Robert Desnos was born in Paris on 4 July 1900, the son of a licensed dealer in game and poultry at the Halles market.

The first poems by Desnos to appear in print were published in 1917 in La Tribune des Jeunes (Platform for Youth) and in 1919 in the avant-garde review Le Trait d'union (Hyphen), and also the same year in the Dadaist magazine Littérature.

In 1922 he published his first book, a collection of surrealistic aphorisms, with the title Rrose Sélavy (the name adopted as an "alternative persona" by the avant-garde French artist Marcel Duchamp; a pun on "Eros, c'est la vie").

While working as a literary columnist for Paris-Soir, Desnos was an active member of the Surrealist group and developed a particular talent for automatic writing.

During that time, he became friends with Picasso, Hemingway, Artaud and John Dos Passos; published many critical reviews on jazz and cinema; and became increasingly involved in politics.

During World War II, Desnos was an active member of the French Résistance network Réseau AGIR,[4] under the direction of Michel Hollard, often publishing under pseudonyms.

For Réseau Agir, Desnos provided information collected during his job at the journal Aujourd'hui and made false identity papers,[4] and was arrested by the Gestapo on 22 February 1944.

[5][6][7][8] Desnos died in Malá pevnost, which was an inner part of Terezín used only for political prisoners, from typhoid, a month after the camp's liberation.

There is a moving anecdote about Desnos's last days after the liberation while being tended to by a young Czech medical student, Josef Stuna, who recognised him thanks to reading Breton's Nadja.

[9] Susan Griffin relates a story, previously recounted slightly differently in an article by her that appears in González Yuen,[10] that exemplifies Desnos' surrealist mindset; his capacity to envisage solutions that defy conventional logic:[11] Even in the grimmest of circumstances, a shift in perspective can create startling change.

Along with many others who crowd the bed of a large truck, she tells me, Robert Desnos is being taken away from the barracks of the concentration camp where he has been held prisoner.

Desnos has saved his own life and the lives of others by using his imagination.A so-called "Last Poem" (Dernier poème) has been published numerous times; it was even set to music by Francis Poulenc in 1956.

It was thanks to a Czech translator Adolf Kroupa and his two well-founded articles in Les Lettres Françaises (June 1960, August 1970) that this false belief in the poem started to cease to exist.

There is a moving anecdote about Desnos's last days after the liberation while being tended to by Josef Stuna, a young Czech medical student who recognised him thanks to reading Breton's novel, Nadja.

Desnos' poetry has been set to music by a number of composers, including Witold Lutosławski with Les Espaces du sommeil (1975) and Chantefleurs et Chantefables (1991), Francis Poulenc (Dernier poème, 1956) and Henri Dutilleux with Le Temps l'Horloge (2007).

The artist met and became friends with Desnos, perhaps the most beloved and influential surrealist writer, in 1925, and before long, they made plans to collaborate on a livre d'artist.

A reading of "Relation d'un Rêve" (Description of a Dream) recorded by Desnos for radio broadcast in 1938 can be heard on the audiobook CD Surrealism Reviewed, issued in 2002.