Guillaume Apollinaire (French Guillaume Apollinaire; real name - Polish Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris de Wąż-Kostrowitcki - Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Alexander Apollinarius Vongzh-Kostrowitsky; August 26, 1880 - November 9, 1918) - French poet of Polish origin, one of the most influential figures European avant-garde of the early 20th century. A friend of the artists Picasso, Braque and others. An exponent of the era of cubism, naive art and airplanes. The author of the calligrams, he came up with the word himself. A true Parisian knows at least the first line of Apollinaire's poem "The Mirabeau Bridge" (Le pont Mirabeau).

Born August 26, 1880 in Rome. In 1887, together with his mother (Anzhelika Kastrovitskaya, a Russian subject, daughter of the Polish officer Mikhail Apollinarius Kastrovitsky, who fled to Italy after the Polish uprising of 1863–1864; Apollinaire’s father was, presumably, the Italian Francesco Fludgi d’Aspermont, an officer) and his younger brother moved to the principality Monaco. Studied at the Monegasque religious college of St. Charles. In 1896–1897 he attended the Lyceum in Nice for five months, then entered the Lyceum Stanislaus in Cannes.

In 1899 the family settled in Paris. Apollinaire got a job as an employee of a bank office. In 1901–1902 he worked in Germany as a teacher in a German family. In 1902 he returned to Paris and took up journalistic, editorial, and writing activities. In 1905, he met with Pablo Picasso, which is believed to have been of considerable importance for the fate of 20th century art.

On September 7, 1911, on suspicion of complicity in the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, he was imprisoned in the Parisian prison of Santé; On September 12, he was released for lack of evidence of a crime.
He volunteered in the First World War, insisted on being sent to the front line, was wounded and demobilized.

He died in Paris on November 9, 1918, having contracted the Spanish flu, at the age of 38. He was buried on November 13 at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Apollinaire occupies a unique place in French literary history: he stands at the origins, at the birth contemporary art. He wrote "The Zone", a legendary poem from the no less legendary book "Alcohols" (or "Alcohols"), with which modern poetry began. Apollinaire dates back to the birth of cubism - not only Picasso's cubism, but also Braque's analytical cubism, the synthetic cubism of Juan Gris, and modern painting in general. A poet and prose writer, he is also known to the French as an erotic writer, in particular, having written two erotic novels; Moreover, the French themselves put him on a par with de Sade and Baffo.

Date of birth 08/26 - 1880; Date of death 09.11 - 1918
French poet, classic of French literature of the twentieth century, Guillaume Apollinaire (26.8.1880, Rome, - 9.11.1918, Paris) was born in the family of a Polish aristocrat and an Italian officer, and was baptized as Wilhelm Apollinary Kostrovitsky. He was educated in Monte Carlo and later moved to Paris.
He worked as a teacher for some time, then devoted himself entirely to literature. In 1913, the poetry collection "Alcohol" was published, which is considered the highest achievement of Apollinaire the poet. In the book of poems “Alcohol. 1898-1913" (1913) - folk song intonations and epic voice big city, and a call to drink the universe with the “throat of Paris” (“Vendemière”), and the poet’s reflection on prison bondage (the cycle of poems “In the Prison of Santé”; Apollinaire was imprisoned on false charges in 1911).
In Apollinaire's work formalistic experimentation and innovative development of the classical tradition collided. And if today Apollinaire is perceived as one of the finest lyricists of the 20th century. (cycle “Vitam impendere amori” - “Dedicate life to love”, 1917), then primarily because of the influence of modernist schools, be it symbolism (the story “The Decaying Sorcerer”, 1908), cubism (“Aesthetic reflections. Cubist artists” , 1913), futurism (“futuristic anti-tradition, manifesto-synthesis”, 1913) or surrealism (drama “The Tits of Tiresias”, post. 1917, published 1918), could not fetter Apollinaire’s work. He emerged from successive dead ends onto his own path - trust in the future, a taste for life (the cycle of short stories “Heresiarch and Co.”, 1910), grotesque ridicule of bourgeois savagery (the book of ironic prose “The Murdered Poet”, 1916), towards the “new” realism (“New meaning and poets”, speech by Apollinaire November 26, 1917).
On the eve of World War I, Apollinaire foresaw that a “time of revolutions” was coming. In the war, he saw the senseless destruction of man by man, but in 1914 he volunteered to join the French army: the desire to liberate Poland is one of the reasons for this decision. He was seriously wounded. The first war poems addressed to " beautiful lady", in the tradition of courtly lyrics, are colored with militant contempt for the enemy (collection "Messages to Lou", 1915, ed. 1955). But Apollinaire also created a lyrical chronicle of the tragic perception of war (“Calligrams. Poems of Peace and War. 1913-1916”, 1918).
Apollinaire’s final reflection in the mystery-bouffe “The Color of Time” (1918, published 1920) over the possessive world sounds like a formidable indictment of the era of suicidal individualism. Apollinaire's formalistic experiments were canonized by Dadaists and surrealists, and the poet's tragic lyricism and his optimistic belief in the triumph of “dawn over twilight” were embraced by P. Eluard, V. Nezval and L. Aragon.
The poet died in Paris from influenza shortly before the signing of the armistice in the war, on November 9, 1918. He was buried in the Parisian Père Lachaise cemetery.

