Guillaume Apollinaire - Apollinaire, The Poet's Gaze

Carole Aurouet, ea Apollinaire, Le regard du poete. Bound. 320 pp. (printed on two types of paper). Illustrated (Full color). 22.2 x 28.8 cm Musee d'Orsay/Gallimard, Paris, 2016 Small damage on the cover. (not noticeable!)
Guillaume Apolinaire (1880-1918), pseudonym of Guillaume Kostrowitzki, was born as the son of an unmarried woman of Polish descent and an Italian officer. In Stavelot, where he lived with his mother, he experienced an unhappy love with the peasant girl Marije Dubois. After this, he left for Germany in 1901, where he met Annie Playden, who came from England and became his great love and muse. However, she later left for the United States. In Paris he met the greats of his time: Picasso, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Max Jacob, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Kees van Dongen and Henri Rousseau. Here he developed his great writing talent. He remained friends with Picasso until his death. In 1916 (during World War I) a piece of shrapnel pierced his helmet and into his head. He underwent several operations. Back in Paris he was employed by the censorship, and again did a lot of journalistic work. In November 1918 he died of the Spanish flu, weakened by the head wound, and was buried at Père-Lachaise. After his death, Calligrammes was published, poems that Apollinaire had written in the trenches. This publication is an accompanying catalogue to a major retrospective exhibition at the Musee d'orsay. This exhibition focused on the work of Apollinaire and his 'famous' friends. A beautiful reference work on Apollinare and cultural life at the beginning of the 20th century.