Letters to Madeleine (2017)

Letters to Madeleine collects for the first time in English the remarkable letters and poems sent by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire to his fiancée Madeleine Pagès during World War I. Stationed in the trenches of Champagne, this man of letters who had been at the forefront of the surrealist movement was transformed overnight into an artilleryman. Writing about the letters in his biography of Apollinaire, Francis Steegmuller noted, “Nowhere, is there a more ‘living picture’ of a poet in a war . . . or, outside of Stendhal, a more vivid picture of war itself.” Letters to Madeleine is a moving portrait of a poet facing one of humanity’s starkest realities and it will be of interest to not only fans of Apollinaire but those interested in personal accounts of World War I as well.

Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzki, known by the pseudonym Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), was among the foremost French poets of the early twentieth century. He was also a playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic credited with coining the term surrealism. Apollinaire’s works include The Decaying Enchanter, The Bestiary, The Spirits, and Caligrams.