Guillaume APOLLINAIRE. Autograph letter signed "Guillaume Ap - Lot 9

Guillaume APOLLINAIRE. Autograph letter signed "Guillaume Apollinaire", Paris November 12, 1911, to the director of Hommes du jour [Henri Fabre]; 2 pages in-8 (18 x 11.5 cm). Beautiful protest against an article by Henri Guilbeaux (1884-1938, journalist and anarchist activist: "La Vie et les Arts. Le cubisme et MM. Urbain Gohier et Apollinaire", Les Hommes du Jour, November 11, 1911), about cubism and his pseudonym Louise Lalanne. He recalls his conversation with Guilbeaux on a staircase at the Grand-Palais: "Indeed, I spoke for nearly an hour with your editor on the subject of cubism, but only to try to make my interlocutor understand the importance of this art movement. [ ] On the other hand, I may have reservations about the personal talent of a particular painter (and room 8 wasn't full of paintings by the cubists), but I can assure you that at no time did I communicate my criticisms to Monsieur Guilbeaux. Incidentally, since your collaborator has done me the grace of introducing me as a mystifier, I'm going to say myself what mystifications I've been guilty of [ ] I once published, in La Phalange, a review of some novels that hadn't appeared but that I'd imagined. In two or three issues of Marges, I signed articles on women's literature with a woman's name, Louise Lalanne. But that's it! And don't my mystifications amount to very little? They couldn't compete with those of Caillot-Duval, Mérimée or Baudelaire. In any case, they contained nothing that would commit my opinions or my character. He met Guilbeaux several times: "We rarely agreed on anything, whether it concerned letters or the arts. We don't agree on cubism, that's all. I still think that, despite its ugly name, this movement is the most elevated in the plastic arts today. Which is not to say that I find genius in all cubist painters. M. Henri Guilbeaux is too loyal a man to maintain that I have ever argued otherwise. He asks for his letter to be inserted [The letter will not be inserted.] Exposition Apollinaire, Bibliothèque nationale, 1969, no. 255. Album Apollinaire (Pléiade 1971), p. 129. Correspondance générale, t. I, no. 360.