Review of Apollinaire's novel “Letters to Law.”

WWe know him from the painting “The Muse Inspires the Poet” by the customs official Rousseau, who helped in its artistic achievement, or from the numerous drawings by Picasso, who belonged to his early avant-garde group: the poet Apollinaire, who was born Wilhelm in 1930. Rome 1880 d Kostrovitsky, the son of a Polish mother and an Italian nobleman, leaves his lover after giving birth to another son. The mother moves to Monaco with her sons, and the man, now called Guillaume, attends boarding schools in Cannes and Nice. The family later lives in Paris, and Guillaume, without a school leaving certificate or training, makes a living through odd jobs and is constantly at risk of poverty.

This gentle poet and wordsmith was also a poet of unhappy love. “The Bridge of Mirabeau,” that little miracle about the passage of time, love and happiness, links his circle of that time to that of his lover, the painter Marie Laurencin — which does not prevent love from “drifting like flowing waters.” The waves of the Seine are tired of the eternal glances of love, the love ends and Marie marries someone else. Apollinaire's first love, the English lady Annie Blyden, already showed the pattern: violent desire without love in return, resulting in the song “La Chanson du mal-aimé” with unforgettable lines: “Avons-nous assez navigué / Dans une onde mauvaise à boire” ( We've had enough time / I've drank a wave of bitterness).