Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918)
Born 1880 CE, died 1918 CE.
Guillaume Apollinaire ( ə-POL-in-AIR, French: [ɡijom apɔlinɛːʁ]; born Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Aleksander Apolinary Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a Polish-French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Polish, Swiss and Italian 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" in 1911 to describe the emerging art movement, the term Orphism in 1912, and the term "Surrealism" in 1917 to describe the works of Erik Satie. He wrote poems without punctuation, in his attempt to be resolutely modern in both form and subject. Apollinaire wrote one of the earliest Surrealist literary works, the play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917), which became the basis for Francis Poulenc's 1947 opera Les mamelles de Tirésias. Influenced by Symbolist poetry in his youth, he was admired during his lifetime by the young poets who later formed the nucleus of the Surrealist group (Breton, Aragon, Soupault).
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