Premiers poèmes, 1913-1921
Inscribed and signed by Éluard:
“à René Char, que j’ai connu à ses vingt ans majeurs, à l’âge où j’écrivais ces poèmes, Paul Éluard.”
One of the review copies.
Signed presentation inscription:
“à René Char, que j’ai connu à ses vingt ans majeurs, à l’âge où j’écrivais ces poèmes, Paul Éluard.”
“To René Char, whom I first knew in the fullness of his twenties, at the age when I was writing these poems, Paul Éluard.”
A fine association copy, inscribed by Éluard to René Char.
This volume should not be confused with Éluard’s very first book, Premiers Poèmes, published privately in 1913 under his civil name, Paul-Eugène Grindel, and later largely rejected by the poet. The 1948 Mermod volume is instead a retrospective anthology, selected by Éluard himself from his early poems.
The texts cover the years 1913-1921: before Surrealism, before Capitale de la douleur, at the moment when Éluard’s voice was forming through war, love, anxiety and the search for a new simplicity.
The inscription to René Char is exceptional. Éluard links the age at which he wrote these poems to the age at which he first knew Char, at the beginning of Char’s own poetic youth. The two men soon became close companions in Surrealism, publishing Ralentir travaux with André Breton in 1930, and later composing together the poems eventually published as Deux poèmes.
René Char’s copy: Éluard’s youth offered to another poet.