Carte autographe signée

“Send us news of any major developments here (1 quai de Suffren), and come if you can get away […] Paul is working like an angel […] Dominique Éluard.” Beneath this note, Éluard added: “Before the family invasion, in July, we have a spare room. Come. And don’t forget to tell your staff (including the accounting department!!) to send my letters and books here, where I have time to read. Love to you both. Paul Éluard.”

Seghers had just published, a few months earlier, Éluard’s Première anthologie vivante de la poésie du passé, and had launched his Poètes d’aujourd’hui series with a biography of the poet by Louis Parrot.

This was to be Éluard’s last summer: he died on 18 November 1952, from angina pectoris. Neruda paid tribute to his memory: “I suffer too much to speak. He had made France bloom. I weep.”

Pierre Seghers then sought to pay him a moving tribute: he asked their mutual friend, the painter Fernand Léger, to add color to the poem “Liberté.” The celebrated fold-out livre-objet designed by Fernand Léger was published the following year, in an edition of 212 copies.