The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

DORA MAAR

I retina you in my breath
you iris you

I write you
you think me
—mary ann caws

Dora Maar

(Henriette Theodora Markovitch) 1907–1997

tours, france

A

photographer and painter, Maar spent her childhood in Argentina

before returning to her native France. Settling in Paris, she worked as a

set photographer for the filmmaker Jean Renoir and became involved

with the Surrealist movement. She was a companion to Georges Bataille. It was

on the terrace of Les Deux Magots that Picasso asked Paul Éluard to introduce

Maar to him. The two entered into a relationship that lasted from 1936 to 1942,

through both the Spanish Civil War and World War II, dark years for Picasso.

During this time he painted his famous Guernica, which Maar photographed in

all its stages. She was popularly known as Picasso’s ‘‘Weeping Woman.’’ After

their separation she lived the life of a recluse, in Paris and Provence. ‘‘After

Picasso,’’ she once explained, ‘‘only God.’’ She continued to paint and write.

If the Touching Memory

If the touching memory of broken glass in his eye does not sound the hour
from the bell perfuming the blue if tired of loving the sighing dress surrounding
him with sun that could from one moment to the next burst apart in his hand
pulls in its claws and sleeps in the shadow sketching the praying mantis nibbling
on a host but if the curve stirred up by the song hung from the end of the snail
should wrap itself around biting the heart charming it and coloring it and the