Paul Smith

The reference by Philippe de Chérisey to "Blue Apples" in the Large "Parchment" was inspired by the poem The Earth is blue... by the surrealist, Paul Éluard (real name, Eugène Émile Paul Grindel); being part of a collection of poems entitled "L'amour la poésie" (1929).

Paul Éluard of course did not know anything about the Priory of Sion and Rennes-le-Château, Philippe de Chérisey was merely inspired by his ideas which he transposed over his own later creations, in the same way that Plantard based his mythologies on the ideas of Paul Le Cour and the Abbe Th. Moreaux.

French website devoted to Paul Éluard

International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in London, 1936. Standing from left to right: Rupert Lee, Ruthven Todd, Salvador Dali, Paul Éluard, Roland Penrose, Herbert Read, E.L.T. Mesens, George Reavey and Hugh Sykes Williams. Sitting from left to right: Diana Brinton Lee, Nusch Eluard, Eileen Agar and Sheila Legge.

The surrealist group in Paris, circa 1930. From left to right: Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, Andre Breton, Hans Arp, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Rene Crevel, Man Ray.

La Constellation surrealiste

Éluard Paul (Eugène Grindel dit)

Poète français né à Saint-Denis en 1895, mort à Charenton-le -Pont en 1952.
Fils de bourgeois aisés, Paul Eluard (qui prit pour écrire le nom de jeune fille de sa mère) poursuivit normalement ses études jusqu’ en 1911, année où, frappé de tuberculose, il entre dans un sanatorium en Suisse. Il y passe deux ans, y rencontre Hélène, sa future épouse; la maladie ne l’empêchera pas de s’engager en 1914.
Après la guerre, il se mêle aux activités dadaïstes, rencontre Breton et Aragon. En 1921, il figure parmi les premiers surréalistes. Cependant, jusqu’en 1924, marié, père de famille, il exerce la métier d’agent immobilier. En 1924 il s’adonne vraiment à la littérature. En 1926 paraît Capitale de la douleur, en 1929, l’Amour, la poésie en 1930, l’Immaculée Conception, texte clé du surréalisme écrit en collaboration avec Breton. En 1930, il adhère au parti communiste, dont il sera exclu en 1933; sa femme Hélène le quitte pour Salvador Dali (qui la nomme Gala). En 1938, il rompt avec le surréalisme.
Bien qu’il ait été un surréaliste de la première heure, il ne semble pas qu’ Eluard ait pratiqué l’écriture automatique. Recherche de l’équilibre, de l’objectivité, quête d’une lucidité qu’il chante et demande à tous les hommes sont les traits dominants de son oeuvre. Ses premiers poèmes d’amour, notamment l’ Amour, la poésie, sont pourtant marqués par des éclats sauvages qui semblent échapper à son habituelle mesure. Mais son appartenance profonde à la poésie traditionnelle, sensible bien avant sa rupture avec Breton, transparaît nettement dans les poèmes patriotiques comme Au rendez-vous allemand (1944), pour s’affirmer avec les Poèmes politiques (1948). L’engagement a pris le pas sur le travail poétique, subordonné à la propagande ou à un idéal de bonheur et de liberté universels. Cette démarche a été regardée par les uns comme une conquête, par les autres (notamment par les surréalistes) comme une démission.

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André Breton and surrealism as pure psychic automatism (The Surrealist Manifesto, 1924).



The relevant part from Stone and Paper relating to Paul Éluard and Blue Apples in the Large "Parchment":

A poem by the surrealist poet Paul Éluard refers to “la terre bleue comme une orange” (“the world is blue like an orange”). In this poem, two different reveries, one elementary and one more learned and recondite, jostle for supremacy. An orange-colored world passes through the firmament tinged with complementary blue: this is the elementary reverie. The more learned of the reveries brings to mind oranges as “golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides”, as mentioned in the legend of Hercules, as well as the great voyage of Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece.

Both reveries agree as to their conclusion: that the treasure is to be found in Eldorado, in other words the Far West where the Hesperides are the sign of the setting sun, where the Sun is cleansed of all its impurities and of all its treasures, to be reborn in the virgin East.

Éluard's theorem of “Orange-Bleue” (Orange-Blue) can be developed into “Pomme-Or-Bleue” (“Apple-Gold-Blue”) to indicate the treasure of Rennes-le-Château by inserting the word “gold” between a fruit and a color.

There's nothing further to be discovered along these lines except for an encouragement to continue the reverie on “Orange-Blue”, which can also be written “Or-Ange-Bleu” (“Gold-Angel-Blue”).

The simplest way is usually the best: in this case this consists in seeing the film “Blue Angel” (“Ange Bleue”) by Joseph Sternberg, in which Marlene Dietrich, in the role of the singer Lola-Lola, singer, proves the downfall of Professor Rat-Unrat, an academic who has become a buffoon.

We have only to look behind the character of Marlene/Lola-Lola to find the figure of Mary Magdalene the Sinner and to find oneself in the church of Rennes-le-Château and note that it is filled with angels. As for the director Joseph Sternberg (whose name means “starry mountain”) it is worth looking at what he had to say about mirrors: “I do not like the expanses of water in my film “Ana-ta-han” because water is the only real thing in my film”, or again, “I want the public to understand aware that the mistakes that they see on the screen are their own mistakes and to distinguish between two approaches, one based on understanding, and the other on emotion”.

There are nineteen angels in the church of St. Mary Magdalene: two on each plinth, four above the stoup, four supporting St. Anthony of Padua and three supporting the watchers of the sanctuary. It is this last group that is important here: three small angels made of gilded metal framing the red lamp that indicates to the faithful that the church is in use.

In the presence of Mary Magdalene the Sinner it is only false prudery that could prevent a person from pointing out that a red lamp is the traditional sign for brothels as much as of religious sanctuaries, and that houses of pleasure, like houses of faith, can only be kept going by the offerings of their respective devotees.

Here you need to put yourself in the position of the curé who, to replenish the lamp, presses a button to trigger a cascade of gilded angels from a blue, star-spangled ceiling.

When the three gilded angels, the bearers of the red lamp, ascend one more to the blue firmament, realizing in doing so the red, yellow and blue triad of fundamental colors, the development of Éluard's theorem is complete.