Paul Eluard
It is poetry's misfortune that even those who take it seriously never quite take it seriously enough. They grant, no doubt, that one must be mad for a moment. But they do not accept being mad themselves long enough to become calmly wise afterwards.
Scholars accept events as strange as variation of forms (for example). Then they patiently investigate how the horse's feet must have changed, or the carp's eyes. But critics, once they have suspected that poets may be able to read the future, are delighted by their own boldness. They stop there. Vaguely waiting for poets to be grateful for the gift.
Yet this is where everything should begin, on the contrary, and poets are ungrateful: they are quite right to be.
Those gathered by Dada as early as 1920, and later by Surrealism, did not share one common idea, nor one common emotion. Their doctrine was vague (but fortunately they ignored their doctrine). Their knowledge of the world was not new (but they took no account of their knowledge of the world). And yet their conduct was evident, their decisions simple. Out of necessity, they knew where they stood. So much despair in the wake of victory, so many lapses but so much ardor, so many taboos, orders, and slogans, even in love the methodical organization of the Companions-of-Disaster, leave no doubt. What they saw, everyone saw twenty years later.
Paul Eluard has kept the radiant patience we knew in him. A ruinous enterprise, which gnaws away around poetry everything that used to be poetry, loses its terrors in his presence, since he fears neither narrative and fable, nor riddle and proverb, nor the gray part and the golden line. Not even, I will say it, eloquence.
He has been judged mawkish: that is because he feels subtle influences. Grandiloquent: he tolerates colossal misfortunes. Uncertain: because he trembles at seeing how impossible it has become for each of us, you or I, to take the view of the world we are entitled to take. But he carries patience so far as to restore the world's chances. He has never been too defeated.
Natural as trust itself, he no doubt deserved to keep the gift. I cannot read him without believing him.
As soon as he opens his eyes, light seems new. What well-placed words, what fresh lips! Even radiant patience does not despair of transforming riddle, proverb, and even golden lines:
The heart to what she sings
She melts the snow
The birds' nurse.
I do not know, no one will ever know, whether the poet completed, in his maturity, the secret operation leading him toward that point of consciousness where reflection, not even intuition, can reach. Then I enter this curious boundless domain into which no writer had yet ventured. Eluard's poetry is, like the night, without rival.
1942, 1950, in Oeuvres Completes, Tchou.
Resources
"Liberte", read by the author - video
Portrait souvenir, 1964 - video
Max-Pol Fouchet on Paul Eluard, 1958 - ORTF
Un siecle d'ecrivains, Paul Eluard - video
Paul Eluard resources - Andre Breton website
Paul Eluard resources - Melusine website
Bibliography of texts published in the NRF
The texts below, published in La Nouvelle Revue Française, are grouped into four main sets: texts by Paul Eluard, notes and columns by the author, texts about the author, and, when available, translations by the author.
Texts by Paul Eluard
- Les Gertrude Hoffmann Girls – Première du monde – Absences, 1925-10-01
- Poèmes, 1937-04-01
- Après moi le sommeil, 1937-10-01
- Poèmes, 1938-05-01
- Pour vivre ici, 1939-11-01
- Blason des Fleurs et des Fruits, 1941-02-01
- Deux poèmes, 1960-05-01
Notes by Paul Eluard
These texts by Paul Eluard may include reading notes, mood notes, performance reviews, miscellaneous pieces, or previously unpublished texts. They appeared in NRF sections such as Chronique des romans, L'air du mois, Le temps comme il passe, etc., or in tribute issues.
- Confections, 1930-02-01, Revue des revues
Texts about Paul Eluard
These texts may include thematic studies about the author, correspondence, reading notes on works by or about the author, interviews conducted by the author, or works edited by the author.
- Capitale de la douleur, par Paul Éluard (Éditions de la N. R. F.), by Gabriel Bounoure, 1928-07-01, Notes : la poésie
- L'Amour, la Poésie, par Paul Éluard (Éditions de la N. R. F.), by Jean Prévost, 1929-08-01, Notes : la poésie
- Histoire de Dada : lettres de Louis Aragon, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Paul Éluard, Tristan Tzara et Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, by Collectifs, 1931-08-01, Notes et discussions
- À toute épreuve, par Paul Éluard (Éditions surréalistes), by Gabriel Bounoure, 1931-12-01, Notes : la poésie
- La Rose publique, par Paul Éluard (Éditions de la N. R. F.), by A. Rolland de Renéville, 1935-02-01, Notes : la poésie
- Les Yeux fertiles, par Paul Éluard (Éditions G. L. M.), by A. Rolland de Renéville, 1937-02-01, Notes : la poésie
- Chanson complète, par Paul Éluard (Éditions de la N. R. F.), by Armand Petitjean, 1939-09-01, Notes : littérature
- Le Livre ouvert, par Paul Éluard (Éditions Cahiers d'Art), by Fieschi, 1941-01-01, Notes : poésie
- Paul Éluard tel qu'en lui-même enfin..., by Maurice Chapelan, 1942-08-01, Notes : poésie
- Paul Éluard, by Henri Thomas, 1953-01-01, Notes : la poésie
- Paul Éluard, by Jean Guérin, 1953-10-02, Les revues, les journaux
- Le dur désir de durer, par Paul Éluard (Seghers), by Philippe Jaccottet, 1960-12-01, Notes : la poésie
Chronological distribution of texts published in the NRF (1908-1968)
This chart shows the chronological distribution of texts across the four categories defined above: Texts, Notes, Translations, and Texts about the author.
Bibliography of texts published in the journal Mesures
The texts below, published in the journal Mesures, are grouped into two sets: texts by Paul Eluard and texts translated by the author.