Desnos Robert – The wine is pulled …: A surrealist poet who becomes a novelist? A novel, excellent indeed, but almost sociological, a novel on addiction, which narrates the story of a group of young people “hooked” to various substances which very few will survive.

The wine is fired … appears in 1943 under occupation. But the public is caught in the wrong by this “thesis novel”: it will be the greatest literary failure of Robert Desnos. Today, many are rehabilitating this remarkable novel which we wish you, as we have been, to be taken by the story and destiny of these endearing characters.

The autobiographical part of the novel (Robert Desnos “tried” opium in the twenties and Barbara, in the story, can be easily identified with Yvonne George, The Mysterious of his poems which he was in love without being paid back and that he watched in his last moments) gives him a soundness and an authenticity that is not always found in writings “from the outside” on the addiction.

“Many books on the world of drugs have been written either by addicts or by ignorant people, besides filled with goodwill. But despite themselves, the first […] have always presented the black or white muse under seductive aspects. The latter have not tried to penetrate the drama that is played out in these men and women who are destined to a tragic destiny. Above all, we have never tried to put the drug issue on a realistic level. Why are there addicts? Are the addicts worth saving? Do the current laws allow this rescue? This book attempts, without the author’s firm belief, to prove that the social issue is responsible for the increased daily release of drugs. […] The drug addicts are like crazy. A century or more after Pinel our organization of asylums still falls short of medical theories. Nor will the police and the courts be able to stop the progress of poisons […]. As long as the social order continues to thwart the free development of the individual, men and women will seek in opium and heroin illusory compensation and the key to a slow suicide. “