The illegitimate son of an Italian officer and a Polish noblewoman was born in Rome on August 26, 1880 under the name Wilhelm Apollinaris Kostrowicki. He first attended school in Monaco, where he moved with his mother. He studied at the Monaco religious college of St. Carla.
In 1896–1897 he attended the Lyceum in Nice for five months, then entered the Lyceum Stanislaus in Cannes. In 1899, he moved to Paris, where he moved among avant-garde artists (among his friends were artists Marlene Andre Derain, Raoul Dufy, Pablo Picasso, writers Max Jacob and Alfred Jarry) and politicians.
Kostrovitsky, having started writing, took a pseudonym - Guillaume Apollinaire. In 1902, he went to one of the Rhine castles as a home teacher, met and fell in love with the English governess Annie Playden, who, despite a long courtship, never became his wife. Unhappy love was the theme of many of Apollinaire's poems.
Romanesque roots determined his appearance and southern liveliness of character, Slavic roots determined his pride and openness. In addition, he lived almost his entire life as a Frenchman without citizenship, which he was able to obtain with great difficulty just two years before his death.
A rather explosive genetic mixture, multiplied by everyday circumstances that led to harshness and resentment - all these were the foundations of a complex and difficult character. That’s what he was: impressionable, naive, a little superstitious, sanguine, tyrant, tyrant, internally pure, simple, easy to get along with people, a brilliant and witty interlocutor, always ready for a joke, a singer of melancholy, whose poetry was not at all inherent in joy.
Guillaume Apollinaire, who spent his entire life tossing between love and play, united with the tradition of high lyricism a passion for low mysticism. Apollinaire apparently inherited both of these aspirations from his mother, Angelica Kostrovitskaya.
Hoaxes haunted Apollinaire from the day of his birth: five days after this significant event, which occurred on August 26, 1880, he was registered in the Roman city hall under the name Dulcini - as a child from unnamed parents.
Two years later, the same fate befell his brother Albert, who at birth was recorded under the surname Zevini and whose parents were also “unidentified.” Subsequently, this gave Apollinaire a reason to nurture and support the most fantastic tales about his origin - to the point that his ancestors were either Napoleon or the Pope.
The mysterious origin cast a shadow on the poet’s entire life. While young Wilhelm Kostrovitsky goes to school - first to college in Monaco and Cannes, and then to the Lyceum in Nice, his mother plays in a casino and acquires a reputation as a “beautiful adventurer.”
A story similar to many, in which the hand of the imperious and eccentric Angelique was felt, later allowed the composer Francis Poulenc to utter the sacramental phrase: “Apollinaire spent his first fifteen years in the frivolous skirts of his tyrannical mother.” In fact, “fifteen years” stretched over Apollinaire’s entire life: Anzhelika Kostrovitskaya died four months after the death of her eldest son, and in her old age pestering him with jealousy and whims.
The first poetic love and the first serious adventure awaited Guillaume Apollinaire in the summer of 1899, when his mother sent him and his brother to a boarding house in the Belgian town of Stavelot for the holidays. The first serious poetic cycle of the young Apollinaire, “Stavelot,” was born here. It is in this form - as a cycle of poems - that it will be published only half a century later: the poems, tied with a ribbon, will be preserved by the Walloon Marey - Maria Dubois, to whom they were addressed. Already in this cycle, Apollinaire becomes an exquisite love lyricist - a voluptuous and vulnerable singer of unrequited love.
Several months have passed, and Apollinaire - already trying to collaborate in literary magazines - has another passion: sixteen-year-old Linda Molina da Silva. Guillaume Apollinaire devotes a special cycle of lyrical poems - special, firstly, because each poem is written on the back of a postcard, and these postcards were regularly sent from April to June to the south, where the entire Molina da Silva family spent the spring and summer of 1901, special also because all these “love dictations” are nothing more than a test of the young Apollinaire’s strength.
The future reformer of verse was obliged to go through school and understand that he could be a professional, that any, even the most sophisticated, poetic form was available to him. This is how the madrigal and acrostic, the “tailed sonnet” and triolet, terzas and elegy arise.
For financial reasons, Apollinaire wrote pornographic novels, the most famous of which, Les onze mille verges (Les onze mille verges), published in 1907, reimagined the work of the Marquis de Sade. Two years later, the story "The Rotting Magician" ("L"enchanteurpour-rissant"), illustrated by Derain, appeared. In it, Guillaume Apollinaire first stated his main themes: love suffering, a mixture of reality and "superreality", lies and truth.
Stylistically, Apollinaire followed new paths: he combined various narrative styles and abolished the classical space-time structure of narrative (the chronological structure of stories and novels). In 1911, his first collection of poems, “Bestiary,” or “Orpheus’s Cortege,” was published - rhymed quatrains, mainly dedicated to animals, with illustrations by Dufy.
Apollinaire was a very great figure, comparable to our Blok or Mayakovsky, and is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. He was loved by women and painted by artists: Picasso, “The Customs Officer” by Rousseau, he drank with such writers as Andre Billi, his friends were Max Jacob and Andre Rouveire, he drank with the poet and author of criminal songs Carco, he knew Alfred Jarry, the author of the play "King Yubu". Blaise Cendrars knew him closely; he was also a very bright and passionate person. At one time, when the investigation into the theft of the La Gioconda from the Louvre (for which Apollinaire and Max Jacob were accused) was underway, Apollinaire was in prison. “La Gioconda” was returned, but the matter was hushed up, but wonderful Apollinarian poems from the prison period appeared, and at the same time the glory of authority came - not only in literature, but also in difficult life.
1913 - a collection of poems “Alcohol”, which he wrote since 1898. The name hinted at the intoxicating quality of the “new world”, its technicality and rapid pace of life. The fifty poems in the collection are not marked by any single stylistic direction; they exhibit elements of futurism and demonstrate the thematic and stylistic versatility of the author.
In the poem "Pont Mirabeau", in which Apollinaire compared his love suffering with the full-flowing Seine. "Song of the Unloved" is an autobiographical poem in which Apollinaire wrote about his great unrequited love. In these poems - as in his other works - Apollinaire presented himself as an outsider, and this fate, in his opinion, was destined for all avant-garde artists in society.
During the First World War, in 1915, Apollinaire, as a soldier, was wounded in the head, which led to surgery on the skull. In 1916, the work “The Poet Killed and Born” appeared, where he described the ideal Poet.
In 1918, "Calligrams" appeared. Apollinaire organized poetry visually and thus for the first time created so-called ideograms, in which text and textual images are fused together.
Guillaume Apollinaire died in Paris on November 9, 1918, having contracted the Spanish flu, at the age of 38. He was buried on November 13 at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
The poem "Pont Mirabeau" has been translated into Russian more than once. We offer you several different translations so that you can compare and feel this poem through the perceptions of different people who tried to convey to the reader all the beauty of Guillaume Apollinaire's verse.

