Note 1 — Front matter

The French language at the end of the nineteenth century had reached a certain fixation, chiefly through the influence of Mallarmé, whose literary artifice was consternating. Apollinaire, a bizarre scholar, and yet a "lord of language," was more of a freebooter. Many of his exoticisms came from the market-place or from other tongues. Their sources were fair and false. But at bottom, there is the sincere desire to free modern literature from romantic sentiment, and artifice, to use words as directly and freely as in conversation.