Guillaume APOLLINAIRE speaks of poetry from the trenches of the front.

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880.1918)

Autographed letter signed, written from the front, to Chérie Faure-Favier.

Two pages in-12° in lilac ink. Autograph envelope.

45th Battery. 38th ^Regiment . Sector 138. October 12, ¹⁹¹⁵

General correspondence. Volume II, pp. 842-843.

"I'll send you a poem next time." 

A moving letter from the poet, at the front, recounting the war to his young friend. Apollinaire testifies to his valiant morale, his courage in the face of the German enemy, and his unquenchable quest for poetry.

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"Dear girlfriend, why aren't you being nice? But you are still being nice when you think of me, when you talk about me. You're exaggerating, though, by complaining about me; I'm not bored. In fact, you understood the message in the photo perfectly, and it's accurate. That's exactly it."

You think we have time to be bored and we have had time to read Walter Scott's Pretty Girl of Perth, to sing At Menilmontant and to look at what serves as the mouths of wild boars and Germans, all this to the howling of our cannons.

I'll send you a poem next time. Remind me in your next letter. I 'm eagerly awaiting my portrait as an artilleryman. I won't be going on leave to Paris. Besides, there hasn't been any leave for six weeks, and I don't know when it will be possible again. If you see André Billy, tell him he's been keeping me out of touch for a long time. Thank you for sending me a blank sheet of paper, but I had some papers today, so I'll use them anyway. 

It's sector 138 again. You know, we've seen the war firsthand now . That doesn't stop the orb-weavers (whose season it is) from throwing their threads of the Virgin Mary between the branches of the broken, partially scorched fir trees. And every now and then, there's a smell of overripe pears, like in the places where they store fruit in the countryside. It's the tear gas that has that autumnal smell and makes you cry. My very friendly hand, GA.

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The daughter of Louise Faure Favier, Anne Chérie Faure Favier (1898-1990) was better known by her artist name, Chériane. She married Léon-Paul Fargue in the early 1940s.

General Correspondence. Edited by Victor Martin-Schmets. Published by Honoré Champion.