Unbroken Poetry II: Poesie ininterrompue II

Paul Eluard’s poetry is concerned with sexual desire and the desire for social change. A central participant in Dada and in the Surrealist movement, Eluard joined the French Communist Party and worked actively in the Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris. Caught between the horrors of Stalinism and post-war, right-wing anti-communism, his writing sustains an insistent vision of poetry as a multi-faceted weapon against injustice and oppression. For Eluard, poetry is a way of infiltrating the reader with greater emotional awareness of the social problems of the modern world. Unbroken Poetry II, published posthumously in 1953, pays tribute to Dominique Eluard, with whom Paul spent the last years of his life. It traces the internal dialogues of a passionate relationship as well as of his continuing re-evaluation of the poetic project it-self. It centres on political commitment and places it at the heart of the lovers’ desire.