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Mikhail Yasnov

Guillaume Apollinaire

Apollinaire's friends loved to draw him. His antique profile, his head, according to the writer Gertrude Stein, “like that of the emperor of late Rome,” attracted artists. The poet was compared either to Caesar or to Virgil.

Romanesque roots determined his appearance and southern liveliness of character; Slavic - pride and openness. In addition, he lived almost his entire life as a Frenchman without citizenship, which he was able to obtain with great difficulty just two years before his death. A rather explosive genetic mixture, multiplied by everyday circumstances that led to harshness and resentment - all these were the foundations of a complex and difficult character. This is how they perceived him - complexly and difficultly: impressionable, naive, a little superstitious; sanguine, tyrant, tyrant; internally pure, simple, easy to get along with people; a brilliant and witty conversationalist, always ready for a joke; a singer of melancholy, whose poetics are not at all characterized by joy...

In the years when Apollinaire was just beginning to compose, in distant Russia, attractive to the Slavic part of his soul, the pioneer of the French symbolists Valery Bryusov wrote about another poetic genius, about Paul Verlaine, as a “dual man”, in whom both “angelic” and “angelic” coexisted. "swine". To some extent, Apollinaire was equally ambivalent, all his life tossing between love and play, combining with the tradition of high lyricism a passion for low mysticism.

Apollinaire apparently inherited both of these aspirations from his mother, Angelica Kostrovitskaya. In the sixties, fate threw her from Poland to Italy, when Guillaume was born, Angelique was twenty-two years old, and several years ago she was “kidnapped” by the Italian officer Francesco d'Espermon. Hoaxes haunted Apollinaire from the day of his birth: five days after that A significant event that occurred on August 26, 1880, he was registered in the Roman city hall under the surname Dulcini - as a child of unnamed parents. Two years later, the same fate befell his brother Albert, who at birth was recorded under the surname Zevini and whose parents were also. “not established.” Subsequently, this gave Apollinaire a reason to nurture and support the most fantastic tales about his origin - to the point that his ancestors were either Napoleon or the Pope.

