Vitam impendere bello : La Grande Guerre sur l’Autre scène d’Apollinaire

Abstract

Once entrenched in Apollinaire’s work, the Great War becomes a double front where the poet and the soldier are fighting, turning the weapon of war against social wounds and closest friends of an outraged man. Apollinaire’s surrealist theatre is a response to the reality of the world, a diversion from the disillusionment of the « big collective words ». It is also a reflection, trustworthy and at the same time deceptive, of the mental portrait of Apollinaire and his ideas on life: a portrait which does not always resembles the original , like the wheel that imitates walking.