Robert Desnos
Template:French literature (small) Robert Desnos (July 4, 1900 - June 8, 1945), was a French surrealist poet.
Early life
Born in Paris, Desnos’ poems were first published in 1917 in La Tribune des Jeunes and in 1919 in the avant-garde review, Le Trait d’union. That same year, in Paris, he met the poet Benjamin Péret who introduced him to the Dada group, a cultural group opposed to World War I. He also developed close ties with André Breton, the French poet known for writing the "Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924. Later they would have a falling out - not over their disparate views of art - but of politics.
The Surrealist movement
While working as a literary columnist for the newspaper Paris-Soir, Desnos became an active member of the Surrealist group and developed a remarkable talent for using the process of “automatic writing”. Although hailed by Breton in his 1924 Manifeste du Surréalisme as being the movement’s "prophet", Desnos’ continuous writings for various journalistic publications and his disapproval with Surrealism’s involvement with Communist politics, caused a rift between the two men.
Poetry
In 1926, he composed The Night of Loveless Nights, a lyric poem about solitude, curiously written in classic-like quatrains, more similar to Charles Baudelaire than Breton. He fell in love with the singer Yvonne George, but her obsessive fans made it difficult for Desnos to have a relationship with her. Nevertheless, he was enamored of the George for several years and composed many poems about her including those in his collection La liberté ou l'amour! (1927).
Politics
By 1929, Breton had definitively condemned Desnos, who in turn had aligned himself with Georges Bataille. Breton was one of the authors to sign "Un Cadavre" attacking “le boeuf Breton”. He wrote articles on “Modern Imagery”, “Avant-garde Cinema” (1929), and “Pygmalion and the Sphinx” (1930). He also wrote a review of Sergei M. Eisenstein, the Soviet filmmaker, and his film titled The General Line (1930).
His career in radio advertising began in 1932 working for Paul Deharme and "Information et Publicite,". During this time, he developed friendships with Picasso, Hemingway, Artaud and John Dos Passos. Desnos published many critical reviews on jazz and cinema and became increasingly involved in politics. He wrote for numerous periodicals, including Littérature, La Révolution surréaliste, and Variétés. Among his numerous collections of poems, he also published three novels, Deuil pour deuil (1924), La Liberté ou l’amour! (1927), and Le vin est tiré (1943).
End of life
During World War II, Desnos was an active member of the French Résistance, often publishing under various pseudonyms. He was arrested by the Gestapo on February 22, 1944. He was first deported to Auschwitz, then Buchenwald, Flossenburg and finally to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia in 1945, where he died from typhoid, only weeks after the camp’s liberation. Tragically, poems written during his imprisonment were accidentally destroyed following his death.
He was married to Youki Desnos, formerly Lucie Badoul. Desnos wrote several poems about her; one of his most famous poems is "Letter to Youki," written after his arrest. Love poems were an important part of Desnos' body of work and in them he often idealized women and the unattainability of love.
He sometimes referred to himself in the third person, in a humorously - if not oddly - disconnected form. Below is an excerpt from No, Love Is Not Dead:
- ...I'm not Ronsard or Baudelaire.
- I'm Robert Desnos, who, because I knew and loved you,
- Is as good as they are.
- I'm Robert Desnos who wants to be remembered
- On this vile earth for nothing but his love for you.
He is buried at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
Desnos's poetry has been set to music by a number of composers, including Witold Lutosławski with Les Espaces du Sommeil (1975) and Chantefleurs et Chantefables (1991) and Francis Poulenc (Dernier poème, 1956). Carolyn Forché has translated his poetry and names Desnos as a significant influence on her own work.
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Works include
- Deuil pour deuil (1924)
- La Liberté ou l’amour! (1927)
- Corps et biens (1930)
- État de veille (1943)
- Le vin est tiré (1943)
External links
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