When Guillaume Apollinaire died in 1918 at the age of thirty-eight, as the result of a war wound, he was already known as one of the most original and important poets of his time. He had led migration of Bohemian Paris across the city from Montmartre to Montparnasse, he had helped formulate the principles of Cubism, having written one of the first books on the subject, and coined the word 'Surrealist'; and he had demonstrated in his own work those innovations we have come to associate with the most vital investigations of the avente - garde.