Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire (French: [ɡijom apɔlinɛʁ]; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.

Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, as well as one of the most impassioned defenders of Cubism and a forefather of Surrealism. He is credited with coining the term Cubism (1911) to describe the new art movement, the term "Orphism" (1912), and the term "Surrealism" (1917) to describe the works of Erik Satie. He wrote one of the earliest works described as Surrealist, the play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917), which was used as the basis for the 1947 opera Les mamelles de Tirésias.

Two years after being wounded in World War I, he died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 at age 38.

Life

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki was born in Rome, Italy, and was raised speaking French, Italian, and Polish. He emigrated to France in his late teens and adopted the name Guillaume Apollinaire. His mother, born Angelika Kostrowicka, was a Polish noblewoman born near Navahrudak, Grodno Governorate (present-day Belarus). His maternal grandfather was a general in the Russian Imperial Army who was killed in the Crimean War. Apollinaire's father is unknown but may have been Francesco Costantino Camillo Flugi d'Aspermont (born 1835-), a Graubünden aristocrat who disappeared early from Apollinaire's life. Francesco Flugi von Aspermont was a descendant of Conradin Flugi d'Aspermont (1787-1874) a poet who wrote in ladin puter (the language spoken in Engiadina ota), and perhaps also of the Minnesänger Oswald von Wolkenstein (born ~1377, died 2 August 1445) [see Les ancêtres Grisons du poète Guillaume Apollinaire, Généanet].

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