Lives of the Poet Saints, Part 1: Robert Desnos

Robert Desnos's Selected Poems, translated by Carolyn Forche and William Kulik, is one of my very favorite books of poetry--so lyrical, romantic, and imaginative. 


Desnos started out as one of the Surrealists, and these guys liked to do "automatic writing" while in a state of hypnosis...though how much this differed from the usual poetry-writing trance, I don't know. Desnos could sit in a crowded cafe, drop off into a dream state, and declaim amazing impromptu poetry. That really would have been worth the price of an espresso. Paris was an exciting place in the 20s and 30s, and Desnos knew a bunch of famous people there, like Cesar Vallejo, Picasso, Hemingway, and Diego Rivera. 


Later the Surrealist ringleader Andre Breton got mad at Desnos for, among other reasons, writing formal poetry, which I'll talk about in the next Formal Friday installment. Desnos actually wrote all kinds of things: music, movie, and book reviews, plays, novels, and a film script directed by Man Ray.  He got a job writing radio shows, advertisements and jingles. 


When the Nazis took over in France, Desnos was part of the press, and was able to get information and disseminate it to the French Resistance. He published poems and essays under pseudonyms making fun of the occupiers. In 1944, the Gestapo arrested him and sent him to Auschwitz. Later they sent him to Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Floha, and then the Theresienstadt, in kind of a grand tour of Hell.

Desnos was amazing. One of the prisoners later remembered him sharing his bowl of watery soup with another prisoner who was worse off. When a guard abused one of the captives, Desnos yelled an insult at him. The guards used to tell all the prisoners they were going to die, and Desnos would respond by going around and reading everyone's palms, making up fantastic futures for everyone.


Desnos died of typhoid fever a few weeks after Theresienstadt was liberated. He was 44. 


Here's a poem by Desnos, in case you've never read him. A section from this poem was apparently on his person when he died.



I've Dreamed Of You So Much

I've dreamed of you so much you're losing your reality.
Is there still time to reach that living body and kiss
onto that mouth the birth of the voice so dear to me?
I've dreamed of you so much that my arms, accustomed
to being crossed on my breast while hugging your shadow,
would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
And, faced with the real appearance of what has haunted
and ruled me for days and years, I would probably
become a shadow.
O sentimental balances.
I've dreamed of you so much it's no longer right
for me to awaken. I sleep standing up, my body exposed
to all signs of life and love, and you
the only one who matters to me now, I'd be less able
to touch your face and your lips than the face and the lips
of the first woman who came along.
I've dreamed of you so much, walked so much, spoken
and lain with your phantom that perhaps nothing is left me
than to be a phantom among phantoms and a hundred times more shadow
than the shadow that walks and will joyfully walk
on the sundial of your life.