Robert Desnos, The Sleeping Surrealist
Robert Desnos was a French poet who joined André Breton in the early Surrealist movement, soon becoming one of its most valuable members because of his ability to fall into a hypnotic trance, under which he could recite his dreams, write, and draw.
Biography
Robert Desnos
(July 4, 1900 - June 8, 1945)
Robert Desnos was a son of a café owner.
He was born in Paris on July 4, 1900.
Desnos attended commercial college, and started
work as a clerk. After that he worked as a literary
columnist for the newspaper Paris-Soir.
Desnos' poems were first published in 1917 in La Tribune des Jeunes (Youth's Tribune) and in 1919 in the review, Le Trait d'union (Hyphenated), and also the same year in the Dadaist magazine Littérature. In 1922 he published his first book, a collection of surrealistic aphorisms, with the title Rrose Selavy (upon the name (pseudonym) of the popular French artist Marcel Duchamp).
In 1919, he met the poet Benjamin Péret who actually introduced him to the Paris group and André Breton, with whom he soon became a friend. While working as a literary columnist for Paris-Soir, Desnos was an active member of the Surrealist group and developed a particular talent for "automatic writing". He, together with writers such as Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard, would form the literary vanguard of surrealism. But although he was praised by Breton in his 1924 Manifeste du Surréalisme for being the movement's "prophet", Desnos disagreed with Surrealism's involvement in communist politics, which caused a rift between him and Breton. Desnos continued work as a columnist.
In 1926 he composed The Night of Loveless Nights, a lyric poem dealing with solitude curiously written in classic quatrains, which makes it more like Baudelaire than Breton. Desnos fell in love with, a singer whose obsessed fans made his love impossible. He wrote several poems for her including those in his collection La liberté ou l'amour! (1927). By 1929, Breton definitively condemned Desnos, who in turn joined Georges Bataille and Documents, as one of the authors to sign "Un Cadavre" (A cadaver) attacking "le boeuf Breton" (the ox Breton). He wrote articles on "Modern Imagery", "Avant-garde Cinema" (1929, issue 7), "Pygmalion and the Sphinx" (1930, issue 1), and Sergei M. Eisenstein, the Soviet filmmaker, on his film titled The General Line (1930, issue 4).His career in radio began in 1932 with a show dedicated to Fantomas. During this time, he became friends with Picasso, Hemingway, Artaud and John Dos Passos; published many critical reviews on jazz and cinema; and became increasingly involved in politics. He wrote for many periodicals, including Littérature, La Révolution surréaliste, and Variétés. Besides his numerous collections of poems, he published three novels, Deuil pour deuil (1924), La Liberté ou l'amour! (1927), and Le vin est tiré (1943).
During World War II, Desnos was an active member of the French Résistance, often publishing under pseudonyms, and was arrested by the Gestapo on February 22,. He was first deported to Auschwitz, then Buchenwald, Flossenburg and finally to (Theresienstadt) in Czechoslovakia in 1945, where he died from typhoid, only weeks after the camp's liberation. He wrote poems during his imprisonment which were accidentally destroyed following his death.He was married to Youki Desnos, formerly Lucie Badoul, nicknamed "Youki" ("snow") by her lover Tsuguharu Foujita before she left him for Desnos. Desnos wrote several poems about Youki. One of his most famous poems is "Letter to Youki," written after his arrest. 
He is buried at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
Desnos's poetry has been set to music by a number of composers, including Witold Lutos%u0142awski with Les Espaces du Sommeil (1975) and Chantefleurs et Chantefables (1991), Francis Poulenc (Dernier poème, 1956) and Henri Dutilleux with Le Temps l'Horloge (2007). Carolyn Forché has translated his poetry and names Desnos as a significant influence on her own work.External links
TABLE OF CONTENTS
POEMS
I Have Dreamed of You so Much...
I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make
your dear voice come alive again?
I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my
chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.
O scales of feeling.
I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and
face of some passerby.
I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.
~Robert Desnos
No, Love is Not Dead
No, love is not dead in this heart and in these eyes and in this mouthhereby announcing the opening of its own requiem.
Listen, I've had it with picturesqueness, colorfulness, and charm.
Love's what I love, its tenderness and its cruelty.
Still, the one whom I love has but one name and form.
Everything's transcient. Mouths may plaster themselves against my mouth
But still, the one whom I love has but one name and form.
And if some day you happen to think of it
Oh you, exact form and name of my love,
Some day, on the seas between America and Europe,
When the last ray of sunlight is flashing off the surface of the tossing waves,
or on a stormy night beneath a tree in the country, or in a speeding car,
One spring morning on the Boulevard Malesherbes,
Or on some rainy day
At dawn just before getting into bed,
Tell yourself, I insist of your innermost soul, that I loved you more than any
other man did, and that it's a shame that you didn't realize it.
But tell yourself, too, that there's nothing to regret: long before me Ronsard and
Baudelaire sang of the sorrows of old women and thoroughly dead
women who despised even the purest love.
But as for you, when you die,
You'll still remain both beautiful and desirable.
I may already be dead by then but incorporated in your timeless and immortal body, in your incomparable
image present forever among the wonders of human life and eternity, on the other hand
should I outlive you
Your voice and its intonations, your gaze and its radiance,
The fragrance of you and of your hair and many, many other things about you,
will still go on living in me
Yes in me, a poet who's neither Ronsard nor Baudelaire,
Just Robert Desnos who, for having known you and loved you so well
Have become their equal.
Just me, Robert Desnos who except for loving you, doesn't want to be remembered for doing anything else
he's ever done while walking the surface of this miserable, despicable earth.
