The Poetry of
Paul Eluard
Louise Bogan
RuL
ELUARD,
one of the original members of the Dada "school,"
moved into Surrealism, under the leadership of Andre Breton,
when "the Dada anarchy" was outlawed. He has held closely to
the tenets of Surrealism through all their hardening and stiffening,
in spite of the fact that his gifts seem perfectly opposed to all that
Surrealism once stood for, and all it stands for now. The reasons
for his alliance with Dada would be somewhat difficult to deter–
mine. It was natural, certainly, that a talent like Eluard's-simple
and sensitive, quite unclouded by the fumes of the macabre, and
undisturbed by the sardonic horse-play and involved cynicism of
his sturdier contemporaries-should be forced, during the post–
War years, to take on some kind of protective coloring, make some
defensive alliance, in order to exist. Such a talent was of the exact
kind to move his contemporaries to parody. Eluard's complete
complaisance to Surrealist doctrine, before and after Surrealism's
alliance with "the revolution," permitted him to go on writing; hut
his passivity has lapsed, at times, into a kind of masochism, vitiat·
ing his work and making his "thinking" ridiculous. He has never
rebelled aganst Breton's manifestos and excommunications; he is,
in fact, the complete complement of Breton, who has been called
the Saint-Just of Surrealism. He obediently became a Communist
when Surrealism, the party wedded to complete non-utilitarianism
and to the exploration of the wayward subconscious, automatism
and the dream, developed a dogma equally unyielding, and
in
many ways paralleling Communist dogma. Eluard has obeyed, it
is true, without once changing his fundamental poetic nature. He
stands today in the peculiar position of a poet who has remained a
depository of one kind of poetic expression (a kind, as we shall
see, which is not particularly French), while paying more than lip–
service to doctrines in every way inimical to the development of
that expression.
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