Paul Éluard & Jean Paulhan, 1919-1944
Jean Paulhan“Can we change without going back to the old way? change forward?
Excerpts from the introduction by Claude-Pierre Pérez:
“The names of Éluard and Paulhan are not those that we commonly think of to bring together, or to oppose. Not so much that one was surreal and the other identified himself with a journal which often had difficult relationships with the friends of Breton. But how can we make the link between a lyric poet and a sophisticated essayist, between a “modern Petrarch” (as Paulhan defines tersely Éluard) and a master ironist, between an enthusiastic communist and a stubborn anti-communist, among one remembered as a beloved poet of Gala, of Nusch and some others and the one in whom we first see a a man of publishing and magazines, an “éminence grise”, a man of power? “I I know few people and I have little authority.” writes Éluard in one of all first letters, in February 1919. Paulhan, conversely, already knows a lot of world; from which follows a request: “You are more needed, you will be more useful as I am to our task.” “Our task”, therefore, as elsewhere, two years later again, “our magazine”. And Paulhan, similarly, in one of his responses: “our Proverb”. They are close, no doubt, but How far are they together?
“Do you understand, wrote Éluard in February 1920, that I hate the N.R.F. and literature”; the same year, Paulhan confided to Henri Pourrat: “I have a great faith in the NRF.” This faith, as we know, will hardly leave him. The membership of the two friends in two rival groups, one “dominated”, the other “dominant” (and even, from the appearance of The Surrealist Revolution, in 1924, their insertion in two rival journals), leads to divergences and conflicts... Even before the rapprochement between surrealists and communists, which committed in 1925, there was no shortage of difficulties: it is undoubtedly true that Paulhan does not mention the name of Éluard in the letters where he attacks the surreal; and that if he happens to attack, in his correspondence, the person of Aragon or Breton, we find nothing of the sort, unless I am mistaken, concerning Éluard. But finally this one does indeed belong to a group which does not hardly stops violently and publicly attacking the NRF, a group whose the leader, André Breton, signed in February 1926 a first letter of insults to Paulhan, before the second, in October 1927, failed to lead them until the duel. Éluard, this time, was forced to choose. And he chose Breton.
The moment when Éluard resumes speaking (cautiously, and in stages) with the director of The NRF, more or less coincides with where it begins, starting in March 1936, to distance himself from Breton and his faithful: it was at the time of the Spanish War in fact, which is also that of the Moscow trials, when Breton publishes what Paulhan calls his “manifestos against Stalin”, which the poet of Free Hands begins to let himself be sucked in by official communism. And this gradual break with Breton is indeed contemporary with his personal reconciliation with Paulhan (completed in January 1937) and with La NRF… We then find, at least at times, the tone of affection. Thus Éluard, in June 1939, from the clinic where (once again) he was staying: “As you are nice! You are, you have always been one of the few for whom I write (At the beginning, you was the only one, with Gala – today, in my moments of exaltation, I counted on the fingers of my hand, by units, and by billions), that is to say that I am sensitive to your opinions (better: to your directives). You always did more that admiring me, you were interested in my “work”, as I was interested in here. / As I saw you and listened to you the day before yesterday in my room and as I saw you and listened to you in Montboron (in Versailles) 20 years ago, you did not changed.”
Yes, a curious friendship indeed, and which circumstances have often thwarted, between two men whose affection still seems, apart from the first months of their exchanges, more or less awaiting a separation and under the perpetual threat of rupture. Beyond Éluard’s conjuring formula: “he does not "We can't be separated", which dates from 1925, we can read this other, from 1941: “Here, everything that separates us would bring us together,” and this third, which is by Paulhan, in 1943: “This is where I vaguely fear that We would never separate.” Well-founded fear, as we have seen, and singular persistence.”
Edition established, presented and annotated by Odile Felgine – Doctor of Letters and
Political science, biographer of Roger Caillois (Stock, 1994), of Victoria
Ocampo (with L. Ayerza de Castilho, Criterion, 1990), painter, poet and
novelist –, and by Claude-Pierre Pérez – professor at the University of Provence (Aix-Marseille I), writer and specialist in Paul Claudel (Le Visible et
the Invisible, for an archeology of Claudelian poetics, 1998) and Jean
Paulhan (Clair et l’obscur, proceedings of the Cerisy conference, Gallimard, 1999).
Odile Felgine and Claude-Pierre Pérez have already published Correspondence together
Roger Caillois - Jean Paulhan (Gallimard, 1992).
19 facsimiles and photographs n. & b. Appendices. Index of Names and Titles.
First edition: December 22, 2003. Collection “Correspondences of Jean
Paulhan”.
Edition of 1,150 copies. Printed in Esprit characters, on ivory Minotaur paper
90 g., in blue filled cover.
13 x 21.5 cm 208 pages.
ISBN: 978-2-912222-20-6.
Public sale price: €27.00
Publisher : Claire Paulhan