Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2339174 in Books
• Published on: 1995-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Customer Reviews

Prose from radio address & speeches help understand his moti
I am intrigued by the speeches given during the resistance of WWII, after the first war, at the first surrealist exposition in London, and the 2nd surrealist manifesto of 1924 by angry young men who had seen too much suffering in the war and were looking for a "new language", a new consciousness to overcome the errors of romanticism and super rationalism that resulted in supernationalism and megalomania.

Eluard was a modest human being, in love with life, and love, and Gala, and primitive art. Read Premierement /First of All, admonishing Gala for keeping her "brain in its attic" and forgetting her commitment to her first love, or "She is standing on my eyelids"; or on justice, "Bonne Justice/Good Justice" and "Minuit", on a poor resistance fighter condemned to be shot; or on learning to see with Picasso in two essays and poems from the book "Donner a Voir."

The Historical introduction, Chronological Contents, definitions of surrealism, and bibliography make good reading in themselves. The translations are "seamless", straight forward, do not betray the poet, so provide a fine way to approach the originals on opposite pages.

Pablo Neruda was his good friend, and must have read Eluard long before he wrote "Walking Around."

lyric and committed poems by a prime mover of Surrealists' s
Paul Eluard was the best beloved European poet of the first half of our century, which William Golding has called the most violent in human history. While illusions were destroyed, this writer wrote love poems, for which he is best known; as medic and infantryman in both world wars, wrote about (while Picasso painted) the devastating bombing of Guernica on market day in broad daylight, during the Spanish Civil War, and the German occupation of France, while he searched for a release from sentimental romanticism and "superpatriotism" held responsible by the Surrealists for the wars, as they recognized the importance of the subconscious and "desire", to find a new language that would help to achieve justice with mercy and release men from the constraints of false values. A historical introduction records this collaboration between writers and painters, who illustrated Eluard's books, with 6 here by Picasso, Chagall, Andre Lhote and Magritte. 6 intriguing prose pieces concern the idea of committed poetry (engagee), Picasso's role in teaching others to see, and the Surrealist Declaration of 1925. Neruda and many others followed the search of this seminal poet. A fine compilation of the poet's life work, with French and accurate, seamless English translations on opposite pages.

committed poetry, lyrical, engagee, best beloved European po
Seamless accurate translations span Eluard's poems of 1913-1953 including Liberte, dropped by RAF in WWII. 6 tantalizing prose pieces: Surrealist declaration of 1925, 2 essays on friend Picasso, on the idea of committed poetry. Publishers Weekly wrote "excellent compilation of the life work of a poet of love and beauty in a search for a language to counter the devastation of wars and super patriotism." Leon-Gabriel Gros wrote: It was a question of transforming life.... a direct method.... penetrating the deep reality...poetic morality.... a sort of virus...delivering the 'low-living' from their torpor. Finding the fire still burning under the ashes of the stillness in our hearts and brains from the "indifference" of the 1990's, Eluard's poems are a call to life and love of the best kind: they impell us to gently open up ouf "child's heart" and bring our "dreams into reality," to find in togetherness the ultimate reason of our being.