Her love for Paul gave her an unshakable faith that they would be reunited again. However, Paul's father, who had also been mobilized, remained adamant that she could not come to Paris. Her initial hostility towards Gala slowly faded away, and she started calling her "the little Russian". Paul's mother came to visit him and he talked for hours about his beloved, opening his heart to her and slowly rallying her to his cause. He suffered from migraine, bronchitis, cerebral anaemia, and chronic appendicitis and spent most of 1915 under treatment in a military hospital not far from home. He passed his physical and was assigned to the auxiliary services because of his poor health. The separation was brutal soon Europe was on the brink of war and Paul was mobilised. In April 1914, Paul Éluard and Gala were both declared healthy again and sent home, to Paris and Moscow respectively. They became friends during their hospitalization in the sanatorium, and kept in touch by mail after returning to their respective countries. In Clavadel, Éluard also met the Brazilian youngster Manuel Bandeira, who would become one of the foremost poets of the Portuguese language. He was then particularly inspired by Walt Whitman. She became his muse and the critic, always honest, and told him which images she preferred, which verses she disliked. She listened and was involved in the creation of his verses. She believed in him and gave him confidence and encouragement and provided him with the sense of security he needed to write. She wrote to him that "you will become a great poet". He confided to her his dream of becoming a poet, of his admiration for "poets dead of hunger, sizzling dreams" and of his parents' disapproval. There he met a young Russian girl of his age, Helena Diakonova, whom he nicknamed Gala. At the age of 16, he contracted tuberculosis, interrupted his studies, and remained hospitalized until April 1914 in the Clavadel sanatorium near Davos. Éluard attended the local school in Aulnay-sous-Bois before obtaining a scholarship to attend the École Supérieure de Colbert. Around 1908, the family moved to Paris, rue Louis Blanc. His father was an accountant when Paul was born but soon opened a real estate agency.
Was born in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, the son of Eugène Clément Grindel and wife Jeanne-Marie née Cousin. He became known worldwide as The Poet of Freedom and is considered the most gifted of French surrealist poets. He adhered to Dadaism and became one of the pillars of surrealism by opening the way to artistic action politically committed to the Communist Party.ĭuring World War II, he was the author of several poems against Nazism that circulated clandestinely. In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a patronymic borrowed from his maternal grandmother. Paul Éluard ( French: ), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel ( 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement.