« Une seule pensée » in Fontaine

The poem opens the June 1942 issue of the review Fontaine, printed in only about a thousand copies. The published text strictly follows the manuscript entrusted by Éluard, with the two words désirs and souvenirs in the plural (in the antepenultimate and penultimate stanzas).

Approved and authorized by the censors in Algiers, the poem bears the title “Une seule pensée,” although Éluard had already renamed it “Liberté,” as shown by the manuscript bearing both titles (the first struck through) that he entrusted to Max-Pol Fouchet in mid-May 1942. “I assured Paul that I would publish the poem in Fontaine, and even at the head of the review, as an editorial,” Fouchet recounts (Un jour, je m’en souviens…, pp. 89-90). “That’s impossible, he answered me, the censors would never allow such a text to be printed […]. To me it was a challenge. I had to publish ‘Une seule pensée.’” This explains the choice of Fontaine’s director to keep this original title, which he in fact preferred, hoping thereby to outwit the censors.

Manuscript in hand, Fouchet had the text typeset in Algiers and submitted the proofs to the French censor: “A German censor stood beside him, but fortunately understood little of our language. The Frenchman began reading the poem. After about ten quatrains, he looked at me, looking exasperated: ‘Ah, I see what this is, it’s a love poem… You poets always repeat the same thing!’ I did not correct him. He shrugged, gave the German a knowing wink, stamped the proofs with the authorization seal, without reading to the last quatrain. I left his office, my heart pounding. A miracle, a miracle, I kept telling myself. Thus ‘Liberté,’ or rather Éluard’s ‘Une seule pensée,’ was able to appear in Fontaine, as an editorial, and not clandestinely, which would have reduced its audience, but in full light” (Ibid., pp. 90-91).

As soon as this issue of Fontaine reached the unoccupied zone at the end of August 1942, the last two stanzas of the poem were surprisingly quoted in the weekly Candide on 2 September, shortly before the poem was reprinted in full in London, under the same title “Une seule pensée,” in La France libre of 15 September 1942.

It was then, in the first days of October, that the La Main à plume group published it in Paris, from a different manuscript, in the booklet Poésie et Vérité 1942, and for the first time under the title “Liberté.”

Several editions followed: in Algiers in April 1943, again from Éditions de la revue Fontaine, in the “Les relais de Fontaine” series. Then, on the preceding 20 February, in Switzerland, in Neuchâtel, in Albert Béguin’s “Cahiers du Rhône” series. It was again from the text published in Fontaine, under its original title “Une seule pensée,” that the poem was published in London in April 1943 in the Revue du monde libre, of which the Royal Air Force dropped numerous copies over occupied France; in New York on 19 December 1943 in the newspaper France Amérique; again in Algiers in June 1944 in the review Fontaine; and in Rio de Janeiro in July 1944. At the same time, a bilingual edition of Poetry and Truth 1942 including “Liberty” appeared in London in May 1944; a second publication of the poem under the title “Liberté” appeared in London in the first issue of the review Choix in July 1944; a publication on behalf of Éditions Julliard within Éluard’s collection Dignes de vivre that same month; and a first separate booklet edition of the poem at the Liberation by the Éditions des Francs-tireurs partisans français du Lot.

A legendary document, and an almost unobtainable issue of Fontaine.

A good copy; wear to the wrappers.