Apollinaire, Guillaume

Alcools.  Poèmes (1898–1913).  Paris: Mercure de France, 1913



8vo (7 3/8 x 4 3/4 in.; 187 x 121 mm).  Frostispiece portrait by Picasso, publisher's yellow printed wrappers bound in; some light browning to margins, publisher's small perforated "M. F." stamp on upper wrapper and two preliminary leaves.  Half red morocco, spine in six compartments, marbled boards, edges gilt, marbled endpapers; spine somewhat faded, some wear.

Connolly 22

8vo (7 3/8 x 4 3/4 in.; 187 x 121 mm). Frostispiece portrait by Picasso, publisher's yellow printed wrappers bound in; some light browning to margins, small perforated "M. F." stamp on upper wrapper and two preliminary leaves. Half red morocco, spine in six compartments, marbled boards, edges gilt, marbled endpapers; spine somewhat faded, some wear.
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Presentation copy of the book which established Appolliniare's reputation.  Copy 707 of an unspecified limitation.  Inscribed on the half-title to the critic and poet Louis Chadourne (1890–1925), "À Louis Chadourne, très cordial souvenir de Vol de Grâce et de l'Hôpital du Gouvernement Italien.  Guillaume Apollinaire."  In 1917, Chadourne published a critique of "L'Œuvre poètique de Charles Beaudelaire," the last piece Apollinaire published in his lifetime. Chadourne declared the poet to be the leader of a bold new movement in literature.  Apollinaire claimed that he was no leader (in a response not published until 1964 in Les Diables amoureux).

"This book of verse by a Polish impresario of mysterious ancestry, interpreter of Cubism, baptiser of Surrealism, novelist, gourmet, bibliophile and pornocrat, includes such modern poems as 'Zone' [famously translated into English by Samuel Beckett] and the 'Emigrant of Landor Road' ... His imagery is dazzling, his vitality prodigious, his poetry, like Eliot's, both memorable and musical ..." (Connolly).