had passed. Yet only a year after its publication, the first World War began, and the
cubist group broke up. Apollinaire himself, though of foreign birth, joined the
French army; he was perhaps the only poet, apart from the futurists, to look upon
the war as an adventure. He was wounded in the head, necessitating an operation,
and he died a year or so later, during the influenza epidemic, on the evening of the
Armistice, 1918, at the age of 38, thinking, it is said, that the crowds in the streets of
Paris shouting 'A bas Guillaume' ( 'Down with William,' meaning the German kai-
ser) were referring to himself. Some years earlier, he had been imprisoned for sev-
eral days by the police, falsely accused of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.
Afterwards he wrote a piece about the episode for a Paris newspaper, a tone of
naïve simplicity covering his anguish, that reminds one of writings by Erik Satie,
the composer. But he revealed that when the heavy door of the prison closed be-
hind him it was like death. He loved life, and had always felt free; it is for this
reason that he was the natural writer for the cubists. One can only marvel at the
instinct of Parisian painters to keep their art in the hands of poets.

Robert Motherwell, New York, March 29, 1949

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