lived at 15, rue Mazarine. He continued his work with the
unusual and the merveilleux. His closest friends were Jean-Louis
Barrault, Madeleine Renaud, Georges Hugnet, Eluard, Lise
Deharme, Masson, Artaud, Salacrou, Picasso, Hemingway, Dos
Passos. Desnos wrote many original scenarios for the movies,
some of which were published in ephemeral magazines.

Eroticism is one of the important aspects of Desnos' poetry,
as it is with Breton's and Eluard's. He perpetuates the myth of
Don Juan in Night of Loveless Nights and in La Ville de Don
Juan, and yet the world which this Don Juan sees is the sem-
blance of a void, of failure. During 1936, Desnos wrote a poem
each day of the year, as an experiment recalling the earlier sur-
realist experiments with automatic writing. To celebrate his
thirty-sixth birthday he wrote a poem about his childhood
neighborhood, Quartier Saint-Merri.

At the beginning of the war, Desnos was more active than
ever. He held a literary chronicle in Aujourd'hui where he ably
defended Gide, who was being severely attacked at the moment.
He participated in the Resistance Movement and joined the group
directing the underground publications, Les Editions de Minuit.
He was taken by the Gestapo in February 1944, on the very
day when his new film, Bonsoir Mesdames, bonsoir Messieurs,
was advertised on the Paris bulletin boards. In April he was
transported to Buchenwald.