Robert Desnos

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Robert Desnos 1924

Robert Desnos [ ʁɔˈbɛːʁ dɛsˈnoːs ] (born July 4, 1900 in Paris , † June 8, 1945 in Theresienstadt ) was a French writer and journalist . Influenced in particular by Nerval and Baudelaire , he wrote mainly poetry - even in the concentration camp . One of his main subjects was love. Ehrenburg quotes Paul Éluard approvingly : “Of all the poets I knew, Desnos was the most immediate, the most free; he was a poet who never left inspiration; he could speak as hardly a poet can write. He was the bravest of them all. "

Life

Robert Desnos and his muse Youki Foujita, 1933
Plaque on his home in Paris

Desnos left his middle-class family at the age of sixteen, joined anarchist circles, and did odd jobs. After his military service in Morocco , the young writer joined the Parisian Dadaists around Tristan Tzara , André Breton , Paul Éluard, Philippe Soupault , Max Ernst and Francis Picabia in 1919 . In the "time of sleep" Desnos was primarily concerned with researching the unconscious and made numerous dream protocols. He stayed above water as a journalist, for example for the surrealist magazine La Révolution Surréaliste (twelve issues, 1924–1929) and for Eugène Merle's Paris-Matinal .

Punished by André Breton in the Second Surrealism Manifesto in 1930, Desnos responded with an article in the anti-Breton pamphlet Un Cadavre (A Cadaver), to which Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes , Georges Bataille , Jacques Prévert , Georges Limbour , Roger Vitrac , Antonin Artaud , Philippe Soupault, André Masson and Jacques-André Boiffard . According to Winfried Engler , he set himself apart from the surrealist "aesthetics of incomprehensibility". Another point of contention was the Communist Party , from which Desnos distanced himself in contrast to Breton.

During this time he met the Japanese (and much-acclaimed muse ) Youki Foujita, who became his lover. Tired of the newspaper business, he became an employee of a housing agency in 1931. From 1935 he worked mainly for radio. In the newspaper Aujourd'hui he polemicized against the (right-hand) writer Celine . Active in the French resistance movement Résistance , he was arrested in 1944 because of a denunciation by the German occupying forces. He went through several concentration camps and had to do forced labor in armaments production in Flöha , in a satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp . Desnos fell ill with typhus and died a few weeks after the Theresienstadt concentration camp was liberated .

Works

  • Deuil pour deuil , poems, 1924
  • La Liberté ou l'amour , Paris 1927
  • L'etoile de mer , film, 1928 (with Man Ray )
  • Corps et biens , poems 1921–1929, Paris 1930
  • Sans-cou , poems, 1934
  • La cantate pour l'inauguration du Musée de l'Homme , cantata, 1937 (together with Darius Milhaud )
  • Fortunes , poems, Paris 1942
  • Le vin est tiré , Roman, Paris 1943
  • Etat de veille , poems, 1943
published posthumously
  • Choix de poèmes , poems, 1946
  • Ouvres posthumes , poems, 1947
  • Domaine public , poems, 1953

For some editions / selected volumes in German, see the National Library link

literature

  • Pierre Berger: Robert Desnos. Paris 1949.
  • Rosa Buchole: L'evolution poétique de Robert Desnos. Brussels 1956.
  • Ilja Ehrenburg : People - Years - Life. (Memoirs), Munich 1962, special edition Munich 1965, Volume II 1923–1941, pages 173–179 (portrait), ISBN 3-463-00512-3 .
  • Mary Ann Caws: The surrealist voice of Desnos. USA 1977.
  • Reinhard JA Pohl: The metamorphoses of the negative hero ... Desnos. Hamburg 1977.
  • Marie-Claire Dumas: Robert Desnos ou l'exploration des limites. 1980.
  • HL Davis: Robert Desnos: Une voix, un chant, un cri. 1981.
  • Marie-Claire Dumas: Moi qui suis Desnos. 1987.
  • Marie-Claire Dumas (Ed.): Cahier de l'Herne. Special issue Desnos, 1987.
  • Michel Murat: Robert Desnos: les grands jours du poète. Paris 1988.
  • Dominique Desanti : Robert Desnos: le roman d'une vie. Mercure de France, 1999.
  • André Bessière: Destination Auschwitz avec Robert Desnos. Paris 2001, ISBN 2-7475-0180-9 .
  • Anne Egger: Robert Desnos. éditions Fayard, 2007.
  • Marie-Claire Dumas (Ed.): Robert Desnos, le poète libre. éditions Indigo / Université de Picardie Jules Verne, 2007.
Fiction
  • Werner Streletz : The freest of all poets: on the way with Robert Desnos: Novelle . Bochum: projektverlag, 2017

Web links

Commons : Robert Desnos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Das Phonetik-Blog”, January 21, 2009
  2. ↑ According to Kindler's New Literature Lexicon , Munich 1988 edition
  3. ^ Munich 1965, page 173
  4. ^ Ehrenburg Munich 1965, page 174
  5. ↑ Winfried Engler : Lexicon of French Literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 388). 3rd, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-38803-0 .
  6. ↑ Ehrenburg (Munich 1965, p. 173) cites Desnos' demand that a poet must understand and be understood
  7. ↑ Ehrenburg Munich 1965, page 175
personal data
SURNAME Desnos, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet, writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1945
Place of death Theresienstadt