The Poet Assassinated

Guillaume Apollinaire wrote this wild, vicious novella in a hospital bed in 1915, recovering from the very war that would eventually kill him. It's a mock-epic, autobiographical fantasia about a poet named Croniamantal, born when the Eiffel Tower 'erects' in salute to his arrival, who storms through the Parisian literary scene proclaiming himself the greatest of living poets before being torn to pieces by an angry mob. Part savage self-mockery, part profound meditation on the artist's fate, the book crackles with the energy of early Modernism. Apollinaire was the movement's first champion and prophet, and this strange, often obscene, deeply funny work captures the chaos and exhilaration of art at the dawn of the twentieth century, before everything burned. A statue is built in Croniamantal's honor, 'out of nothing, like poetry and glory.' The dead poet's final, perfect irony.