Le Dur Desir de Duren By Paul Eluard. Translated by
Stephen Spender and Frances Cornford. Illustrated by Marc Chagall. (Trianon Press: Faber. 3 2s. 6d.) MANY of the poems in this book were written during the German occupation of Paris in circumstances that make them a memorial to a time when the poet was the real martyr of a murderous decade. This translation by Stephen Spender and Frances Comford is not on facing pages, as is usual, but follows the text, which makes comparison with the original a difficult matter of manipulation from the back to the front of a book bound only in stiff paper in a large flabby format. This is a pity, as the wide spaces and large type incline to dream over the simple but subtle beauty of Eluard's world. For in spite of a deceiving simplicity of content his verbal virtuosity presents difficulties that the translators have not entirely met. There are, in fact, what many may feel to be considerable falsifications of the original. In a note Mr. Spender tells us that he had undertaken merely a literal translation to help out the English reader. Eluard's simplicity is peculiarly suited to such a word-for-word rendering, but other collaborators seem to have crept in, and the result is not too happy. It is difficult not to feel that the poet, the artist and the translators are as ill-met as the witches and Macbeth on the misty hillsides of Scotland.
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