Customer Reviews

Ombres Et Soleil / Shadows and Sun: Selected Writings of 1913-1952

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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.

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."

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.

Perhaps this is a bit unfair of me, but let's just take a look at two translations of one of Eluard's best known poems, "L'amoureuse."

Translation 1: She is standing on my lids / And her hair is in my hair / She has the color of my eye / She has the body of my hand, / In my shade she is engulfed / As a stone against the sky. /

She will never close her eyes / And she does not let me sleep. / And her dreams in the bright day / Make the suns evaporate / And me laugh cry and laugh, / Speak when I have nothing to say.

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Translation #2: She is standing on my eyelids, / Her hair mingles with mine, / She takes on the shape of my hands, / She is the color of my eyes, / She is absorbed by my shadow / Like a stone against the sky. /

Her eyes are forever open / She doesn't let me sleep. / Her dreams in the light of day / Make the suns evaporate, / Make me laugh, cry, and laugh again, / And babble on with nothing to say.

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I posted the two versions so you can judge for yourself, but it seems to me the first is far superior to the second. Not surprisingly, the first is by Samuel Beckett, and his faithfulness to Eluard is not only one of meaning but of rhythm. Alas, it is the second, wooden version that you will find in "Shadows and Sun," and the two translators' tin ears do ill service to Eluard throughout the book. The best thing you can say about this volume is that it contains the French original, and the literal translations should help people with a rudimentary knowledge of French to enjoy Eluard in his own language. But if you can't sound out the French to hear the sonorousness of Eluard's lines, then these translations will give you a very poor impression of the poems' lyrical beauty.

As for where you might find the Beckett translation... well, I don't know. I wrote his translation down in a notebook years and years ago but neglected to write where I found it. I believe it was in a collection of Beckett's writing and not of Eluard's.

The name of the book the other reviewer mentions, that contains translations of Eluard by Beckett is "Collected Poems in English and French" by Samuel Beckett (Paperback) and it's available at Amazon.