Darius Milhaud nourished his work with poetry. A hitherto unpublished lecture made it possible to characterize how the composer integrated different poetic worlds. By comparing Milhaud's artistic approach with various others, the study deals first with his encounters with Romanticism particularly with Maurice de Guérin and his world as well as with the poetesses of the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lucile de Chateaubriand, Eugénie de Guérin and Christina Rossetti. Without abandoning this source of inspiration the encounter of three major writers disrupted the aesthetic conception of the musician and indeed Gide, Jammes and Claudel contributed to renewing his tools of expression and to drastically changing the relationships between the world of sounds and the world of words. Milhaud justifies the diversity of his approaches by claiming the right for his creation to take "parallel roads". One can appreciate here the importance of his reading Rimbaud's and Mallarmé's poetry. His friendship with both Léo Latil and Armand Lunel reveals the depths of a sensitivity that characterizes young men that were brought up before the first World War. The writings of his two schoolfellows, deeply rooted in their Provençal and "Judeocontadist" environment provide him with subject matter to be developed. The wound caused by Léo Latil's death on the battlefield leaves a deep mark which is sometimes simply suggested. Furthermore the composer's humanism causes his meeting with Jean Cassou after the second World War. This collaboration is a continuation of Milhaud's commitment during the period between the two wars. Finally his lasting friendship with Jean Cocteau enables one to appreciate the inventiveness of a composer that was never satisfied with conventional solutions and kept experimenting.
