If I'm not mistaken, there was a strike at the University of Nice at the time when the conference for Éluard's centenary was supposed to be held there. I had gone there in advance, and I had stayed in the accommodation that had been reserved for me, not only to admire the Mediterranean in this season, but above all to compose a collection there. This is to say that the text that will be read has not undergone the test of a public reading. It remains that the story of this friendship between two poets in the Dada era deserved to be recounted.

This volume brings together the communications presented at the Nice conference on the occasion of the centenary of a young poet of 100 years, augmented by those of several other critics specializing in modern and contemporary poetry. The first part of this tribute explores the poetic and pictorial trajectories of the work, including in its epistolary component. The second part of the volume revolves around the question: what about Éluard's poetry today?

Download my contribution "Éluard and the Mad Ally"

Text reproduced in: Henri Béhar and Catherine Dufour: Dossier H Dada Total Circuit, L'Age d'Homme, 2005, pp. 296-318: https://www.lagedhomme.com/ouvrages/henri+behar/dada+circuit+total/3167

This comprehensive and exhaustive Dossier H addresses the Dada movement from "proto-dada" to all the major poles of "historical Dadaism" Zurich Paris Berlin Cologne etc. The work is enhanced with unpublished documents, general syntheses that only existed in foreign languages, French novelties by Hausmann, Huelsenbeck and Arp, studies and documents on Baargeld and Dada in Cologne. An event book not to be missed!

Extensions: see on this subject the Éluard-Paulhan correspondence.