They lose themselves in silence,
Prodigiously drunk.
The equilibrium of their balance
Would thunder as it broke.
If there were any interest
In the rumor of the sky in flames
The pilot would light up
And leave us.
*
The troop that laughs all lively in the shadows
Can drink for one evening without wanting to . . .
By candlelight the quarters are pretty
And so are the songs that end.
All day long countless cries
For a feast so sweet to wish for
Leaped from all sides,
For it was a feast of favorites . . .
Hanging on the walls the regimental colors that flatter
Tomorrow everyone will know that the adorable joy
Is gone forever. And every naked gesture
Will be accompanied by words of welcome
Like the pity that follows a wretch.
*
The sea that has all the boats
Is no bigger than the place
Where they danced, to the sound of a reed,
People of a land less cold
Than this, a land of mud and water.
The place seemed so big to us,
We needed to be held so tight
That without certain—may they be defended!—
The dancers were crushed
And we were keeping warm around them
Right next to them!
*
Helmeted soldiers with flowers, singing and destroying.
Always, very slowly,
Mid-wheels replaced in the wheat
Trucks, cannons, caissons.
Calm waiting.
In the evening, the sun sets
Like a heavy pack slips from a shoulder.
*
Work-all,
Dig holes
For skeletons of nothing at all.
*
No graves in the forest.
The shadow waits for these escapes
That we make towards the light
All together, breaking branches.
The trunks we tattoo at rest
Will never know our knives.
“If you want, slow down a little,
And that’s all.”
Does anyone know where we’re going?
Are we going to release the joy
That’s inside us, that we hide
Like a tree hides its roots?
Or will we always follow this path?
from Duty
Paul Éluard
translated from the French by David R. Russell
Listen to "[The troop that laughs all lively in the shadows]" read in the original French by Silvère Boitel:
These poems, from a chapbook of ten short, self-published poems entitled simply Le devoir (Duty; 1916), deserve translation for both historical and aesthetic reasons. This chapbook of war poems was the first book published under the pseudonym Paul Éluard. Posted to the Somme front in June 1916, at age twenty, pining for his fiancée stuck in Russia, Éluard wrote official letters of condolence to the families of the dead from a field hospital and composed these poems. He experienced the horrors that motivated Dada and, shortly after, Surrealism. He published these war poems in mimeograph in August 1916, and sent the seventeen copies to friends and relatives.
Though Éluard suppressed the poems for decades, perhaps regarding them as juvenilia, he eventually rearranged them, titled them individually, and reprinted them thirty-two years later as part of his Premiers poèmes 1913–1921 (First Poems 1913–1921; Mermod, 1948). While they have been discussed at some length by French critics, and widely praised, they have never been translated into English. They provide a chilling window into the war that scarred a generation, the Lost Generation, in their depiction of the dreariness and dread of the front, the longing for family and happiness amid the trench digging and drinking, the camaraderie and the bedbugs.
Unlike other poets of the First World War period, Éluard juxtaposes “the brutality of conflict with the tranquility and calm he hopes to regain once the weapons have been laid down”.
As in his most famous poem, “Liberté” (Liberty)—about a later war—he writes here “in a sober, unpretentious way, to capture the conflict without intensifying it in any way”—“to demobilize eloquence.”
The challenge in translating these poems is to allow their understated, often conversational tone to reveal the horror of the direct experience of modern war, while being true to the poet’s hope of happiness—all without sentimentality. The poems affirm humanity while revealing its absurdity, pointing to what the surrealists would later do, at their best. They are also haunting evocations of the chilling intimacy of the trenches and tunnels of contemporary wars.
Though Éluard suppressed the poems for decades, perhaps regarding them as juvenilia, he eventually rearranged them, titled them individually, and reprinted them thirty-two years later as part of his Premiers poèmes 1913–1921 (First Poems 1913–1921; Mermod, 1948). While they have been discussed at some length by French critics, and widely praised, they have never been translated into English. They provide a chilling window into the war that scarred a generation, the Lost Generation, in their depiction of the dreariness and dread of the front, the longing for family and happiness amid the trench digging and drinking, the camaraderie and the bedbugs.
Unlike other poets of the First World War period, Éluard juxtaposes “the brutality of conflict with the tranquility and calm he hopes to regain once the weapons have been laid down”.
As in his most famous poem, “Liberté” (Liberty)—about a later war—he writes here “in a sober, unpretentious way, to capture the conflict without intensifying it in any way”—“to demobilize eloquence.”
The challenge in translating these poems is to allow their understated, often conversational tone to reveal the horror of the direct experience of modern war, while being true to the poet’s hope of happiness—all without sentimentality. The poems affirm humanity while revealing its absurdity, pointing to what the surrealists would later do, at their best. They are also haunting evocations of the chilling intimacy of the trenches and tunnels of contemporary wars.
Paul Éluard (1895–1952) is widely regarded as the greatest of the French surrealist poets. Born Eugène-Émile-Paul Grindel, At age seventeen, while being treated in hospital for tuberculosis, Éluard met Gala, his future wife and lifelong muse—even after she left him for Salvador Dalí in 1929. His service on the front in the First World War profoundly marked him, as it did other founders of Dada and Surrealism. During the war he married Gala, and their only child was born the following year. This was also the period in which he published his first two books of poetry, including the first to be written under the pseudonym Éluard. He had a long and distinguished career as a poet and political activist, and was part of a circle that included Picasso, Max Ernst, Lee Miller, and Man Ray. He was active in the French resistance during the Second World War, and thousands of copies of his poem “Liberté” were dropped by the Allies over occupied France, cementing his reputation.
David R. Russell is professor emeritus of English at Iowa State University. He has published more than one hundred books and articles on writing and rhetoric, including four articles in French, and has lectured at five French universities. His interest in early twentieth-century French avant-garde poets, especially Éluard, dates from courses on the Surrealist movement he took in graduate school in the 1970s, taught by the late poet Madison Morrison. Since 1992, Russell has traveled widely in France to visit sites associated with the movement and particularly its antecedents in Dada and the First World War. Russell’s recent retirement has given him time to pursue his long-standing dream of translating Éluard’s early poems, especially those written during and about the First World War.
