Paul Éluard
This bilingual compilation French/Dutch ambles through the bounteous poetical oeuvre of the French poet Paul Éluard, who published aboutbooks poetry, literary and political works in his ensuing qualities as a Dadaist, Surrealist, Communist and poet of the resistance.
These obediences and engagements all inspired his poetry, but above all, Paul Éluard quintessentially flourishes and sinks in as a sublime poet of the manifold countenances of love.
Infatuation, love, grief for lost love are the themes which give some his poems a mesmerising and universal charm, the simple, dainty and sensuous language elegantly illustrating the common belief that French is the language of love par excellence, starting by his early and most renowned poetry collection, Capitale de la douleur sitelinkCapital of Pain fromand continuing in the collections compiled and translated in English in sitelinkLast Love Poems.
With the poems put to music by his friend Poulenc in several song cycles sitelinkTel jour telle nuitsitelinkCinq poèmessitelinkLa fraîcheur et le feu sitelinkLe travail du peintre as a point of departure, the compilation focusses on Éluards most beauteous love poems, including a few poems from his resistance poetry like the famous poem Liberté, Liberty, of which thousands of copies were parachuted by RAF planes over occupied France.
The compilation however keeps silent on his political poetry, omitting some of the black marks on his shining armour, which brought Milan Kundera to debunk him as an exponent of totalitarian poetry After having been expelled from the communist party intogether with Breton, Éluard rejoined the party in, remaining a faithful party member to the end, writing an “Ode to Stalin” inand notoriously renouncing to stand up for Záviš Kalandra, a surrealist friend victim of a show trial and hanged in Prague.
The Dutch title of this collection, World with eyes of snow, refers to two recurrent images in Éluards poetry: the image of snow, paramount to him since his stay in a sanatorium close to Davos, Switzerland, where he met
his youth love and later wife, Gala later having to share her with his friend Max Ernst, eventually losing her to Salvador Dalí, and the eye epitomising the supreme sense in his utterly visual poetry, often inspired by and dedicated to visual artists of which some were close friends of him, Joan Miró, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Max Ernst.
Poems on their work are also abundant in this compilation,
La femme est l'être qui projette la plus grande ombre ou la plus grande lumière dans nos rêves, Baudelaire
Woman is the being who projects the greatest shadow or the greatest light in our dreams,
However unquestionably inspired by the subsequent women in his complicated love life Gala, Nusch, Dominique his poetry reads like lyrical hymns to the perpetual, archetypical woman, la femme absolue, to the muse so central in Surrealist thought.
Further embroidering on the ambivalent muse of Baudelaire, the woman bringing darkness and light, the Surrealists, like modern troubadours, venerated the woman as a creature more in touch with the irrational and emotional side of nature, and love and desire not only as a means to defy the bourgeois, but also as an oneiric entrance to perception of the unconscious and the world of dreams.
The later virulent feminist critique on the ostensible misogynist aspects of the surrealist movement sitelinkThe Beribboned Bomb: The Image of Woman in Male Surrealist Art, degrading women as saints or whores, reducing them to passive objects of male fantasy, disfiguring and dismembering the female body in the visual arts, isnt susceptible of disparaging the brilliance of the poetry of Éluard.
While his surrealist aesthetics and imaginary sweep from puzzling to enchanting, giving his stanzas thriving on the world of the senses and images of nature a delicate touch of synaesthesia, some of his love poems, chanting on the pleasures and despairs of love, desire, its elation, bliss and grief, are of a stunning beauty and lucidity.
Meditative, lyrical and intimate, they are prone to rekindle and substantiate ones belief in love even when embittered or hardened by life, like in the elegies mourning the sudden death of his second wife Nusch in the moving poems Ma Morte Vivante My Living Dead One and Notre Vie Our Life, from the collection Le Temps déborde Time Overflows,:
Nusch Éluard, by Dora Maar
I cannot say every poem spoke to me, but some of these multifaceted and at times searing poems will stay with me for a long time.
La poésie dÉluard est comme la nuit, sans rivale, Jean Paulhan Bevat tevens de oorspr, Franse tekst Paul Éluard was the pen name of Eugène Émile Paul Grindel, French poet, a founder of Surrealism with Louis Aragon and André Breton among others, one of the important lyrical poets of theth century, Éluard rejected later Surrealism and joined the French Communist Party, Many of his works reflect the major events of the century, such as the World Wars, the Resistance against the Nazis, and the political and social ideals of theth century.
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liberté, poésie
I only wish to love you
A storm fills the valley
A fish the river
I have made you the size of my solitude
The whole world to hide in
Days and nights to understand
To see no more in your eyes
Than what I think of you
And a world in your image
And days and nights ruled by your eyelids.
Je n'ai envie que de t'aimer
Un orage emplit la vallée
Un poisson la rivière
Je t'ai faite à la taille de ma solitude
Le monde entier pour se cacher
Des jours des nuits pour se comprendre
Pour ne plus rien voir dans tes yeux
Que ce que je pense de toi
Et d'un monde à ton image
Et des jours et des nuits réglés par tes paupières.
This bilingual compilation French/Dutch ambles through the bounteous poetical oeuvre of the French poet Paul Éluard, who published aboutbooks poetry, literary and political works in his ensuing qualities as a Dadaist, Surrealist, Communist and poet of the resistance.
These obediences and engagements all inspired his poetry, but above all, Paul Éluard quintessentially flourishes and sinks in as a sublime poet of the manifold countenances of love.
