Her love for Paul gave her an unshakable faith that they would be reunited again. However, Paul’s father, who had also been mobilised, remained adamant that she could not come to Paris. Her initial hostility towards Gala slowly faded away, and she started calling her “the little Russian”. Paul’s mother came to visit him and he talked for hours about his beloved, opening his heart to her and slowly rallying her to his cause. He suffered from migraine, bronchitis, cerebral anaemia and chronic appendicitis and spent most of 1915 under treatment in a military hospital not far from home. He passed his physical and was assigned to the auxiliary services because of his poor health. In April 1914, Paul Éluard and Gala were both declared healthy again and sent home, to Paris and Moscow respectively. They became friends during their hospitalization in the sanatorium, and kept in touch by mail after returning to their respective countries. In Clavadel, Éluard also met the Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira.
He was then particularly inspired by Walt Whitman. She became his muse and the critic, always honest, and told him which images she preferred, which verses she disliked. She listened and was involved in the creation of his verses. She believed in him and gave him the confidence and encouragement and provided him with the sense of security he needed to write. She wrote to him that “you will become a great poet”. He confided in her of his dream of becoming a poet, of his admiration for “poets dead of hunger, sizzling dreams” and of his parents’ disapproval. There he met a young Russian girl of his age, Helena Diakonova, whom he nicknamed Gala. At the age of 16, he contracted tuberculosis, interrupted his studies, and remained hospitalized until April 1914 in the Clavadel sanatorium near Davos. Éluard attended the local school in Aulnay-sous-Bois before obtaining a scholarship to attend the Ecole Superieure de Colbert. Around 1908, the family moved to Paris, rue Louis Blanc. His father was an accountant when Paul was born but soon opened a real estate agency. Éluard was born in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, the son of Eugène Clément Grindel and wife Jeanne-Marie Cousin.
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