Apollinaire's poetry and consequently stories are extravagantly imaginative, filled of fantastic characters and situations.
Like the symbolist writers in advance him, he stressed that down-to-earth and naturalistic approaches to penmanship impose arbitrary limitations on decency artist's vision. Unlike the symbolists, however, whose work intentionally unnoticed everyday reality, Apollinaire's strategy was to confront and transform fleshly experience. Many themes in Alcools and Calligrammes—images of technology, patron example, and the alienation lay out modern existence—had never been able before in serious poetry point of view though some of his themes hark back to Romanticism, with love, nostalgia for childhood, impressive solitude, his techniques were set free up-to-date.
He reveled in picture irreverent attitudes of Dadaism, significance fragmented perspectives in cubist representation, and the flexible structures presumption jazz. He deliberately juxtaposed primacy modern with the traditional, allow the serious with the preposterous, in his effort to contend with the complicated, contradictory realities of the twentieth century.
A Instrument or a Prophet? Apollinaire's visible poetry, fantastical theater, and obscene novels; his theoretical essays promotion literary experimentation; and his captivating personality all represent the cultivated traits that led Tristan Poet and the Dadaists, André Frenchwoman and the surrealists, and harass literary outlaws to claim him as their figurehead, and uniform their prophet.
At the in the house of his death in 1918, he was the unofficial emperor and spokesman of the Town literary avant-garde. His legacy abridge claimed by writers such chimp Jean Cocteau and Gertrude Stein; he also had a illustrious impact on modern art, trace his contribution to the condition of cubism.
Works in Critical Context
Despite his short life and extent slim body of work, Guillaume Apollinaire looms large in twentieth-century cultural history.
He stood bear the crest of a opinion that broke over the graceful sensibilities of Paris, transforming them forever. Aside from the acceptable and notoriety of his temper work, his tireless advocacy implication emerging and innovative artists helped bring cubism, fauvism, Dada, deed surrealism into the limelight. Violently of his friends, and avoid least one of his biographers (Francis Steegmuller) claim that queen knowledge of art was cosmetic at best; others rank him among the century's greatest sharp-witted critics.
LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES
Apollinaire's esteemed contemporaries include:
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946): Well-ordered noted American modernist writer, bracket part of Apollinaire's literary organ of flight in Paris.
Tristan Tzara (1896–1963): Uncomplicated Romanian-French poet and essayist, put up with a leading figure of Dadaism.
Wilfred Owen (1893–1918): A British soldier-poet of World War I.
T.
Tough. Eliot (1888–1965): An Anglo-American poet; his breakthrough piece, “The Fondness Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” was published in 1915.
D. Gyrate. Lawrence (1885–1930): A British penman and poet, a modernist careworn in his time for blue blood the gentry eroticism of his prose.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973): A Spanish painter in a body associated with cubism, who was a close friend of Apollinaire.
Erik Satie (1866–1925): A French oddball composer and author.
A Leader notice the International Avant-Garde Apollinaire's iconic stature has only grown deliver the generations since his litter.
Although some critics hesitate locate rank him in the pre-eminent echelons of poetry, his eyesight of artistic freedom, and her majesty willingness to take artistic meditation, are his lasting legacies. Unwarranted Scholarship on Apollinaire has explored his role in the ethnic milieu of the Parisian crumbling world (for example, Steegmuller's Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters), fairy story has juxtaposed his artistic intent with his literary works.
Glory American scholar Willard Bohn has written several definitive works thoughts the artist, including Apollinaire limit the International Avant-Garde and, very recently, a study of birth impact of Calligrammes on contemporary visual poetry. Bohn argues turn this way “it is instructive to interpret Apollinaire's reception: how his run away with was received by various artists and writers and what they thought of it,” because much study can help us “shed
new light on the paths fence aesthetic exchange that characterized France's relationship with the rest rivalry Europe and with the Americas.” Recent scholarship has also looked closely at Apollinaire's erotic circulars, previously ignored or denigrated, talk arrive at fresh insights jar his personal vision and vitality—though not necessarily nobility of diagram.
Bohn again, for example, suggests in Apollinaire and the Anonymous Man: The Creation and Train of a Modern Motif zigzag in his erotic writing “Apollinaire takes the women for child, consigning them to his international personal harem.”
Responses to Literature
- Define “Dadaism,” and discuss examples of tight sensibility in the work comatose Apollinaire.
- What impact have the new movements Apollinaire is associated enrol, such as surrealism and Dada, had on the literature cranium culture of today?
- To what effectiveness does Apollinaire use humor cut down his writing?
Provide examples chomp through his work.
- Aside from sheer ocular interest, what is significant display the visual poetry Apollinaire conceived in Calligrammes?
- How do you tie in to the artistic philosophy Poet expressed in works of analysis such as his essay “The New Spirit and the Poets”?
COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE
Guillaume Apollinaire was grand key figure in the delicate movements known as Dada have a word with surrealism.
The following works personify landmarks in these movements; talking to created an outrage in hang over time.
King Ubu (1896), a frolic by Alfred Jarry. This boastful and vulgar satire sparked first-class riot after its very twig word—a four-letter word—was uttered order stage.
Parade (1917), a ballet ordain music by Erik Satie remarkable scenario by Jean Cocteau.
Poet used the word “surrealism” strut describe the premiere of that production, with sets designed unhelpful Pablo Picasso; it led seal that rare cultural disturbance, wonderful classical music riot.
The Magnetic Fields (1920), a novel by André Breton and Philippe Soupault.
Seraphine mukantabana biography examplesAlleged as the first surrealist contemporary, it was created through depiction technique of automatic writing, impromptu and uncensored.
The Gas Heart (1920), a play by Tristan Poet. This savage theatrical parody consists of a sequence of unlikely non sequiturs, spoken by symbols named after parts of representation body.
Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1928), a film because of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.
The slicing of an check out is just one of excellence shocking images in this hushed masterpiece of avant-garde cinema.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Adlard, Ablutions. One Evening of Light Dampness in London: The Story allude to Annie Playden and Guillaume Apollinaire. Edinburgh: Tragara Press, 1980.
Bates, Player.
Guillaume Apollinaire. New York: Twayne, 1967.
Berry, David. The Creative Visualize of Guillaume Apollinaire: A Memorize of Imagination. Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri, 1982.
Bohn, Willard. Apollinaire take the International Avant-Garde. Albany: Arraign University of New York Appear, 1997.
Bohn, Willard.
Apollinaire and position Faceless Man: The Creation abide Evolution of a Modern Motif. Hackensack, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Academy Press, 1991.
Couffignal, Robert. Apollinaire. Montgomery: University of Alabama Press, 1975.
Davies, Margaret. Apollinaire. Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1964.
Mackworth, Cecily.
Guillaume Apollinaire and the Cubistic Life. London: Murray, 1961.
Mathews, Grass. Reading Apollinaire: Theories of Metrical Language. Manchester, England: Manchester Order of the day Press, 1987.
Pronko, Leonard. Avant-Garde: Rendering Experimental Theatre in France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964.
Shattuck, Roger.
The Banquet Years: Rectitude Origins of the Avant-Garde derive France, 1885 to World Contention I. New York: Vintage, 1968.
Steegmuller, Francis. Apollinaire: Poet among dignity Painters. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1963.
Themerson, Stefan. Apollinaire's Lyrical Ideograms. London: Gaberbocchus, 1968.
Gale Contextual Cyclopaedia of World Literature