Poésie et vérité 1942 Poetry and Truth 1942

Name: Poésie et vérité 1942 Poetry and Truth 1942
SKU: 29025
Author: Paul Éluard

London, London Gallery Edition, [May] 1944.

1 vol. (150 x 210 mm) of 43 p. and [2] f. In wrappers, with printed blue dust jacket.

First English edition, illustrated with a portrait of Paul Éluard by Man Ray, and first translation into a foreign language of the poems of Poésie et vérité 1942 (cf. nos. 15–18), including “Liberté” / “Liberty,” by Roland Penrose and E. L. T. Mesens.

Sole printing of 500 numbered copies, signed by the translators, Penrose and Mesens.

This copy was presented by Penrose to the editor of the American magazine World Review: “to the Editor WORLD REVIEW for review, from the editor, 12th May 1944.”

In his introduction, Edouard Léon Théodore Mesens (1903–1971), the Belgian Surrealist writer settled in London since 1938 and a contributor to the B.B.C.’s wartime broadcasts since 1941, ends with an attack on “French nationalist propaganda in the Allied territories […] [which] cites [Éluard’s] name in the disconcerting company of Claudel, Gide, Pierre Emmanuel, Aragon, etc.,” recalling Éluard’s own “Critique de la poésie”: “C’est entendu je hais le règne des bourgeois / Le règne des flics et des prêtres / Mais je hais plus encore l’homme qui ne le hait pas / Comme moi / De toutes ses forces. / Je crache à la face de l’homme plus petit que nature / Qui à tous mes poèmes ne préfère pas cette Critique de la Poésie.”

A remarkably contrarian commentary.

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