Repetitions & Misadventures of Immortals
by Paul Éluard & Max Ernst, translated from the French by Gian Lombardo  

ISBN: 978-1-935835-36-3
Perfect Bound: $16.00
Publication Date: March 15, 2025
6.14 x 9.21 inches, 102 pages
PROSE POETRY/POETRY/ART

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Repetitions and Misadventures of Immortals represent a collaboration between two of the premier figureheads of the Surrealist movement. In 1921, the French poet Paul Éluard became acquainted with Max Ernst’s artwork. Éluard wrote a collection of thirty-three poems and then selected a number of Ernst’s collages to accompany his poems, which became Repetitions. For Misadventures of Immortals, Ernst initially created twenty collages and then Éluard began drafting prose poems to both accompany and comment on the collages. On one level, the prose poems were constructed via ekphrasis but the composition process was more synergistic, with artist and poet responding to each other’s compositions and modifying them into an organic whole in an iterative revision process. Both works are considered to be premier examples of proto-Surrealism. Both collections were first published separately in 1922.

From Misadventures of Immortals...

CONDEMNED BLIND MAN
TURNS HIS BACK ON PASSERS-BY

A fly perched on his hand. The sun, to prevent it from flying away, sows needles around it. The sun attracts swallows afflicted with those horrible skin diseases that disfigure brutal weather. They surface from the water to walk the fields. The river isn’t swarming and they’ve had more than enough time to arrive. But they must pack up and find all the forgotten crosses.

His feet emit the stink of lizards. He’ll therefore make an auspicious marriage, a marriage with the best intentions.