Louis Aragon

Born on October 3, 1897 Louis Andrieux (Louis Aragon) is a poet, publisher, author and editor and a participant in the Communist Party. Aragon was a founding member of surrealism in 1925 along with Andre Breton. He joined the Communist Party in January 1927 and in 1933 he wrote for the party's newspaper L'Humanite. He wrote political poems and was critical of the USSR after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956.
Aragon married Elsa Triolet in 1939 and worked in the left-wing French media before going underground for the rest of the Nazi occupation of France. In 1939 Aragon mobilized for war and won the military medal for bravery. He was one of many poets who joined the Resistance through literary activation and as an organizer of Resistance acts.
He worked for Les Editions de Minuit during the war and he and his wife set up the National Front of Writers in the Southern Zone. He wrote about the Resistance in post war poems. After the war he was a leading Communist intellectual and assumed political responsibilities.
In addition to writing Aragon was CEO of Editeurs francais reunis pulishing house and heir to two other publishing houses. The EFT published launched a poetic collection Petite sirene. Aragon ended his L'Humanite work and returned to his surrealist roots. He published Henri Matisse, Roman and Les Adieux during the last ten years of his life. He died on December 24, 1982 and many of his poems have been set to music.