ELUARD Paul (1895-1952)

Autograph POEM signed "Paul Eluard," [Eternity of those I have not seen again, 1945]; 2 pages in-fol. on the back of the letterhead of the M. A. I. Gallery. (the beginning is missing). Important poem about writers murdered by the Nazis or in deportation. Published "on the front page" of Lettres françaises of September 8, 1945, this poem was collected in 1946 in the 6th edition of Au rendez-vous allemand. The first part of the poem is missing here. The working manuscript, written in black and then blue ink, contains numerous erasures and corrections, several lines crossed out, and numerous variants with the final text. It is written on paper of the gallery M.A.I. (Meubles Architectures Installations, rue Bonaparte), belonging to Yvonne Zervos, wife of the director of the Cahiers d'Art. The manuscript begins here: "Clear faces dark memories Then like a great blow on the eyes Faces of burned paper In the memory nothing but ashes The cold rose of the oblivion"... And Éluard to evoke his disappeared companions: Robert Desnos, Gabriel Péri, Benjamin Crémieux, Pierre Unik, Sylvain Itkine, Jean Jausion, the printer Jacques Grou-Radenez, Georges Politzer, Jacques Decour, Saint-Pol Roux, Max Jacob, Maurice Bourdet, etc