There are men who cannot bring themselves to conform with the rest of human society, who cannot conceive of a secure and honorable career even at the hands of a tolerant age. They flee, they are eternally escaping from the fold by some particularly outrageous or suicidal action. Rimbaud having mastered the art of poetry in his twenties, deserted literature to lead caravans through the African desert. Apollinaire at almost as early an age had also mastered the traditional forms of his art, but with Rimbaud's example before him could not become "an explorer, a trapper, a robber, a hunter, a miner." Possessed of great energy, curiosity, and disrespect, he was from the start thrown upon the side of those who flout authority, court disorder and embrace the glitter and profusion of an intensely mundane existence. To regard the spectacle of modern life and to sense the cleavage with the past and with the art or humanities of the previous day, is to be "modern"
