Poem of The Day: – Paul Éluard, from “The Capital of Sorrow” 1926 [Nusch & Paul Éluard] - Uncredited and Undated Photograph [possibly Man Ray]

 

Nusch and Paul Éluard Uncredited and Undated Photograph [possibly Man Ray]

I go to the arms of shadows,

I am at the bottom of shadows,

Alone.

The pity is higher and can stay there,

Virtue makes itself the charity of its breasts

And the grace became entangled in the nets of her eyelids.

She is more beautiful than the faces of the bleachers,

She is harder,

She is down with stones and shadows.

I joined her.

It is here that the clarity gives its last battle.

If I fall asleep, it is to stop dreaming.

What will then be the weapons of my triumph ?

In my eyes wide open the sun makes the joints,

O garden of my eyes !

All fruits are here to show the flowers,

Flowers in the night.

A window of foliage

Opens suddenly in its face.

Where I would put my lips, nature without shore ?

A woman is more beautiful than the world where I live

And I close my eyes.

I go to the arms of shadows,

I am at the bottom of shadows,

And shadows are waiting me.

– Paul Éluard, from “The Capital of Sorrow” 1926

Nusch Eluard fascinates me at least as much as her husband as the women of Dada and Surrealism frequently do. From Lee Miller, to Dora Maar to artists the strength of Frida Kahlo, Leanora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Dali’s wife and muse Gala. They seem collectively to have had at least as much free thinking exploratory relationships with art and their menfolk an exploration of them all collectively is long over due