Before dying of the Spanish influenza during World War I while recovering from a bullet wound, Guillaume Apollinaire (pen name of Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitsky born 26 August 1880) the illegitimate son of a Polish woman and (possibly) an Italian bishop, was both a great French avante-garde poet and a key impresario in the history of modern art.

Roy Arthur Swanson in the Cyclopedia of World Authors: “Apollinaire was a large man, powerful physically, and is said to have resembled a dissolute Roman emperor.” A flamboyant man, he was once arrested on suspicion of being involved in an infamous heist of the Mona Lisa.

In his introduction to Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire (1948), Roger Shattuck identifies one unifying quality of Apollinaire’s life and work as his tremendous gusto, in eating (he took friends on legendary eating tours of Paris where they would go to a dozen different restaurants in one night), chatting, singing, and writing poetry.

Apollinaire wrote experimental prose, but he is revered as much for the formal innovation of his poetry as its beauty. His first poetry book, Bestiary, pairs short epigrams about animals with striking illustrations by Raoul Duly.

His second and third collections of poetry, Alcools and Calligrams, are each considered a masterpiece in their kind, and the long poem “Zone” (from Alcools) is often considered among the greatest French poems of the 20th century.

From the time he started his first literary journal in 1903, Apollinaire was one the very first to champion the work of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and other Cubist artists; he wrote a manifesto for the movement in 1913 with these calligrams on the frontis. (last picture)

And even while he was on his deathbed, Apollinaire continued to innovate, writing Tiresias (1917), which is considered the first Surrealist play. (In fact, Apollinaire is credited with coining the word “surrealism” as a means of describing the play.)