The mysterious origin cast a shadow on the poet’s entire life. While young Wilhelm Kostrovitsky goes to school - first to college in Monaco and Cannes, and then to the Lyceum in Nice - his mother plays in a casino and gains a reputation as a “beautiful adventurer.” And when in Nice the seventeen-year-old aspiring poet and his lyceum comrade Ange Toussaint-Luc begin publishing a handwritten journal, one immediately has to think about the first hoax - about a pseudonym: Wilhelm signed his works with the name “Guillaume Macabre” (“Guillaume the Gloomy”), and Ange - "Zhean Lok" ("Zhean the Beggar"). Subsequently, Apollinaire more than once resorted to literary hoaxes and pseudonyms - just look at the story of 1909, when articles and poems by a certain Louise Lalanne began to appear, which immediately attracted the attention of readers with the extraordinary judgments about modern women's literature and great lyrical gift. This prank, staged by Apollinaire, excited the public for almost a year until the hoaxer himself became bored. The carnivalesque of life and poetry are intertwined to never leave the poet.

Apollinaire's first poetic love and first serious adventure awaited him in the summer of 1899, when his mother sent him and his brother to a boarding house in the Belgian town of Stavelot for the holidays. The first serious poetic cycle of the young Apollinaire, “Stavelot,” was born here. It is in this form - as a cycle of poems - that it will be published only half a century later: the poems, tied with a ribbon, will be preserved by the Walloon Marey - Maria Dubois, to whom they were addressed. Already in this cycle, Apollinaire becomes an exquisite love lyricist - a voluptuous and vulnerable singer of unrequited love.

The love for Marey was interrupted in the fall, when Anzhelika Kostrovitskaya, once again strapped for money, ordered the brothers to secretly sneak out of the boarding house without paying the owner. This story, similar to many in which the hand of the imperious and eccentric Angelique was felt, later allowed the composer Francis Poulenc to utter the sacramental phrase: “Apollinaire spent his first fifteen years in the frivolous skirts of his tyrannical mother.” In fact, “fifteen years” stretched over Apollinaire’s entire life: Anzhelika Kostrovitskaya died four months after the death of her eldest son, and in her old age pestering him with jealousy and whims.

It has long been noted that the attractive paradox of youth lies in its reckoning with time. Several months have passed, and Apollinaire - already trying to collaborate in literary magazines - has another passion: sixteen-year-old Linda Molina da Silva. To dark-haired Linda, a languid and quiet beauty, with a slight lisp, which obviously gives an amazing charm to her voice, Apollinaire devotes a special cycle of lyrical poems - special, firstly, because each poem is written on the back of a postcard, and these postcards are from April until June they were regularly sent to the south, where the entire Molina da Silva family spent the spring and summer of 1901; special also because all these “love dictations” are nothing more than a test of the young Apollinaire’s strength. The future reformer of verse was obliged to go through school and understand that he could be a professional, that any, even the most sophisticated, poetic form was available to him. This is how the madrigal and acrostic, the “tailed sonnet” and triolet, terzas and elegy arise.

But Linda does not want - or does not yet know how - to respond to this feeling. In a letter to one of her mutual friends, she constantly repeats: “this is a feeling.” “Does he really have this feeling for me?”, “I can’t share this feeling,” “I think he is very proud and suffers a lot, seeing that I cannot answer this feeling for him...” Linda, like Marey, preserved all the love letters of the young poet, and they were subsequently published in his posthumous book “What Is.” Few could answer Apollinaire's “this feeling.” The Englishwoman Annie Playden, his truly great and truly tragic love, could not do this either. In any case, the unrequited feeling made Apollinaire an outstanding lyric poet.

He met her in Germany, in the house of Countess Eleanor Milgau, where he was invited to teach French to the young daughter of Countess Gabrielle and where Annie served as a governess. Hundreds of pages have already been written about their stormy romance - on the banks of the Rhine, Seine and Thames, about Annie Playden's escape to America from the hot advances of a poet who is not very clear to her and who frightens her with passion and erudition; but much more important is what Apollinaire himself wrote, and above all the “Rhine Poems” - both those that were included in his book “Alcohols” and those that he did not include in it for various reasons. The story of this bitter love turns in verse from an event of personal life into a phenomenon of poetic culture. A wide range of historical, literary, picturesque and simply everyday associations dissolves love in life, giving it a unique flavor, depth and tension.

The result of the poet's great passion for rarities of the past, the realization of his remarkable erudition, were Apollinaire's first two books: prose - "The Rotting Sorcerer" (1909) and poetic - "Bestiary, or Orpheus's Cortege" (1911). Apollinaire dedicated his “Bestiary” to the writer Elemir Bourges, who was his oldest friend and admirer of his talent: it was Bourges who nominated Apollinaire’s book “Heresiarch et Co” (1910) for the Goncourt Prize, which included stories published in periodicals starting in 1902 . And although The Heresiarch did not win the prize, in this book Apollinaire declared himself as a wonderful prose writer who subtly captured the spirit of his time.

