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Paul Éluard's poem Liberté, parachuted by the Royal Air Force in April 1943, quickly became the symbol of the resistance to Nazi occupation. Eluard confirmed this sanctification and insisted on the importance of the word and the name 'Liberty' in the genesis of his poem. Yet, witnesses of how the poem came into being have suggested a different founding myth: the poem may have been written for Nush, a woman he loved, with the idea of freedom coming after the fact in response to a favorable reception by the public. We have retraced the discursive mechanisms of the legend in the first rough draft of the poem. Though our conclusions hardly permit us to separate the legend from the poet's initial intent (what Benveniste called the 'intended'), or to isolate the feminine component in the idea of freedom, the capacity of the text â€" even in the traces of its beginnings - to preserve the mystery of creativity is humbling.