APOLLINAIRE: POET AMONG THE PAINTERS

By Francis Steegmuller '27.New York: Farrar, Strauss and Company,1963. 365 pp. Illustrated. $6.50.

This handsomely printed and well-illus-trated volume is easily the best of the few existing biographies in English of Guillaume Apollinaire and must rank in importance with the 1952 biography in French by Marcel Adema, which it supersedes in part. Intended for the broadest circle of readers of French literature, it will also be respected by Apollinaire specialists despite its lack of bibliography and the paucity of its notes and references.

Mr. Steegmuller has made good use of the numerous books and articles on Apollinaire which, since 1945, have reflected and contributed to the immense growth of the poet's reputation. Many biographical details he has personally verified in Rome, Monte Carlo, Germany, and France, and he himself has made minor original contributions to our knowledge. (One source that could have been more extensively used is Apollinaire's own fiction and poetry.) Certain episodes are particularly well treated, such as the 1911 arrest of Apollinaire on suspicion of complicity in the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.

The book's subtitle, Poet amongthePainters, is at least partly justified by a documented reappraisal of Apollinaire's close association with the young painters of the 1904-1914 decade. Correcting a widespread error, Mr. Steegmuller shows that, in spite of his sincerely ardent defense of the Fauves, Cubists, and Futurists, Apollinaire had lit! tie real understanding of their work, and was consequently a rather inept art critic as a number of his painter friends realized and have admitted.

The book is considerably less helpful in dealing with the intellectual and artistic development of Apollinaire, and in the critical study of his poetry. This is not Mr. Steegmuller's real concern, and we shall have to wait for Professor LeRoy Breunig of Barnard College to give us the first book-length critical study of Apollinaire's poetry. But Mr. Steegmuller has given us a highly readable, full, accurate, and up-to-date biography, which forms an excellent introduction to any study of the major French poet, Guillaume Apollinaire.

Professor of French