The era of Montmartre, the famous “Laundry on a Raft”, began, which for many years united together the “Triumvirate”, as their contemporaries called them: Apollinaire, Picasso and the poet Max Jacob. Somewhat later, artists began moving from Montmartre to Montparnasse, to the no less famous “Beehive” - and all this will go down in history as the “belle epoque”, the “beautiful era”, a time of disruption and change of aesthetic positions. New myths began to emerge: speed, mechanics, simultaneity, that is, awareness in art of the simultaneity of a variety of processes. The Catholic revival and mystical prophecies came into militant life: Jacob “sees” the shadow of Christ on the wall of his room and becomes an ardent Catholic; then he predicts the writer Rene Daliz to be the first of their circle to die, and at a young age - and Daliz is the “first”, in 1917, to die at the front; then Giorgio de Chirico draws a prophetic portrait of Apollinaire called “Target Man,” many years before the poet was wounded, marking the place on his temple where a shell fragment would hit...

The idea for “Bestiary” came to Apollinaire in 1906, in Picasso’s studio, when he was watching the work of a fellow artist who was engraving images of animals at that time. A year later, the same Picasso introduced Apollinaire to Marie Laurencin. She is twenty-two, he is twenty-seven. She is an artist and a bit of a poetess, behind him is the collapse of his crazy love for the Englishwoman Annie Playden, already significant experience as a journalist and critic, serious publications of poetry and prose. They will stay together for five years, which will turn out to be the most significant time in the poet’s life, when Apollinaire’s book “Alcohols” was being prepared for publication.

"Alcohols" was published in April 1913. And a few months earlier, in December and November 1912, respectively, two of his poems were published, which opened the way for new poetry: “The Zone” and “Vendemière.” Working on the composition “Alcoholic,” the poet begins and ends the book with these very verses, framing the past with the future. Following "The Zone" he places "The Mirabeau Bridge", which was published in February 1912. This was a significant start. The future came first, the second was farewell to the departed; they walked “hand in hand, face to face,” like the heroes of “The Mirabeau Bridge.” Sailing along the waves of time and memory begins precisely with “The Bridge of Mirabeau,” a tragic farewell to Marie, with a feeling that dissolves throughout the book and absorbs the memory of all past rejected Loves.

The French writer Daniel Auster once noted that in "Alcohols" Apollinaire appears as Orpheus descending into the hell of memories. The last two years before the release of Alcohols could especially look like “hell” - in any case, like the mental hell into which Apollinaire was cast down. At least three events of this time determined the mental tension, confusion and painful search for poetic sublimation that led him to the creation of lyrical masterpieces: the break with Marie Laurencin, the story of the theft of La Gioconda and the meeting with Blaise Cendrars.

La Gioconda was stolen from the Louvre on August 21, 1911. Apollinaire was arrested on September 7 on suspicion of involvement in this crime. Suspicion fell on Apollinaire because of his friendship with a certain Geri Pierre, who at one time worked as the poet’s secretary; Pierre turned out to be dishonest; he stole all sorts of little things from the Louvre, which he then sold to collectors. The poet's arrest turned out to be short-lived; on September 12 he was already free, fortunately Pierre gave truthful testimony, and Apollinaire's lyceum friend Ange Toussaint-Luc, who by that time had become a lawyer, defended his old comrade in court. However, the case was closed only in February 1912, and this entire period of panic torment that overwhelmed the poet highlighted what he sometimes hid from himself: his civic “inferiority,” which easily led to nationalist attacks from those who saw foreigners are a danger to society and culture.

The Dreyfus affair has not yet been erased from the memory of contemporaries, but the poet’s interest in Slavic and Jewish traditions only fueled the false patriotism of his literary enemies. The war that began three years later further aggravated this new duality of his situation - it is clear with what force he longed for French citizenship.

His stay in the Parisian Santé prison became the occasion for writing an outstanding cycle of poems: picking up the traditions of “prison lyricism,” primarily Verlaine, Apollinaire creates a masterpiece in the spirit of classical poetry, after which there could only be one step - towards a truly new poetic aesthetics. This step was taken in 1912, when Apollinaire published “The Zone” and “Vendemière” (by the way, the first of Apollinaire’s poems to appear in print without punctuation). The writing of “The Zone” was preceded by Blaise Cendrars reading in the studio of the artist Robert Delaunay his poem “Easter in New York,” composed in April 1912. This poem, written by Cendrars in one breath, for the first time opened the way to that rhythm, that stream of poetic consciousness, without which French poetry is already unthinkable today. Starting from Cendrars, Apollinaire made a revolution in poetry, finding an adequate poetic form for the most powerful lyrical feeling.

