On top of being a great poet, he was an active member of the French Resistance, and thus a principled man. This ultimately resulted in his arrest, which leads to another big reason I admire him: instead of flee and risk having his wife arrested and tortured, he sacrificed himself for her safety.

He died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, and, at his request, was buried with a flower brought to him in his last moments—a symbol of beauty within ugliness.

His last words were purportedly a completion of one of his most famous poems (and my favourite of all time) “j’ai tant reve de toi,” part of a cycle known as “a la mysterieuse,” which can be found in the collection “corps et biens.”