L’Amour la poésie

Éluard always had a genius for titles and for the shape of a collection as a whole. L’Amour la Poésie is no exception. It follows Capitale de la Douleur and notably contains the famous line “La Terre est bleue comme une orange” (the first line of the seventh poem in the first chapter, entitled “Premièrement”). It is dedicated “à Gala, ce livre sans fin.”

If, as Baudelaire wrote, “woman is the being who casts the greatest shadow or the greatest light into our dreams,” the Surrealists elevated the experience of love to a central theme. Foremost among them, Éluard’s poetry produced some of its most vibrant verse, notably in this collection, which gathers some 82 poems across four parts, exploring in turn purity, grace, absence, longing, desire and even separation: “Le front aux vitres comme font les veilleurs de chagrin / Je te cherche par de là l’attente / Par-delà moi-même / Et je ne sais plus tant je t’aime / Lequel de nous deux est absent.”

One of Paul Éluard’s finest collections of poems.