Reading Order
Le Poète assassiné Reading Order
Le Poète assassiné (The Assassinated Poet, 1916) by Guillaume Apollinaire is the prose fiction collection that presents Apollinaire's most direct self-portrait in narrative form — the central piece, 'Le Poète assassiné,' is a semi-autobiographical tale about the poet Croniamantal (a thinly disguised self-portrait), his loves, his creative struggles, his persecution by the crowd, and his eventual murder by a mob that hates poets. The collection also includes 'L'Hérésiarque et Cie' stories, fantasy tales, and the remarkable 'Giovanni Moroni' — stories that mix the occult, the erotic, the mythological, and the comic in a way that anticipates Surrealist fiction. Apollinaire was a prose writer of genuine and distinctive quality, though his fiction has been overshadowed by the poetry — the prose is looser and more fantastic than the verse, reveling in the folkloric, the magical, and the sexual in ways that the concentrated lyric poems cannot accommodate.
Where to start
Begin with 'Le Poète assassiné' itself (the title piece) — it is longer and more developed than the other stories, and its semi-autobiographical portrait of the poet-hero gives the clearest access to Apollinaire's self-image. Then try 'L'Hérésiarque' (the opening story of the earlier collection, about a heresiarch who manipulates religious systems for entertainment) and 'Le Cas du brigadier masqué' for the comic and fantastic sides of Apollinaire's prose.
Complete Le Poète assassiné Book List
- 1Buy
Le Poète assassiné (1916)
Guillaume Apollinaire·1916·In the Gallimard Folio edition; also in the Pléiade Œuvres en prose complètes. In English: The Poet Assassinated and Other Stories, translated by Ron Padgett (North Point Press, 1984) — a lively translation by an American poet of the New York School. - 2Buy
L'Hérésiarque et Cie (1910)
Guillaume Apollinaire·1910·The earlier prose fiction collection — stories of heretics, occultists, and fantasts that share the same tone as Le Poète assassiné; the natural next reading for Apollinaire's prose fiction. - 3Buy
Alcools (1913)
Guillaume Apollinaire·1913·The poetry that the prose fiction illuminates — reading the autobiographical stories alongside the lyric poems gives a fuller picture of the life and obsessions that both draw on. - 4Buy
Contes de la Bécasse
Guy de Maupassant·1883·The French short story tradition from which Apollinaire is partly descending (and departing from) — Maupassant's controlled realism is the foil that makes Apollinaire's fantastic departures legible. - 5Buy
Les Chants de Maldoror
Comte de Lautréamont·1869·The most direct predecessor of Apollinaire's fantastic prose — Lautréamont's violent, extravagant prose-epic is the tradition of French Gothic-fantastic prose that Le Poète assassiné is working in.
Le Poète assassiné — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Le Poète assassiné autobiographical?
Significantly so — Croniamantal, the poet-hero, shares major biographical details with Apollinaire (Polish-Italian origins, Paris bohemian life, love affairs with painters, persecution by critics), and the story can be read as Apollinaire's fantasy account of his own position in literary and social life. The name 'Croniamantal' is an anagram of 'Mont Carmel' (Mount Carmel — the Carmelite mountain, associated with Catholic mysticism that was part of Apollinaire's background) and is also a figure of the poet as cosmic martyr. The story's ending — in which the crowd kills the poet and the sculptor Tristouse (Marie Laurencin) creates a monument of empty air in the shape of the absent body — is one of the most striking statements about the poet's social position in early twentieth-century French literature.
Who is Marie Laurencin and what was her relationship to Apollinaire?
Marie Laurencin (1883-1956) was a French painter who was Apollinaire's lover from 1907 to 1912. She is the 'Tristouse Ballerinette' of Le Poète assassiné and the 'Marie' of the famous poem in Alcools. Their relationship was the central love affair of Apollinaire's Paris years — she moved in the same artistic circles (she knew Picasso and was part of the Bateau-Lavoir group), and the end of the affair is the emotional source of several of Alcools' most beautiful poems. Laurencin became an important painter in her own right, known for her delicate, pastel-colored paintings of women, and is represented in the collection of the Musée Marmottan in Paris.
What is the connection between Le Poète assassiné and the Fantômas serials?
Apollinaire and his circle (including Max Jacob and Alfred Jarry) were enthusiastic readers of popular fiction — the Fantômas crime serials by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain were among their favorites. The fantastic, surreal, and grotesque elements in Apollinaire's fiction draw on this popular tradition as much as on the high-literary sources. The juxtaposition of the literary and the popular — the poet-martyr alongside the occultist detective — is one of the characteristic gestures of Apollinaire's prose.
What other prose works did Apollinaire write?
Apollinaire was a prolific prose writer: L'Hérésiarque et Cie (1910, short stories — nominated for the Prix Goncourt), Le Poète assassiné (1916), Les Onze Mille Verges (pornographic novel, 1907), Les Exploits d'un jeune don Juan (1911, erotic fiction), and the art criticism collected as Chroniques d'art and Les Peintres cubistes (1913). He also wrote an enormous volume of journalism. The erotic fiction is the most provocative — Apollinaire wrote two of the most inventive works of French literary pornography, combining the obscene with the fantastical in ways that anticipate later Surrealist erotica.
When and how did Apollinaire die?
Apollinaire died on November 9, 1918 — two days before the Armistice that ended the First World War, at age thirty-eight — of the Spanish influenza pandemic that killed more people worldwide than the war itself. He had never fully recovered from the head wound he received in March 1916 (shrapnel, trepanation); his weakened constitution made him particularly vulnerable to the flu. He is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. His death was mourned as the loss of the most important French poet of his generation, and the publication of Calligrammes, which had appeared in April 1918, was his last major work.
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