Let us remember that all these events unfolded against the backdrop of a painful break with Marie Laurencin. The story of the theft of La Gioconda further alienated the artist from the poet, just as it alienated many fleeting acquaintances from him, just as it forced his brother Albert to leave Paris, where he worked as a bank employee, and go to Mexico. America has already taken Annie away from him and has now taken the second person close to him. Apollinaire's mother was indignant and despised her son, Madame Laurencin clearly did not like him. Her death on Easter night 1913, literally on the eve of the release of Alcohols, only for a short time brought Marie and Guillaume together again. And a year later, everything went to pieces: in June 1914, Marie married the German artist Otto Weitien, and a month later the First World War began, putting an end to Apollinaire’s entire previous life.

The three years remaining to him seem today to be some kind of feverish agony: a war into which he rushed headlong, trying not to “earn” the much-coveted French citizenship through ostentatious patriotism; ongoing vigorous collaboration with the Parisian press; poetry and prose that are written, it seems, without regard to the battles; finally, new loves, as feverish as this entire military-literary life - first with the high-society beauty Louise de Coligny-Châtillon, then with the young resident of Algeria, Madeleine Pages; finally, marriage to the red-haired beauty Jacqueline Kolb, with whom Apollinaire managed to live for only six months before his sudden death from the Spanish flu on November 9, 1918...

On December 5, 1914, he was enlisted in the 38th Artillery Regiment, stationed in the south of France, in Nimes, from April 1915 he spent almost a year on the front line, was promoted, received the long-awaited citizenship, and a week after that, on March 17, 1916 years old, was wounded in the head by a shell fragment. The chronicle of this life formed the basis of his book "Calligrams. Poems of Peace and War (1913-1916)", published in 1918.

Returning from the hospital, Apollinaire feverishly plunged into the reviving cultural life: he still collaborates with many magazines and is preparing new books for publication. One of them, on which he began working back in 1913 and which was published in 1916, the book of short stories “The Murdered Poet,” marked the poet’s return to literature after his long and painful recovery. In June 1917, at the Rene Maubel theater in Montmartre, as in the good old days, the poet's many friends met again at the premiere of his play "The Breasts of Tiresias", in the preface to which the word "surrealism" first appeared, and in November, at the famous theater " Old Dovecote", he read the text that actually became his poetic testament - "New Consciousness and Poets". “Poetry and creativity are identical,” said Apollinaire, “only the one who invents, the one who creates, should be called a poet, since in general a person is capable of creating. A poet is someone who finds new joys, even painful ones.”

By the end of his short life, Apollinaire achieved not only recognition; it seemed that his two main passions were satisfied: he finally found mutual love, as for the hoax, even with his death a decent joke was played. On November 13, when the coffin with the body of the poet was carried out of the Church of St. Thomas Aquinas, a crowd filled the Parisian streets, but not at all on the occasion of his funeral, but on the occasion of the truce that had just been concluded - and shouted at a hundred throats: “Down with Guillaume! Down with Guillaume! ..” These words addressed to the German Emperor Wilhelm were the last cry of the street, with which it involuntarily saw off its late singer.

The poet Jean Cocteau, who came that day to say goodbye to his friend, subsequently wrote: “His beauty was so radiant that it seemed that we were seeing young Virgil. Death in Dante’s attire led him away by the hand, like a child.” If we remember that it was Virgil who was the singer of passionate love, which was mercilessly invaded by contemporary life with its adventures and wars, then this metaphor will not be accidental and the roll call of the titans, as happens in culture, will take on a significant and logical meaning.

APOLLINARE, GUILLAUME(Apollinaire, Guillaume), (1880–1918), French poet of the early 20th century; real name: Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris Kastrovitsky.

Mother - Anzhelika Kastrovitskaya, a Russian subject, daughter of the Polish officer Mikhail Apollinaris Kastrovitsky, who fled to Italy after the Polish uprising of 1863–1864; father unknown. Born August 26, 1880 in Rome. In 1887, together with his mother and younger brother, he moved to the Principality of Monaco. He studied at the Monaco religious college of St. Charles. In 1896–1897 he attended the Lyceum in Nice for five months, then entered the Lyceum Stanislaus in Cannes.

