Les Armes de la douleur

Published in May 1944 by Éditions de Minuit, this poem is dedicated “to the memory of Lucien Legros, shot at eighteen,” who had gone underground after taking part on 16 April 1942 in a protest against the arrest of Raymond Burgard, a Resistance teacher at the Lycée Buffon. Arrested by the special police brigades on 5 June, sentenced to forced labor on the 25th, he was handed over to the occupying forces, who condemned him to death on 15 October. A week later Éluard received a letter from the young man’s father informing him of the sentence: “my boy has been condemned to death, but I will save him” (quoted in Minuit au cœur, au cœur de Minuit, p. 43). He would fail: along with four fellow students from the Lycée Buffon, his son was shot on 8 February 1943. Éluard wrote “Les Armes de la douleur” for him and for “Daddy des ruines,” the young martyr’s father, his “comrade of two wars.”

The poems “À celles dont ils rêvent,” “Courage” and “Bêtes et méchants” follow “Les Armes de la douleur.”