Who was Robert Desnos?

Search more than 3,000 biographies of contemporary and classic poets. Robert Desnos was born on July 4, 1900, in Paris. Desnos was the son of a café owner. He attended commercial college, then worked as a clerk before becoming a literary columnist for the newspaper Paris-Soir. He first published poems in the Dadaist magazine Littérature in 1919.

Who wrote the essays on Robert Desnos?

(The text of Desnos's journal for February 1944, followed by eleven essays on Robert Desnos, by: David Wills, Adelaïde M. Russo, Mary Ann Caws, Michel Murat, Jacqueline Chénieux-Gendron, Renée Riese Hubert, Colette Guedj, Serge Gaubert, Reinhard Pohl and Carmen Vásquez.) Dumas, Marie-Claire, ed. (1999). Robert Desnos: Œuvres (in French).

What did Desnos die of?

Desnos was moved among various concentration camps and died, of typhus, at Terezin, in Czechoslovakia, a few days after the camp was liberated. Desnos’s work continues to exert an influence on French poetry and art, as well as poets who write in English.

What was Desnos's role in the French Resistance?

By the early 1940s, Desnos was working for the French Resistance, passing sensitive information he received at the newspaper along to Resistance fighters. He also published, under pseudonyms, articles critical of the Occupation. The Nazis eventually discovered Desnos’s role in the Resistance and, in February 1944, the Gestapo arrested him.