SOURCE: Benoit, Leroy J. “Poetic Themes of Paul Eluard.” Modern Language Quarterly 12, no. 2 (June, 1951): 216-29.

In the following essay, Benoit provides an overview of central themes of Eluard's poetry during various phases of his life and career.

The school of surrealism arising in 1924 between two conflicting poetic traditions, namely, the school of les voyants (Saint-Pol-Roux and Lautréamont) and the inspired mysticism of Claudel and Valéry, sought to bring its own measure of balance. Drawing its code from André Breton's Manifeste du surréalisme, it emphasized the application of literary formulas based upon a cooperative work collated from all the arts; it advocated a theory of materialism, and a belief in the revelation of a psychic life beyond pure rationalization. This supremacy of the subconscious mind over rational thought and over the general law of movement as applied to the exterior world of human thought became the...