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Biographical Aspects of Eluard's Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The life of Paul Eluard holds a remarkable number of mysteries for that of a man who became prominent rather young and whose friends frequently made a particular effort to have themselves talked about. Specifically, three crises from the first period of his career, when he was attached to the surrealist movement, are either avoided or barely mentioned by biographers: the strange disappearance from Paris in 1924 which turned out to be a trip around the world; the breakup of Eluard's first marriage in 1930; and the rupture with Breton and the surrealists in 1938. Our ignorance about these questions does not stem from a lack of witnesses, but rather from the tendency of some of the poet's friends to withhold information for reasons of tact, and the tendency of others to write with such an evident bias that their testimony is unreliable. Doubtless we will soon be better informed, since every year new documents appear, and the reasons for restraint or excess become regularly less compelling.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1963
References
1 In Entreliens (Paris, 1952), p. 105.
2 PMLA, lxxvi (Sept. 1961), pp. 436–46. Professor Car-mody apparently overlooked Entretiens, which contains Breton's version of the quarrel. A possible reason for the revival of the quarrel may be found in an exchange of public letters, which are published in Breton's La Clé des champs (Paris: Sagittaire, 1953).
3 In LL.S Pas perdus (Paris, 1924), pp. 147–158.
4 The works of Eluard quoted in this article are: Capitale de la douleur (Paris, 1926); Donner à voir (Paris, 1939); La Jarre peut-elle être plus belle que l'eau (Paris, 1951); Choix de poèmes (Paris, 1951).
I have not thought it necessary to give page references to Capitale de la douleur, which is quoted extensively and has an index. In cases where Eluard has used the same title more than once, I have arbitrarily added a roman numeral according to the poem's position in the book. For example, Suite I (p. 10), Suite II (p. 16). I have abbreviated the third title to La Jarre. This volume contains several collections published separately between 1930 and 1938. My page references are to this volume, but I have indicated the date of first publication with each quotation.
5 New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962, pp. 178179, 227. The other biographical sources are: Louis Parrot, Paul Eluard (Paris: Seghers, 1944), pp. 35 ff.; Georges Hugnet, L'Aventure Dada, 1916–1922 (Paris: Galerie de l'Institut, 1957), pp. 98–99.
6 See Europe, juil-août 1953 and nov-déc 1962, especially the articles by René Lacôte and Robert D. Vallette.
7 Salvador Dali, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Dial Press, 1942), pp. 199 ff. Parrot and Lacôte may also be consulted on this incident, but they are again vague.
8 Five of the poems, scattered throughout, are taken from Les Nécessités de la vie et les Conséquences des rêves of 1921. According to Donner à voir (p. 182), the poems Arp and Georges Braque were written in 1921 and 1924, respectively, but they come after Andre Masson, Paul Klee, and Max Ernst, all dated 1925.
9 Parrot (p. 39) mentions this visit.
10 In Donner à voir (pp. 117–118) Eluard discusses Chirico, and speaks of the period from 1918 to 1929 as one during which Chirico had lost himself, but after which he recovered. This does not exactly correspond to the other accounts of Chirico's life and works, as in the Encyclopedia of World Art (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960, in, 578), but Eluard's own opinion is, after all, the more significant in this case.
11 André Rousseaux, Litteralure du vingtième siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1954), pp. 118–119.