In 1899 the Kastrovitsky family settled in Paris. He got a job as a bank office employee. In 1901–1902 he worked in Germany as a teacher in a German family. In 1902 he returned to Paris; became editor of a financial publication The rentier's companion. Z He became involved in journalistic activities, writing short articles for the magazines “European”, “Sun”, “Messidor”, “Social Democracy”. In the same year he published several poems and stories, one of which is Heresiarch(L'Érésiarque) was signed under the pseudonym Guillaume Apollinaire. He formed bonds of friendship with the poets Max Jacob and André Salmon; together with them he founded the magazine “Aesop’s Celebration” in 1903 (“Le Festin d'Esope”), which existed until 1904 (eight issues were published). He became a regular at literary cafes; met a galaxy of recognized masters and future celebrities - Jean Moreas, Paul Faure, Alfred Jarry, Maurice de Vlaminck, Andre Derain, Henri Rousseau and many others; in conversations and disputes he absorbed the innovative ideas born in the cosmopolitan environment of young poets and artists; in turn, they were strongly influenced by his personality. In 1905, he met with Pablo Picasso, which is believed to have been. considerable significance for the fate of art of the 20th century. Published in the magazine “Poems and Prose”, published by the symbolist poet P. Faure. In 1907 he wrote two erotic novels for income. The exploits of the young Don Juan And Eleven thousand maidens. He gave lectures at the Salon of Independent Artists about poets and poetry. Since 1909, he began writing art criticism columns in the magazines “Irreconcilable” and “French Mercury”; His article caused a great stir Symbolist poetry(Poésie symboliste). In May 1909 he published a poem Song of the Unfortunate in Love (La Chanson du mal-aimé), in December - poetic prose Rotting Sorcerer(L'Enchanteur pourrissant), in 1910 – a collection of stories Heresiarch and company (L'Érésiarque et Companie), in March 1911 - a collection of poems Bestiary, or Orpheus's Cortege(Le Bestiaire, ou le Cortège d'Orphée). Opened at the French Mercury chapter Curiosities, which led until his death.

September 7, 1911 on suspicion of complicity in theft Mona Lisa from the Louvre imprisoned in the Parisian prison of Santé; On September 12, he was released for lack of evidence of a crime. In 1912, together with friends, he founded the magazine “Parisian Evenings” (since 1913 its director), called upon to inform the public about new trends in poetry and painting; on its pages appeared the names of M. Jacob, B. Cendrars, Henri Matisse, A. Rousseau, A. Derain, Francis Picabius, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, M. de Vlaminck and others. In February 1912 he published the most lyrical of his poems Mirabeau Bridge (Le Pont Mirabeau), and in December - a poem Zone(Zone), which put him in first place among modern poets. In June 1913, following the February exhibition of Italian futurists, he wrote an article Futuristic anti-tradition(L"Antitradition futuriste). In May 1913 he published a book Cubist Artists: Reflections on Art(Les Peintres cubistes: M editations esthetiques), where he proved the right of every artist to creative search; after its release he was recognized as a herald and theoretician of Cubism. At the same time he published a collection of poems 1898–1913 Alcohols(Alcools). This collection, like Reflections on art, were considered by modernist poets as programmatic. Alcohols approved the unpunctuation letter, which Apollinaire first used in Zone. In 1914 he published several experimental poems typed in the form of drawings (calligrams).

After the outbreak of the First World War, he applied on August 10, 1914 with a request to be granted French citizenship and sent to the front. On December 6, he was mobilized and assigned to an artillery regiment in Nimes. He submitted a request to be transferred to the front line; in April 1915 he was sent to Champagne; served in the infantry forces near Reims. While in the trenches, he regularly sent to the "French Mercury" essays on the course of military operations and poems. On March 10, 1916, he finally received French citizenship. On March 17, he was wounded in the skull by a shell fragment; Trepanned in May. Demobilized; returned to Paris, where he plunged into active creative activity.

In 1916 he published a collection of stories Murder of a Poet (Poète assassin); in one of them he modeled the universal image of the fate of a poet given over to be torn to pieces by the crowd. In June 1917 he staged his play Breasts of Tiresias(Les Mamelles de Tiresias), which caused a public scandal. In December he gave a lecture New consciousness and poets(L'Esprit nouveau et les poètes), which became his poetic testament. In 1917–1918 he actively published in magazines, prepared several scripts for films, wrote two plays and a comedy Casanova(Casanova). In April 1918 he published a collection of poems Calligrams(Calligrammes).

He died in Paris on November 9, 1918, having contracted the Spanish flu, at the age of 38. He was buried on November 13 at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

In the manifesto New consciousness and poets Apollinaire formulated a view on the task of poetry, which must correspond to the modern era with its unprecedented technical progress. Its pathos lies in the affirmation of the necessary connection between innovation and national cultural traditions and in the understanding of the high mission of the poet-seer, who discovers or predicts truths. Apollinaire's work fully embodied these poetic principles.

Apollinaire returned to poetry the plot content rejected by the symbolists ( See also SYMBOLISTS). He imbued his poems with a dense and tangible reality, which came not only from personal emotional experience, which manifested itself with extraordinary force in his lyrics ( Mirabeau Bridge, Song of the Unfortunate in Love). Like no one else, he knew how to hear and convey the essential rhythms of contemporary life: he sang “the grace of the industrial street” (“la grace de cette rue industrielle”), the unstoppable flow of workers rushing to the factories, airplanes soaring in the air, the polyphony of train stations - a cluster human destinies, the tragic music of sirens and exploding shells. The singer of human progress, he simultaneously carried within himself an alarming sense of impending catastrophes. On the eve of the First World War, he predicted that August 1914 would be the milestone that would clearly separate the old era from the new ( Small car).

