"Vous avez senti mon âme comme personne."

Unpublished autograph letter signed by Guillaume Apollinaire addressed to Jean Royère, one page written in black ink on a sheet. Transverse folds inherent to posting.
Very fine letter of thanks from poet to poet.
"I thank you for the admirable article you devoted to me. You have felt my soul like no one else." Jean Royère had indeed written a laudatory article upon the publication of Alcools in the June 20, 1913 issue of La Phalange: "Here, gathered in an 18mo of barely two hundred pages, is almost the entire poetic work of Apollinaire. Fifteen years of poetry rest in this small volume. I therefore do not open it without almost a preconceived admiration. In poetry, abundance means sterility and one only writes three volumes in a year through inability to devote one's life to a book. Apollinaire, evidently, will leave only one book of verse, like Baudelaire and Mallarmé, like Rimbaud: this is a considerable chance of immortality, for the true poet is one who has this too rare gift of condensation."
"[...] I will come to see you in the coming days to thank you first and also to speak to you about naturalization I am appalled by the new law."
The poet here alludes to the Three Year Law (dubbed the Barthou Law), increasing the duration of military service from two to three years in view of preparing the French army for a possible war with Germany. If Apollinaire's biography prefers to focus on the publication of his works in this year 1913, the letters his mother addresses to her son show that the latter moves heaven and earth to avoid military service and be naturalized as quickly as possible: "For your papers an Italian colonel attached to the ministry of war who was witness for your act of recognition had written to me once to give me the steps to follow so that you would be exempted from military service in Italy and for your French naturalization. I am going to write to him moreover to ask him to see to the Town Hall." (letter from Angelika Kostrowicka of July 12, 1913).
War would come soon and, on August 3, 1914, the day after mobilization, the stateless poet would file a request for voluntary enlistment accompanied by a naturalization request. The latter would only be granted to him in 1916.
An interesting letter, written at the dawn of the Great War, bearing witness to Guillaume Apollinaire's two passions: poetry and France.