In 1936, the poet Paul Éluard helped to organise an exhibition of work by surrealists from across Europe. In June of that year, when the show opened at the New Burlington Galleries in Mayfair, London, Éluard addressed an audience of guests and colleagues, speaking in urgently political terms. “Surrealism,” he said, “is a state of mind” that “strives to reduce the differences between people”. He then described his experience as a soldier, fighting for France in the 1st World War, and how this was later thrown into perspective by an unexpected friendship:
“In February 1917, the Surrealist painter Max Ernst and I were at the front, hardly a mile away from each other. Max, a German gunner, was bombarding the trenches where I, a French infantryman, was on the look-out. Three years later, we were the best of friends and ever since we have fought fiercely side by side for the same cause: that of the total emancipation of human-kind.”
I read the text of this speech in June this year, as I researched my essay, Asylum, for Aeon, in which Éluard appears. Later the same day, I read Éluard’s poem Liberté. As with much of the material I had encountered since beginning work on the essay, the poem was completely new to me. I knew it had been published in France in 1942 as part of a clandestine collection and that it was then air-dropped by the British air forces in pamphlet form, across occupied territories, as an inspiration to the French Resistance. And it was this story, as well as Éluard’s 1936 Burlington Galleries speech, that illuminated the poem as I read it.
It’s written in the first person as an address to a second person. The 21 stanzas follow a pattern, each ending in the phrase, ‘I write your name’. For example, the first two:
On my school notebooks
On my desk and on the trees
On the sand on the snow
I write your name
On pages already read
On all the white pages
Stone blood paper or ash
I write your name
As I read, I pictured the two artists, Éluard and Ernst, facing one another across no-man’s-land. I read the ‘I’ as Éluard and the ‘you’ as Ernst: ignorant of one another and cast in deadly opposition by violent politics, yet carrying the flame of possibility, the hope of future friendship. I read the ‘you’, in fact, as every reader, every person living in Occupied France who found the poem stuck in a hedge or bloating in a puddle by the road; an unknown person, whom the poet had not met, could only imagine, but with whom he believed he shared a bond of common feeling. It was only when I reached the final stanza that this perspective collapsed, wound inwards, transformed through the realisation of the poem’s intent.
I suppose that’s why poetry can be magic. It reads you both ways at the same time.
Here is a recording of my own translation of Liberté. Below that is the text of my translation and, after that, the original French.
Freedom
On my school notebooks
On my desk and on the trees
On the sand on the snow
I write your name
On pages already read
On all the white pages
Stone blood paper or ash
I write your name
On golden icons
On the weapons of warriors
On the crowns of kings
I write your name
On the jungle and the desert
On the nests on the broom
On the echo of my infancy
I write your name
On the wonders of night
On the white bread of days
On the beloved seasons
I write your name
On all my blue rags
On the pond weeded sun
On the lake living moon
I write your name
On the fields on the horizon
On the wings of birds
And on the mill of shadows
I write your name
On each puff of dawn
On the sea on the boats
On the crazed mountain
I write your name
On the froth of clouds
On the sweat of the thunderstorm
On the thick insipid rain
I write your name
On the glimmering forms
On the clamour of colours
On the stubborn truth
I write your name
On the wakened trails
On the routes deployed
On the overflowing squares
I write your name
On the lamp that shines
On the lamp gone out
On my home regained
I write your name
On the halved fruit
Of my mirror and my room
On my bed empty shell
I write your name
On my greedy and tender dog
On his prickling ears
On his clumsy paws
I write your name
On the sill of my door
On familiar things
On the flood of blessed fire
I write your name
On any willing flesh
On the foreheads of my friends
On each hand held out
I write your name
On the window of surprise
On attentive lips
High above the silence
I write your name
On my ruined asylums
On my fallen flares
On the walls of my boredom
I write your name
On the emptiness without desire
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name
On health returned
On vanished risk
On hope without memory
I write your name
And by the power of a word
I recommence my life
I was born to know you
To name you
FREEDOM
Liberté
Sur mes cahiers d'écolier
Sur mon pupitre et les arbres
Sur le sable de neige
J'écris ton nom
Sur les pages lues
Sur toutes les pages blanches
Pierre sang papier ou cendre
J'écris ton nom
Sur les images dorées
Sur les armes des guerriers
Sur la couronne des rois
J'écris ton nom
Sur la jungle et le désert
Sur les nids sur les genêts
Sur l'écho de mon enfance
J'écris ton nom
Sur les merveilles des nuits
Sur le pain blanc des journées
Sur les saisons fiancées
J'écris ton nom
Sur tous mes chiffons d'azur
Sur l'étang soleil moisi
Sur le lac lune vivante
J'écris ton nom
Sur les champs sur l'horizon
Sur les ailes des oiseaux
Et sur le moulin des ombres
J'écris ton nom
Sur chaque bouffée d'aurore
Sur la mer sur les bateaux
Sur la montagne démente
J'écris ton nom
Sur la mousse des nuages
Sur les sueurs de l'orage
Sur la pluie épaisse et fade
J'écris ton nom
Sur les formes scintillantes
Sur les cloches des couleurs
Sur la vérité physique
J'écris ton nom
Sur les sentiers éveillés
Sur les routes déployées
Sur les places qui débordent
J'écris ton nom
Sur la lampe qui s'allume
Sur la lampe qui s'éteint
Sur mes maisons réunies
J'écris ton nom
Sur le fruit coupé en deux
Du miroir et de ma chambre
Sur mon lit coquille vide
J'écris ton nom
Sur mon chien gourmand et tendre
Sur ses oreilles dressées
Sur sa patte maladroite
J'écris ton nom
Sur le tremplin de ma porte
Sur les objets familiers
Sur le flot du feu béni
J'écris ton nom
Sur toute chair accordée
Sur le front de mes amis
Sur chaque main qui se tend
J'écris ton nom
Sur la vitre des surprises
Sur les lèvres attendries
Bien au-dessus du silence
J'écris ton nom
Sur mes refuges détruits
Sur mes phares écroulés
Sur les murs de mon ennui
J'écris ton nom
Sur l'absence sans désir
Sur la solitude nue
Sur les marches de la mort
J'écris ton nom
Sur la santé revenue
Sur le risque disparu
Sur l'espoir sans souvenir
J'écris ton nom
Et par le pouvoir d'un mot
Je recommence ma vie
Je suis né pour te connaître
Pour te nommer
LIBERTÉ