A poem by Paul Eluard
“I cannot be known
Better than you know me
Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man’s gleam
A better fate than for the common nights
Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth
In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude
Are no longer what they thought themselves to be
You cannot be known
Better than I know you.”
― Paul Éluard
A French Poet
Eugène Grindel (1895-1952), known as Paul Éluard, was a French poet who was dedicated to Dadaism and Surrealism. He was a great admirer of symbolist and avant-garde poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, and Guillaume Apollinaire. The woman you see in the photo is his second wife Nusch Eluard (1906-1946) She was a French performer, model and surrealist artist.
Surrealism by Surrealists
What do we know about Surrealism? Surrealists say true reality only comes from your subconscious. It is for this reason that over time concepts and techniques were developed allowing the artists to use the subconscious mind. They wanted to be able to learn and discover the depths of their brains.
Surrealism was most popular among painters because of its immediate and clear form of expression. In comparison to other forms of art including poetry and literature, it was much harder to be expressed. Surrealists believed in a structured clearly outlined process when expressing themselves. The aesthetics were not that important.
Of course, we can also find surrealism in the film industry, a great example of a Surreal movie is The Blood of a Poet (1932) directed by Jean Cocteau
According to Octavio Paz, (1914-1998) the Mexican writer and poet, “Surrealism is not a poetry but a poetics, and even more, and more decisively, a world vision”. Paz himself was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.
Picture by Man Ray
Photograph of Nusch and Paul Eluard made by the famous photographer Man Ray(1890-1976.) American painter, maker of Surrealist objects and photographer.
