Profession: poet

Éluard encouraged Char to move to Paris; Breton as well as Éluard collaborated with him. Char wrote to Péret explaining why he was breaking with surrealism. He was one of Jabès’ earliest literary friends; Miró illustrated his work; Blanchot was a friend, and wrote that meeting him was pivotal in his life. He formed an unlikely friendship with Heidegger, the philosopher writing poetry influenced by the resistance hero. Both Camus and Picasso were close friends – only the fact there was no room for him saved him from being in the car-crash that killed Camus.

Andreas-Salomé was a lover and lifelong friend: she taught him Russian, and accompanied him to Moscow. He met Pasternak as a child, whose father introduced him to Tolstoy. He knew Modersohn-Becker (who painted his portrait) while living in an artists’ colony in Germany: he was deeply affected when she died following childbirth. In Paris he became Rodin’s secretary, wrote a book on him, and was a regular at Mallarmé’s salon. Tsvetaeva and Pasternak engaged in a passionate triangular literary correspondence with him. Moving in with their mother, he was an influential mentor to Klossowski and Balthus.

Reverdy met many of his Parisian artist/writer friends while living at the rickety Bateau Lavoir: Jacob, Picasso, Gris, Apollinaire were all residents; he also met Matisse, Léger and others through it. Gris was close, and Reverdy’s favourite illustrator for his own work (Picasso and Laurens also did illustrations for him). Léger, Jacob, Laurens and Gargallo were lasting friends, Gargallo visiting him frequently later in life at his abbey retreat. Aragon said that for Éluard, Soupault, Breton and himself, Reverdy was the poet they most looked up to. He himself told Soupault he preferred the company of artists – they lied less.

Southey was a Lakeland neighbour, though Shelley later took against him. Godwin refused to speak with him after he eloped with his (and Mary Wollstonecraft’s) daughter Mary, though they had been friends with shared libertarian ideals. Leigh Hunt introduced Keats to Shelley; Hazlitt was another member of the same London literary circle, and Peacock a friend and neighbour of Shelley in Marlow. Byron and he became close influences on each other when they lived as neighbours on Lake Geneva. When Keats died, Shelley wrote the elegy ‘Adonais’, while he himself drowned in Italy, returning from a visit to Leigh Hunt.

Embirikos was a lifelong friend; they travelled to the USSR together. Living and studying in Paris after WWII, Elytis got to know Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti, Breton, Éluard (his great literary influence), Michaux, Reverdy, Tzara, Camus and Chagall. His friend Theodorakis, deeply moved by his most renowned poem, set it to music. Hadjidakis, another close friend, composed settings for other work of his (as also did his close friend Mercouri’s grandfather).