Robert desmos biography

Early life [ edit ]. Career [ edit ].

Robert desmos biography

Resistance and deportation [ edit ]. Legend of "The Last Poem" [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. Death [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. Publications [ edit ]. Published posthumously [ edit ]. Filmography [ edit ]. Discography [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. ISBN New York: Columbia University Press. London: Boulevard Books. Robert Desnos, surrealism, and the marvelous in everyday life.

Lincoln, NE. New York, Oxford: Peter Lang. Les confidences de Youki in French. Paris: Fayard. Les dieux meurent le matin in French. Paris: Grasset. Paris: Le Temps des Cerises. Taken up with radio activity, he abandoned poetry. He published Les Sans cou in , invented poems for the children of his friends and in challenged himself to write a poem every evening.

Desnos was mobilised in and fought the "phoney war", convinced of the legitimacy of the fight against Nazism. He did not let the defeat of June , nor the occupation of Paris, where he lived with Youki, get him down. His radio activity having ceased, he became a journalist for Aujourd'hui, a newspaper that was quickly subjected to German censorship but where he managed to publish, "in a small way" as he put it, literary articles that encouraged the preparation of a free future.

The struggle was now clandestine. From onwards, he was part of the Agir network, to which he passed on confidential information that reached the newspaper, while also making false papers for Jews or Resistance fighters in difficulty. Under his own name or under the mask of pseudonyms, he returned to poetry. Exhausted by mistreatment and forced marches, he died of typhus on 8 June , with the ultimate comfort of being recognised by Josef Stuna and Alena Tesarova, two young Czechs who assisted the dying deportees.

Thus Robert Desnos emerged from the anonymity of a simple registration number tattooed on his arm. As soon as the news of his death became known, a legend was born. The voice of Robert Desnos now resounds in a poem that has ceased to belong to him and has become the voice of all. Search this site. In , one month before he was arrested, Desnos wrote in Reflections on Poetry, "Poetry may be this or it may be that," but, he continued, "…it shouldn't necessarily be this or that…except delirious and lucid.

Between the years of and , Desnos was very prolific, publishing eight books of poetry. His first book, Rrose Selavy, published in , was a collection of surrealistic aphorisms. Early works reflect his imaginative and fanciful love of word play. In , he committed and challenged himself to writing a poem a day. His work became more structured as he matured and gave up the many excesses of his youth, which included drug experimentation.

Although his writing was still adventurous, it was less obscure, while retaining its distinctive and lyrical rhythms. He married the former Lucie Badoul, nicknamed "Youki" "snow" by her ex-husband, the painter Tsugaharu Foujita. One of Bresnos' most famous poems is "Letter to Youki," written after his arrest. In , he composed The Night of Loveless Nights, a lyric poem about solitude, curiously written in classic-like quatrains, more similar to Charles Baudelaire than Breton.

During this early creative period, Desnos idolized entertainer, Yvonne George, a popular cabaret singer, who was also a part of the Parisian cultural milieu. His return to formalism and more mainstream writings are most likely what set him apart from other surrealist writers. He became further alienated from them due to their increasing association with Marxism.

Young enough to avoid the draft during World War I, Desnos began his compulsory military service in as an infantryman in the Haute-Marne. Following the completion of his service in , he became involved with the Paris Dada circle. Desnos distinguished himself for his automatic poetry as the Paris Dadaists and Breton began to experiment with mediumistic activities.