| Liberté | |
| Author: | Paul Éluard |
| First: | Poésie et vérité |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | French |
| Lines: | 84 |
"Liberté" (Liberty) is a 1942 poem by the French poet Paul Éluard. It is an ode to liberty written during the German occupation of France.[1] [2]
The poem is structured in twenty-one quatrains, which follow the same pattern. Éluard names many places, real or imaginary, on which he would write the word liberté. The first three lines of each begin with Sur (On) followed by the naming of a place, and the last line is twenty times, like a refrain, J'écris ton nom (I write your name). The 21st stanza reveals that name, saying Pour te nommer Liberté. (To name you Liberty).The first stanza reads:
The original title of the poem was Une seule pensée (A single thought). Éluard comments:
The poem was published on 3 April 1942, without apparent censorship, in the clandestine book of poetry Poésie et vérité 1942 (Poetry and truth 1942).[3] According to Max Pol Fouchet, he convinced Éluard to reprint the poem in June 1942 in the magazine Fontaine, titled Une seule pensée, to reach the southern Zone libre.[4] The same year, it was printed in London in the official Gaullist magazine La France libre and thousands of copies were dropped by parachute by British aircraft of the Royal Air Force above occupied France maquis.[5] In 1945, the poem was published by Éditions de Minuit in Eluard's poetry book Au rendez-vous allemand. [6] The complex history of Éluard's collections is detailed by the editors of his complete works, Lucien Scheler and Marcelle Dumas, particularly in Vol. 1 of Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1975, p. 1606–1607.
Francis Poulenc composed in 1943 Figure humaine, FP 120, a cantata for double mixed choir of 12 voices on this and seven other poems by Éluard. Written during the German occupation of France, it could not be performed in France, but was premiered in a radio broadcast of the BBC in English on 25 March 1945.[7]
Canadian composer Jacques Hétu included a choral setting of the poem as the final movement of his Fifth Symphony (2010).
Liberal quotings from the poem created an underlying theme in the 2014 drama film Maps to the Stars.