Apollinaire's work is distinguished by the richness and variety of themes - from lyrics to civic motifs, from medieval legends to front-line poems, from short (4-5 lines) tales about animals ( Bestiary) to large epic canvases. The thematic arsenal is expanding due to the “cosmopolitanism” of the poet. A Slav by birth, who spent his childhood in Italy, a citizen of France, who lived for a year in Germany, who visited England and the Netherlands, he fills his poetry with multinational subjects ( Response of the Zaporozhye Cossacks to the Sultan of Constantinople,Emigrant from Landor Road,Easter in New York,Rhine night,Synagogue,Isfahan,Complaint from an artillery soldier from Dakar, etc.). In addition, he places the action of his poems in a variety of time layers - from the biblical era to the present. Such a wide chronological coverage is evidence of his deepest erudition.

Polythematic nature is also characteristic of individual poems by Apollinaire. In the poems of the “big breath” ( Zone, Hills, Musician from Saint-Merri, Red-haired beauty etc.) he strings together various phenomena of life from the most significant (war, turning points of his own fate) to the most seemingly insignificant (the appearance of a city street, posters that are full of the walls of houses, avenues and catalogs on the shelves, fragmentary remarks from passers-by, etc.). Fused together, thanks to the unique Apollinarian rhythm, they present a holistic, epic picture of the world. This integrity is facilitated by the absence of punctuation - meaning the connection and equality of all things; All boundaries separating the small from the large, the particular from the general have been erased. The poem moves like a powerful, undivided stream of existence.

Apollinaire - an innovator in the field poetic language. He enriches it with terms (telegraph, telephone, airplane, zeppelin, submarine, tram, traumatism, trepanation, chloroform, etc.); apoetic by definition, but woven into the rhythm of his poems, they become aesthetic realities. He includes in the orbit of the poetic geographical names, including the most ancient ones (Canaan, Chaldea, Euripus, Formosa), as well as the names of neighborhoods and streets. His poems are filled with a huge number of proper names - biblical characters, heroes of Greek, Indian and other mythologies, Christian saints, characters from medieval legends, writers, philosophers, his lovers and friends. He draws widely from various linguistic layers: archaisms and vernacular, vulgarisms and exotic names, historicisms and the realities of national cultures. Apollinaire's poetic vocabulary, unique in its versatility, allows him to concentrate different worlds and eras in the limited space of the poem.

Apollinaire’s images amaze with their unusual poetic vision: “widowing days” (“journees veuves”), “endless orphanhood of train stations” (“long orphelinat des gares”), “Punic knife” (“couteau punique”), “Scythian wind” (“vent scythe"). The main ones among them are the image of the Sun and the image of movement. In the first, the poet concludes not only his passionate belief in beauty: “the ever-flying sun” (“l”eternel avion soleil”), “flaming Reason” (“la Raison ardente”), “flaming glory of Christ” (“la flamboyante gloire de Christ"), but also an awareness of the whole tragedy of the world: "The sun's cut throat" ("Soleil cou coupe") The image of movement (words-leitmotifs: motorcade, passer-by, Ariadne's thread) structures the plot lines of many poems ( Zone, Cortege, Traveler, Stray acrobats, Emigrant from Landor Road, Small car, Let's go faster etc.); it is most fully realized in the poem Musician from Saint-Merri, based on the German legend about the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who leads all the children out of the city to the sound of a magic pipe.

Apollinaire does not abandon traditional verse. He often follows the classical stanza with a strictly controlled rhyme ( Rose of War, Song of the Unlucky in Love, Hills, The sadness of a star etc.). However, the poet also creates a new form. An adherent of free verse, he varies the meter in the most bizarre way, transfers rhyme inside the verse, replaces it with assonance, or completely gets rid of it. He destroys the canonical pattern of the stanza, proposing a new strophic configuration, devoid of any proportionality (from one to twenty or more lines in a stanza), where one verse can have up to thirty syllables or is reduced to one. This form is adequate to the content: it models the many-sided and not limited by any limits human existence.

Apollinaire's work is a significant phenomenon of French culture at the beginning of the 20th century. He was destined to fill the gap formed between two major literary and artistic movements - symbolism, which was already becoming history, and surrealism, which was just emerging. And not only to fill, but also to give a powerful impetus to the further development of poetry.

Latest publications in Russian: Apollinaire Guillaume. Aesthetic surgery: Lyrics. Prose. Theater. St. Petersburg, 1999; Poet's prose. M., 2001.

Evgeniya Krivushina