Desnos Robert – Calixto Contrée: Two collections of poetry written in 1942-43, under occupation, a few months before the arrest of Robert Desnos by the Gestapo. “Poetry can talk about everything freely,” he says. Thus in Calixto, a succession of sonnets, which are not separated by any title, assembles in a continuity: that of the nymph Calixto, symbol of freedom in a busy Paris, “passante” in love and inaccessible. Contrace, of the same form, contains several poems in slang whose language contrasts with the finesse of poetic writing. Allusive language “related to the circumstances of the moment, even when landscapes or actions are mentioned whose generality does not give rise to any suspicion (so all the titles of Contrée, without appearing to” counter “anyone, rest on a neutral generic title, “Le Coteau”, “La Sieste”) or myths borrowed from the literary tradition (The Bath with Andromeda evokes both the erotic torment of the young prisoner and the enslavement of Paris). […] The poet notes for himself: “Remind the public that there may be subtext and Theory of the double sense (immediate and second) essential to poetry. »(Presence of Literature, Canopic Network, 2008)»