Customer Reviews

Selected Poems (A Calderbook, Cb435) (Pt. 2)

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This is a good primer for anyone interested in a brief survey of Paul Eluard's writing from the early 20s through the time of his death. The foreword by Max Adereth, about 19 pages, summerizes his life and the styalistic changes in his writing.

The main problem is its brevity. There are too few examples from each period and not nearly enough from his early Dada/Surrealist period.

Woman in Love

She is standing on my eyes
And her hair is in my hair;
She has the figure of my hands
And the color of my sight.
She is swallowed in my shade
Like a stone against the sky.

She will never close her eyes
And will never let me sleep;
And her dreams in day's full light
Make the suns evaporate,
Make me laugh and cry and laugh,
Speak when I have nought to say.

If you like the translation of that poem, then this book may be for you (I would have said 'nothing' instead of 'naught'). At any rate, it will point you to other collections for deeper delving.

MF

Along with a few other poets who were in the surrealist group formally but had to maintain a healthy distance from time to time in order to maintain their intellectual integrity (Rene Char, Soupault, Robert Desnos), Eluard comes extremely close to being the very best. That is to say: no matter what highs and lows occur with Surrealist Marketing, his work will stand on it's own, over and apart from the glossy franchise that has been made of Breton and the gang. Eluard was a poet from top to bottom, in the league of the greats; his constant focus is on love and life, choosing to "affirm rather than question" in the Rilkean tradition. He writes in broken, rhythmic couplets which violate traditional form and each combination packs a huge emotional wallop:

"Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth

In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude.."

Sometimes Eluard's greatness is interrupted by what one can only call narcissism of a sort, a turning away from everything except what he feels about himself, or remembers about himself, etc. But this is his only failing. More than highly recommended, to miss Eluard is to miss one of the greatest poets of the 20th cenutry. So there!