Quarter 86 of Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is the resting place of the poet, art critic and literary figure of Polish descent, Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918). Since 1919 his friends and admirers have gathered at his tomb around 11:30 a.m., a custom that continues to this day.

Apollinaire is remembered as one of the most important writers and critics active in France in the twentieth century. He was the author of “Alcools”, “Le Poète assassiné”, “Calligrammes”, and the treatise “Les Peintres cubists”, and he is credited with coining the term “Surrealism”. Through his reviews in numerous journals, he played a pivotal role as a champion of the early twentieth-century avant-garde. His views had a lasting impact on the formation of many artistic movements, including Orphic Cubism, Surrealism and Purism.

Description of the Tombstone

The poet’s tomb, designed in 1935 by his close friend Serge Férat – painter, writer and publisher of the magazine “Les Soirées de Paris” – consists of a rectangular stone slab surmounted by a menhir. The slab bears engravings of excerpts from Apollinaire’s poems in the collection “Calligrammes”: a heart-shaped calligram with the words “mon cœur pareil à une flamme renversée” (“my heart like an inverted flame”), and three stanzas from the poem “Les Collines” (“The Hills”), which evoke Apollinaire’s poetic vision:

Je me suis enfin détaché
De toutes choses naturelles
Je peux mourir mais non pécher
Et ce qu’on n’a jamais touché
Je l’ai touché je l’ai palpé

Et j’ai scruté tout ce que nul
Ne peut en rien imaginer
Et j’ai soupesé maintes fois
Même la vie impondérable
Je peux mourir en souriant (...)

Habituez-vous comme moi
À ces prodiges que j’annonce
À la bonté qui va régner
À la souffrance que j’endure
Et vous connaîtrez l’avenir

“I have finally freed myself
From all things natural.
I can die, though never sin,
And what has never been touched
I have touched and held.

I have explored all that no one
Could ever imagine.
I have weighed time and again
Even life without weight.
With a smile I shall be able to die [...].

Accustom yourselves, as I have,
To the miracles I foretell,
To the goodness that will reign,
To the suffering I endure.
You will then know the future.”

Jacqueline Apollinaire (1891–1987), the poet’s wife, is also buried in the tomb.

Genesis of the Project

The tomb was financed through an auction of works by artists who had been Apollinaire’s friends, held on 21 June 1924. The initiative was conceived in consultation with the committee of friends of Apollinaire (Souvenir d’Apollinaire), which had been active since 1920 in commemorating the poet at Père Lachaise.

The choice of designer and the eventual form of the monument, determined in the mid-1930s, were the outcome of disagreements within the committee. Apollinaire’s widow and leading literary figures held decisive influence, which placed them at odds with the artist initially invited to undertake the project, Pablo Picasso. The Surrealist-inspired designs that Picasso presented in 1927–1928 did not accord with the more traditional conception of the monument preferred by the decision-makers.