Eluard's Female Landscape

Abstract

This paper seeks to place the image of woman as landscape, frequent in Eluard, in the structure of the poems in which it appears. The image most often indicates a transition within the poem from a state of personal identity to one of impersonality; but this basic structure is subject to systematic modifications affecting the character of the image and of the states preceding and succeeding it; thus poems may imply a range of different values and may present the relationship of speaker and other people or outside world more or less positively. Forms of the image may also occur initially, so that the remainder of the text shows either a gradual development of the impersonal state they imply or the overcoming of an obstacle to it; or they may occur finally, either as a surprising closure or as a reinforcement of a previous occurrence of the image in some form. In thus selecting among the imagined implications of the image, Eluard imposes an order on his fascination with the body in space.