Paul Eluard Biography and List of Works

I was born to know you
To give you your name
Freedom.
(from Poèsie et Vérité, 1942)

French poet, a founder of Surrealism with Louis Aragon and André Breton among others, one of the important lyrical poets of the 20th century. Éluard rejected later Surrealism and joined the French Communist Party in 1942. 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 the 20th-century.

Paul Éluard came from a lower-middle-class background. He was born in Saint-Denis, Paris, as the son of a bookkeeper, whose wife helped out with the household bills by dressmaking. He became interested in poetry in a Swiss sanatorium, where he was sent at the age of 16 for treatment of tuberculosis. When he returned to France, he joined the army and was badly injured by gas. His first noteworthy volume of poetry, LE DEVOIR EL L'INQUIÉTUDE, appeared in 1917.

Éluard was briefly involved with the Dada Movement, meeting Tristan Tzara, André Breton, and other member of surrealist and Dadaist circles. In 1921 appeared his statement in verse of surrealist theories, LES NÉCESSITÉS DE LA VIE ET LA CONSÉQUENCE DES RÊVES. His reputation as a poet was established with the publication of CAPITALE DE LA DOULEUR (1926). In 1924 Éluard mysteriously disappeared. Rumours of his death were widely circulated and finally accepted as true. After seven months he appeared and explained that he had been on a journey from Marseille to Tahiti, Indonesia, and Ceylon. The journey has been later connected with the loss of his wife Gala to the surrealist artist Salvador Dali.

In the 1930s Éluard abandoned Surrealistic experimentations as a result of his concern over the Spanish Civil War and political problems. During WW II he served in the French army and in the Communist Resistance. Éluard published poems under such pseudonyms as Jean du Hault and Maurice Hervent. To avoid Gestapo Éluard and his second wife Nusch constantly changed addresses. Éluard's most famous poems during these years, 'Liberté' and 'Rendez-vous Allemand' were spread throughout France.

After the war Éluard was active in the international communist movement in the cultural field. He travelled in Britain, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, and Russia, but not the United States, because he was refused a visa as a Communist. Éluard's idealism, good-heartedness and inability to see the reality of the Soviet Union led the poet admire Stalin as a cultural force for good. According to Éluard, the mission of poetry was renew language in order to effect radical changes in all areas of existence. He saw poetry as an action capable of arousing awareness in his readers, and identified with leftist struggle for political, social and sexual liberation.

Éluard published over seventy books, including poetry, literary and political works and poetic texts dedicated to such painters as Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso. By adding word to line and colour, he attempted to abolish the barrier between the 'seeing' subject and the 'perceived' object. Painting, like poetry, was for Éluard destined to disseminate truth belonging to both the real and the imaginary. In his love lyrics woman performs as a liberating force. Love, to Eluard, was a kind of revolution of the spirit, binding one soul to another, to reach universal solidarity.

Among Éluard's best-known later works are POÉSIE ININTERROMPUE (1946) and POÉMES POLITIQUES (1948). Eluard died of a heart condition on November 18, 1952 in Charenton-le-Pont.

L'amoureuse

Elle est debour sur mes paupières
Et ses cheveux sont dans les miens,
Elle a la forme de mes mains,
Elle a la couleur de mes yeux,
Elle s'engloutit dan mon ombre
Comme une pierre sur le ciel.

Elle a toujours les yeux ouverts
Et ne me laisse pas dormir.
Ses rêves en pleine lumière
Font s'évaporer les soleils,
Me font rire, pleurer et rire,
Parler sans avoir rien à dire.

For further reading: World Authors 1900-1950, ed. by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); French Literature by W. Fowlie (1980); Sensibility and Creation, ed. by R. Cardinal (1977); Paul Éluard by R. Nugent (1974); Poésie ininterrompue et la poétique de Paul Éluard by R. Vernier (1971); Meetings with Poets by J. Lindsey (1968); Paul Éluard par lui-même by R. Jean (1968); Études sur le temps humain by G. Poulet (1964)

PREMIERS POÈMES, (1913)