117 - [Russia]. Paul ELUARD.

[Russia]. Paul ELUARD. Hugo as Seen by Russian Authors. No place, (February 1952). Handwritten notes by the author for speeches on Victor HUGO and corrected typewritten speeches, titled *Hugo, a Vulgar Poet* and *Victor Hugo*. [February 1952]. 4 pages (handwritten) in-4 (21 x 26.8 cm) and 6 pp. and 3 half-pages (typed) (21 x 31 cm), with cross-outs and corrections. A fine collection of notes and speech fragments for the commemorative celebrations in Moscow marking the 150th anniversary of Hugo’s birth in February–March 1952. These notes discuss Hugo as seen by the Russians: Pushkin, who loved *Hernani*; Herzen, who asked him to speak about the Polish uprising of 1863; Dostoevsky, who considered *Les Misérables* superior to *Crime and Punishment*, and the ban imposed on the Russian ambassador in Paris, “by order of the Tsar,” from attending Hugo’s funeral Most of these points will appear in the speeches delivered on February 25 and 26, 1952, at the Gorky Institute and the Hall of Columns, and on March 1 at Boys’ School No. 607 (Complete Works, Pléiade, II, 920). Accompanied by a typescript titled *Victor Hugo au stylo bleu*. Annotated (top margin) and corrected. Pages 2 and 3 of this fragment are heavily crossed out and corrected. These notes accompany the typed, corrected speech titled “Hugo, Vulgar Poet.” The speech was delivered at the Gorky Institute and included, notably, a paragraph that was not included in the final version: “Hugo sang of heaven and earth, the summit and the abyss, the past and the future, the animal and man. He sang of love for one’s country and for liberty. He sang, better than anyone, of the wretched and the humble with sparkling words usually reserved for those who make the laws to profit from them. Of course, his love of nature and humanity, his emotion, and his entire imagination were vulgar, for he was nothing more than a collective being who called himself Hugo. On the other hand, those who speak only for themselves are called *nobody*. Hugo’s dreams are the dreams of the men of his time, but his reality is that of the consciousness of tomorrow; it sublimates and combats the nineteenth century, but it does so to elevate the twentieth.” Eugène Grindel, known as Paul Eluard (1895–1952), a French poet from the Parisian suburbs and a Dadaist. Challenging the world through absurdity, humor, and nonsense, Paul Eluard became one of the pillars of Surrealism, paving the way for politically engaged artistic action in support of the Communist Party.