Guillaume Apollinaire French

Guillaume Apollinaire was born in Rome in 1880 to a Polish mother and unknown father. By 1899 he was in Paris, where quickly he made his mark among the artistic avant-garde. Prolific writer of prose and poetry, plays and an erotic novel, and an early champion of Cubism, Apollinaire’s collections Alcools (1913) and Calligrammes (1918) announced the arrival of modernism in poetry. Apollinaire is also the major French poet of World War I. Badly wounded and trepanned in 1916, he died in Paris in November 1918, two days before the Armistice. He is buried in Paris’ Père Lachaise cemetery.

(2022)