~Robert Desnos
BOOKS
POETRY
Surrealist Love Poems
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The Voice of Robert Desnos: Selected Poems
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Essential Poems and Writings of Robert Desnos
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The secret book for Youki: And other poems
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The secret book for Youki..
- The Drunken Boat
- To read these poems in english as translated by Translated by Todd Sanders or in the original French language.
BIOGRAPHIES
Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and the Marvelous in Everyday Life
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WORKS INCLUDE
- Deuil pour deuil (1924) /Grief for Grief/
- La Liberté ou l'amour! (1927) /Liberty or Love/
- Corps et biens (1930) /Body's fine/
- État de veille (1943) /Waking/
- Le vin est tiré (1943) /The wine is drawn/
IN FRENCH
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Le couple astral - Gouache de Robert Desnos (1935)
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GUESTBOOK
What is it about Robert Desnos?
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Reply
- Justin Dowdy Justin Dowdy Mar 29, 2009 @ 8:48 pm
- Wow.
Never heard of this surrealist poet before.
His poetry is really free form.
I love it.
It really inspired me.
Thank You
-
Reply
- confetta confetta Mar 20, 2008 @ 3:05 pm
- I LOVE BATHS.
-
Reply
- ben crook ben crook Mar 20, 2008 @ 10:50 am
- i dont like baths
Desnos...
Desnos was renowned through Europe at the time the war began. According to William Kulik, one of the two translators of The Selected Poems of Robert Desnos, Desnos was a French surrealist poet, a novelist, a film, art, record & literary reviewer, a songwriter, a radio playwright and the writer of 3,000 commercials.His fame was so widespread that the young Czech. medical student who helped care for Desnos when Desnos was dying of typhus at the Terezin concentration camp after liberation asked Desnos, on seeing his patients name, if he knew the famous French writer Robert Desnos?
As recounted in Ann Weiss's photography book The Last Album: Eyes From the Ashes of Auschwitz (2001),
Desnos looked up at the student
with eyes I will never forget
and exclaimed
I am Robert Desnos.
A Christian by family background, Desnos was born in 1900. Active in anti-Nazi resistance activities, he was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp and at Auschwitz. He died of typhus in 1945 at Terezin.
Further in his preface, Kulik writes that in 1928 Yvonne George was in a Swiss sanitorium dying of tuburculosis.
LINKS
- Robert Desnos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Robert Desnos (4 July 1900-8 June 1945), was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the surrealistic movement of his day...
- ARTSEDGE: Dalí & Desnos: Surrealism in Poetry and Art
- Students will learn about the writers and artists of the Surrealism movement. Students will analyze imagery in poetry and visual art of the period, ...
- Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More - Robert Desnos
- The Academy of American Poets presents a biography, poems, and links.
- Robert Desnos: A Unique French Surrealist Poet--Michael Benedikt ...
- Desnos Intro. & Translations based on texts in Benedikt's anthology for Little-Brown: POETRY OF SURREALISM. With 6 major Desnos poems, incl.
- Poet: Robert Desnos - All poems of Robert Desnos
- Robert Desnos, the son of a café owner, was born on July 4, 1900, in Paris.... Britannica online encyclopedia article on Robert Desnos: French poet who ...
- Robert Desnos -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
- Britannica online encyclopedia article on Robert Desnos: Desnos Courtesy of the Editions Gallimard French poet who joined André Breton in the early Surrealist ...
- Robert Desnos - Infoplease.com
- Related content from HighBeam Research on: Robert Desnos. Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and the Marvelous in Everyday Life.
- Robert Desnos
- Robert Desnos was a French poet who joined André Breton in the early Surrealist movement, soon becoming one of its most valuable members because of his ...
- Robert Desnos - FREE Robert Desnos Biography | Encyclopedia.com ...
- Robert Desnos - Facts about Robert Desnos,
biography, pictures of Robert Desnos, videos, and Information at Encyclopedia.com: a free, credible collection of ... - Open Directory - Arts: Literature: Authors: D: Desnos, Robert
- Robert Desnos: A Unique French Surrealist Poet - An introduction by Michael Benedikt; poem "The Voice of Robert Desnos", bibliography...
- elephan' twirl: Robert Desnos
- '1927: Robert Desnos, thin from lack of money and food, lives in a drafty studio inherited from Andre Masson, in Montparnasse. ...
- Desnos, Robert. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07
- Desnos, Robert. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07... During World War II, Desnos died as a prisoner in the Theresienstadt concentration...
- Robert Desnos artist and art...the-artists.org
- Robert Desnos artist and art, Surrealism Writing, biography portrait and gallery exhibition on the-artists.org, resource modern and contemporary art,...
- Robert Desnos: Seven poems translated by Louis Simpson | American ...
- Robert Desnos: Seven poems translated by Louis Simpson from American Poetry Review, The in Arts provided free by Find Articles.
- Charles Nunley - Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and the Marvelous in ...
- When, just a few days before his arrest and deportation, Robert Desnos tried to imagine what, if anything, of his work would survive the test of time, ...
- Robert Desnos - Poems, Biography, Quotes
- Free collection of all Robert Desnos Poems and Biography. See the best poems and poetry by Robert Desnos.
- Robert Desnos
- The eight poems featured here were written by Desnos in a period of two... Robert Desnos 119. and me I wait. Sometimes the telephone rings and no one ...
- Robert Desnos (poet) - Biography Research Guide
- Robert Desnos - Robert Desnos was a French surrealist poet; (July 4, 1900 - June 8, 1945).
- Desnos, Robert
- Desnos's poetry has been set to music by a number of composers, ... The Library. Robert Desnos 1900-1945...
- JSTOR: Robert Desnos
- ROBERT DESNOS* The scope of Mary Ann Caws's book is clearly defined within fully defensible borders. In her study of Desnos' writings, "the primary emphasis...
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