Apollinaire / Pablo Picasso - Calligrammes - 1925

Guillaume Apollinaire, Calligrammes, NRF, 1925. With a portrait of the author by Pablo Picasso, wood-engraved by R. Jaudon. Missing at the bottom of the back. Very fresh interior. In-8, 228 pages,

Rare second edition of this emblematic collection by Guillaume Apollinaire. One of 200 numbered copies on pure Fil Lafuma-Navarre paper.
In the frontispiece, the reproduction of the portrait representing Apollinaire signed Pablo Picasso and accompanying the original edition published by Mercure de France in 1918.

Apollinaire had planned for this work an “Author’s Note” that remained unpublished:
"Here is the greater part of my war poems up to the moment when I was gravely wounded. I addressed them to my friends in letters from which they were pleased to draw. I am still missing many. I set aside for publication later my pre-war poetic production. The lyrical ideograms that open the collection had been created shortly before the great conflict erupted and were to appear under the title And I too am a painter, when mobilization was decided. The edition disappeared in the turmoil..."

A first version of the collection was eventually submitted to Mercure de France.
By the end of 1917, production was delayed due to typographical difficulties in reproducing the Calligrammes. Apollinaire, noting the poor quality of the proofs, decided to create the editor’s own mock-up, based on corrected proof pages, copies of poems published in reviews, and handwritten versions of other poems written or revised.

Calligrammes finally appeared in April 1918. The first edition contains in the frontispiece the reproduction of a portrait depicting Apollinaire signed Pablo Picasso. The collection is dedicated to René Dalize, Apollinaire’s childhood friend, who died in the war, to whom he pays tribute in his dedication: “To the memory / of the oldest of my comrades / René Dalize / mortally wounded in action / on May 7, 1917.”
Apollinaire alludes to him in the calligrams The Pierced Dove and the Water Jet:

“Where are Raynal Billy Dalize / O my friends gone to war / Whose names grow melancholic”

The reception of the collection at its first publication was mixed: the formal innovation was poorly understood and the poems sometimes seemed too light or not critical enough of World War I.

Over time, Calligrammes has become a mythical collection of French poetry.