Paul Eluard.

Road book. May-June [1949]. Autograph notebook in-16 of 18 sheets written in pencil on squared paper. Precious and terrible eyewitness account of the Greek civil war, written on the spot. Eluard went to Greece to support the Greek democratic forces. The sheets are covered with notes taken on the fly on the stages of his journey, from Prague, where the World Congress of Peace Supporters was held, to the Gramos Mountains, returning via Tirana, on June 14. We find quoted the persons crossed: the name of the Albanian diplomat, Misto Treska, written in ink, probably by the hand of the person concerned himself, or that of a director of theater with the mention "very active cultural work". Eluard gives his impressions of his travels, by jeep or on horseback, in occupied or resistant villages. He evokes his visits in ammunition factories or sanitary stations, meetings with peasants, women, victims, "these wounded understand that the health of the whole Greece, it is the victory". He relates the atrocious spectacle of a peasant woman hanging by her feet: "The most beautiful face can not complain more violently about the horrors of war", transcribes the words of a young soldier of 18 years, whose entire family was killed: "I could leave the army but I want to fight". "Gramos is a bit rough but the fighters soften it [...] these fighters who are the fire of the mountains and of all Greece, the honor of the civilized world. The women mixed with the men, the peasants with the workers and the intellectuals [...] while dancing a girl holds the other by the trigger of her machine gun". He reports on incidents between fascists and partisans, and repeatedly notes the number of killed and wounded... One passage alludes to a letter from English intellectuals, which Eluard had recently read, in defense of "natural Anglo-Saxon good manners": "this protest moved me, especially since it was about my great friend Picasso, but these gentlemen ignore...." Shortly afterwards, the final campaign of the national army against the communist forces, which lost the support of Yugoslavia and Albania, was to lead to the official surrender of the Democratic Army of Greece and end the civil war. The pages at the top and bottom are occupied by two draft speeches - Eluard's address to Americans following his ban on entering the country and his speech to the fighters of the national army, delivered at the Gramos Mountains in June 1949, which was broadcast on several occasions. The text presents some variations with the printed text: "Sons of Greece, I address you, peasants, workers, intellectuals, enrolled by force in the army of a government of traitors sold to the foreigner. I wanted above all to be here a witness and I was animated only by the only concern of the truth and the only passion of the peace...". (Eluard, OEuvres complètes, II, p. 905).