Infatuation, love, grief for lost love are the themes which give some his poems a mesmerising and universal charm, the simple, dainty and sensuous language elegantly illustrating the common belief that French is the language of love par excellence, starting by his early and most renowned poetry collection, Capitale de la douleur sitelinkCapital of Pain fromand continuing in the collections compiled and translated in English in sitelinkLast Love Poems.
With the poems put to music by his friend Poulenc in several song cycles sitelinkTel jour telle nuitsitelinkCinq poèmessitelinkLa fraîcheur et le feu sitelinkLe travail du peintre as a point of departure, the compilation focusses on Éluards most beauteous love poems, including a few poems from his resistance poetry like the famous poem Liberté, Liberty, of which thousands of copies were parachuted by RAF planes over occupied France.
The compilation however keeps silent on his political poetry, omitting some of the black marks on his shining armour, which brought Milan Kundera to debunk him as an exponent of totalitarian poetry After having been expelled from the communist party intogether with Breton, Éluard rejoined the party in, remaining a faithful party member to the end, writing an “Ode to Stalin” inand notoriously renouncing to stand up for Záviš Kalandra, a surrealist friend victim of a show trial and hanged in Prague.
The Dutch title of this collection, World with eyes of snow, refers to two recurrent images in Éluards poetry: the image of snow, paramount to him since his stay in a sanatorium close to Davos, Switzerland, where he met
his youth love and later wife, Gala later having to share her with his friend Max Ernst, eventually losing her to Salvador Dalí, and the eye epitomising the supreme sense in his utterly visual poetry, often inspired by and dedicated to visual artists of which some were close friends of him, Joan Miró, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Max Ernst.
Poems on their work are also abundant in this compilation,
La femme est l'être qui projette la plus grande ombre ou la plus grande lumière dans nos rêves, Baudelaire
Woman is the being who projects the greatest shadow or the greatest light in our dreams,
However unquestionably inspired by the subsequent women in his complicated love life Gala, Nusch, Dominique his poetry reads like lyrical hymns to the perpetual, archetypical woman, la femme absolue, to the muse so central in Surrealist thought.
Further embroidering on the ambivalent muse of Baudelaire, the woman bringing darkness and light, the Surrealists, like modern troubadours, venerated the woman as a creature more in touch with the irrational and emotional side of nature, and love and desire not only as a means to defy the bourgeois, but also as an oneiric entrance to perception of the unconscious and the world of dreams.
I am in front of this feminine land
Like a child in front of the fire
Smiling vaguely with tears in my eyes
In front of this land where all moves in me
Where mirrors mist where mirrors clear
Reflecting two nude bodies season on season
Ive so many reasons to lose myself
On this roadless earth under horizonless skies
Good reasons I ignored yesterday
And Ill never ever forget
Good keys of gazes keys their own daughters
in front of this land where nature is mine
In front of the fire the first fire
Good mistress reason
Identified star
On earth under sky in and out of my heart
Second bud first green leaf
That the sea covers with sails
And the sun finally coming to us
I am in front of this feminine land
Like a branch in the fire.
The later virulent feminist critique on the ostensible misogynist aspects of the surrealist movement sitelinkThe Beribboned Bomb: The Image of Woman in Male Surrealist Art, degrading women as saints or whores, reducing them to passive objects of male fantasy, disfiguring and dismembering the female body in the visual arts, isnt susceptible of disparaging the brilliance of the poetry of Éluard.
While his surrealist aesthetics and imaginary sweep from puzzling to enchanting, giving his stanzas thriving on the world of the senses and images of nature a delicate touch of synaesthesia, some of his love poems, chanting on the pleasures and despairs of love, desire, its elation, bliss and grief, are of a stunning beauty and lucidity.
Meditative, lyrical and intimate, they are prone to rekindle and substantiate ones belief in love even when embittered or hardened by life, like in the elegies mourning the sudden death of his second wife Nusch in the moving poems Ma Morte Vivante My Living Dead One and Notre Vie Our Life, from the collection Le Temps déborde Time Overflows,:
Ma morte vivante
Dans mon chagrin, rien nest en mouvement
Jattends, personne ne viendra
Ni de jour, ni de nuit
Ni jamais plus de ce qui fut moimême
Mes yeux se sont séparés de tes yeux
Ils perdent leur confiance, ils perdent leur lumière
Ma bouche sest séparée de ta bouche
Ma bouche sest séparée du plaisir
Et du sens de lamour, et du sens de la vie
Mes mains se sont séparées de tes mains
Mes mains laissent tout échapper
Mes pieds se sont séparés de tes pieds
Ils navanceront plus, il ny a plus de route
Ils ne connaîtront plus mon poids, ni le repos
Il mest donné de voir ma vie finir
Avec la tienne
Ma vie en ton pouvoir
Que jai crue infinie
Et lavenir mon seul espoir cest mon tombeau
Pareil au tien, cerné dun monde indifférent
Jétais si près de toi que jai froid près des autres.
Nusch Éluard, by Dora Maar
I cannot say every poem spoke to me, but some of these multifaceted and at times searing poems will stay with me for a long time.
La poésie dÉluard est comme la nuit, sans rivale, Jean Paulhan Bevat tevens de oorspr, Franse tekst Paul Éluard was the pen name of Eugène Émile Paul Grindel, French poet, a founder of Surrealism with Louis Aragon and André Breton among others, one of the important lyrical poets of theth century, Éluard rejected later Surrealism and joined the French Communist Party, Many of his works reflect the major events of the century, such as the World Wars, the Resistance against the Nazis, and the political and social ideals of theth century.
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