ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the surrealist features of Paul Éluard's poems. These analyses are followed by close readings of Paul Celan's translations. First, a brief survey of Éluard's oeuvre is necessary in order to contextualize the poems from Capitale de la douleur. The poems from Capitale de la douleur translated by Celan include two whose titles refer to a surrealist artist, 'Pablo Picasso' and 'Georges Braque'. In 'Pablo Picasso', the evocation of vision reflects Éluard's preoccupation with that sense as a mode of perception and exchange. 'Georges Braque' celebrates light, such as at the end of the first stanza, 'Il n'a jamais eu d'ombre'. Celan's rendering of nouns and pronouns in his versions of Éluard's poems tend to increase the general and universal references of the poems. Celan's translations of Éluard's poems, written while he was involved with surrealist poets in Bucharest, bears witness to this commitment to the surrealist group.
