In 1921, the French poet Paul Éluard and his Russian wife Gaya travelled to Cologne where they met the artist Max Ernst, one of the pioneers of the city’s flourishing Dada movement. This encounter marked the start of a tumultuous ménage à trois, which saw Ernst leave his wife and child in Germany to set up shop with the couple at their home in the Paris suburbs. The trio then travelled to Southeast Asia on a journey that provided inspiration for several of Ernst’s subsequent paintings, and prompted Éluard’s 1924 collection of poems, Mourir de ne pas mourir (Dying of Not Dying), whose title hints at the author’s fast-evolving feelings about the love triangle…

Read the full article in The Public Domain Review, available online here.