Guillaume Apollinaire Quotes

French poet (1880–1918)

Guillaume Apollinaire (26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent who was hugely influential as a Modernist poet and as a spokesman for the Cubist painters. His original name appears in many forms along the lines of Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris Kostrowitzky or Wąż-Kostrowicki.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: Fernand Laviet

Alternative Names: Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki • Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzki • Guillaume Apolinaire • Guillaume de Kostrowisky • Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky • Guillaume De Kostrowisky • Guillaume Albert Wladimir Alexandre Apollinaire de Kostrowitzky • Wilhelm Albert Wladimir Alexander Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky • Guillaume Albert Vladimir Alexandre Apollinaire de Kostrowicky • Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Apollinaris De Kostrowitski) • Kostrowicka • Kostro • Apollinaire, Guillaume

From Wikidata (CC0)

Under Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine.
Why must I be reminded again
Of our love?
Doesn't happiness issue from pain?
Bring on the night, ring out the hour.
The days wear on but I endure.

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

At last you're tired of this elderly world
Shepherdess O Eiffel Tower this morning the bridges are bleating
You're fed up living with antiquity

A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien
Bergère ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matin
Tu en as assez de vivre dans l'antiquité grecque et romaine

The poems I am writing at the moment will be much closer to your present way of thinking.I am trying to renew poetic style,but within a classical framework.On the other hand,I don't want to lapse into imitating others.Letter to Picasso 1918

Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer.

La géométrie est aux arts plastiques ce que la grammaire est à l'art de l'écrivain.

From this new alliance – for until now costume and scenery on one hand, choreography on the other, have been linked only artificially – there has resulted in Parade a kind of sur-réalisme.

De cette alliance nouvelle, car jusqu'ici les décors et les costumes, d'une part, la choréographie, d'autre part, n'avaient entre eux qu'un lien factice, il est résulté, dans Parade, une sorte de sur-réalisme.