Louis Aragon:
Letter to Boris Lurie
(1970)
Thank you for writing. It means to me that I am not anterily dead. It is quite a nice feeling. I am not stupid enough not to know my old face; because there are mirrors. And, for what mirrors are not showing, I am also well informed.
For the moment, Alain Jouffry is not in Paris. I should have had full time to ask him about you, since your letter is dated April 18. But I red it two days ago, only. That, for all the others I didn't even open this year. Any how, good words would not change much.
When the book you spoke about will appear, please send it over. Old people (the English language has no word for the French veiIIard which means old man, but deprecatorily, if I due say) like to believe they have young eyes.
I have not forgotten my youth. But I understand also why others differently do.
Good luck, my boy, to you and your friends, young and old. And excuse me, if I shall not write for your book: neither shall I wander on the moon.
And your work! I never know how to finish letters, even in French. Then, I don't.
Aragon. — Without any excuse for my English writing.
Source: Lurie, Boris; Krim, Seymour: NO!art, catalog, Cologne 1988
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ABOUT LOUIS ARAGON: (October 3, 1897 — December 24, 1982), French poet and novelist, a long-time political supporter of the communist party . Having been involved in Dada from 1919 to 1924, he became a founding member of Surrealism in 1924 with André Breton and Philippe Soupault. Aragon joined the French Communist Party with several other surrealists. He would remain a member for the rest of his life, writing several political poems including one to Maurice Thorez, however he was also critical of the USSR, particularly during the 1950s. In 1939 he married Russian-born author Elsa Triolet , the sister-in-law of Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. During the World War II German occupation of France he wrote for the underground press Les Éditions de Minuit. One noted Aragon poem is "Red Poster," in which he honoured foreigners who died while fighting to free France.
