In Association with Amazon.com

Choose another writer in this calendar:

by name:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

by birthday from the calendar.

Credits and feedback

TimeSearch
for Books and Writers
by Bamber Gascoigne


André Breton (1896-1966)

 

French poet, essayist, critic, and editor, chief promoter and one of the founders of Surrealist movement with Paul Eluard, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dali among others. André Breton's manifestoes of Surrealism are the most important theoretical statements of the movement.

SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern. (from 'Manifesto of Surrealism (1924)', in Manifestoes of Surrealism by André Breton, translated from the French by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1972, p. 26)

André Breton was born in Tinchebray (Orne), the son of Louis Justin Breton, a shopkeeper, and Marguerite-Marie-Eugénie Le Gouguès. His grandfather, Pierre Le Gouguès, was an "old Breton, taciturn but a good storyteller, of whom [Breton] kept a loving memory." (Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton by  Mark Polizzotti, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995, p. 8) Breton spent his childhood on the Brittany coast and started early on to write poems – he knew the poet Paul Valéry while still young. Breton studied medicine and later psychiatry. He never qualified but during World War I he served in the neurological ward in Nantes and made some attempts to use Freudian methods to psychoanalyze his patients, whose disturbed images he considered remarkable. In 1921 met Freud in Vienna, but the meeting was disappointment. He described Freud as a "little old man with nostyle, who receives clients in a shabby office worthy of the neighborhood." ('Psychoanalysis and Surrealism: André Breton and Sigmund Freud' by Aaron H. Esman, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Volume 59, Issue 1, February 2011)

Among Breton's friends was Jacques Vaché, a wounded, rebellious soldier, who declared art to be nonsense. Vaché died of an opium overdose in 1919 in a hotel room with another young man. His ideas, expressed in Lettres de guerre (1919), continued their life in the Dadaist movement.

Breton joined first in 1916 the Dadaist group, but after various quarrels continued his march forward and declared in his essay 'Lâchez tout' (1922): "Leave everything. Leave Dada. Leave your wife, leave your mistress. Leave your hopes and fears. Drop your kids in the middle of nowhere. Leave the substance for the shadow. Leave behind, if need be, your comfortable and promising future. Take to the highways." (The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theater and and Performance by James M. Harding, 2013, pp. 54-55) Breton turned then to Surrealism and cofounded with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault the review Littérature. Very important for his literary work were his wartime meetings with Apollinaire.

Manifeste du surréalisme came out in 1924. Influenced by psychological theories, Breton defined Surrealism as "Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought., Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern. (Manifestoes of Surrealism by André Breton, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, 2007, p. 26) In the Second manifeste du surréalisme Breton again the justified the existence of the movement:  "Everything suggest that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future, the communicable and the incommunicable, the heights and the depths cease to be perceived contradictorily. Now it is in vain that one would seek any other motive for surrealist activity than the hope of determining this point. . . ." (The History of Surrealism by Maurice Nadeau, 1978, p. 174) Basically Breton hoped that the publication of the book would mean a new departure for Surrealism.

Breton and his colleagues believed that the springs of personal freedom and social liberation lay in the unconscious mind. They found examples from the works of such painters as Hieronymus Bosch and James Ensor and from the writings of Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry – and from the revolutionary thinking of Karl Marx. The Surrealist movement was from the beginning in a constant state of change or conflict, but its major periodicals, La Révolution surréaliste (1924-30) and Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (1930-33), channeled cooperation and also spread ideas beyond France.

In the 1930s Breton published several collection of poems, including Mad Love (1937), a defence of an "irrational" emotion of lovers, which used the Cinderella myth. Humor was an essential part of the Surrealists' activities and Breton also edited in 1937 an anthology on l'humour noir, which featured such writers as Swift, Kafka, Rimbaud, Poe, Lewis Carroll, and Baudelaire. "When it comes to black humor, everything designates him as the true initiator," Breton wrote on Swift. "Swift's incontestable originality, the perfect unity of his production viewed from the angle of the very special and almost unprecedented emotion it elicts, the unsurpassable character, from this same viewpoint, of his many varied successes historically justify his being presented as the first black humorist." (Anthology of Black Humor by André Breton, translated from the French and with an Introduction by Mark Polizzotti, 1997, p. 3)

Generally speaking, Breton's prose has been more highly rated than his poetry. Among his masterworks from the 1920s is Nadja (1928), a portrait of Breton and a patient of Pierre Janet. The title refers to the name of this woman and the beginning of the Russian word for hope. Breton's first-person narrative is supplemented by forty-four photographs of places and objects which inspire the author or are connected to Nadja.

In Les Vases communicants (1932, Communicating Vessels) Breton explored the problems of everyday experience, dreams, and their relationship to intellect. "Anyone who has ever found himself in love has only been able to deplore the conspiracy of silence and of night which comes in the dream to surround the beloved being, even while the spirit of the sleeper is totally occupied with insignificant tasks", he wrote. "How can we retain from waking life what deserves to be retained, even if it is just so as not to be unworthy of what is best in this life itself?" (Communicating Vessels by André Breton, translated by Mary Ann Caws & Geoffrey T. Harris, 1990, p. 5)

From 1927 to 1935 Breton was a member of the French Communist Party. Although he broke with the party in disgust with Stalinism and the Moscow show trials, he remained committed to Marxism. In his critique of the Surrealists in 1933, Ilya Ehrenburg called them deviants, pederasts and onanists (among other things). As a result, Breton slapped Ehrenburg in the 1935 Paris Congress on Franco-Soviet cultural ties. In Nadja Breton said that subjectivity and objectivity commit a series of assaults on each other over a lifetime, with subjectivity coming off worst." (Dickens and Benjamin: Moments of Revelation, Fragments of Modernity by Gillian Piggott, 2016, p. 92)

While in Mexico on a lecture tour with Jacqueline Lamba, Breton socialized with Leon Trotsky, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo. With Leon Trotsky  he founded the Fédération de l'Art Revolutionnaire Independant, and produced a paper on the civil liberties of an artist. Manifesto: Towards A Free Revolutionary Art was first published in in French in July 1938; the Spanish, English, and Russian translations came out in the same year. Though Breton had different opinions with Trotsky about art, he followed the thoughts of the Russian revolutionary in the writing of the Manifesto and ignored his flirtantions with his wife. At a picnic into the Mexican countryside Breton stole some votive paintings from a local church. Kahlo was bored with Breton's endless theorizing.

When the Nazis occupied France, Breton fled to the United States with Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst. He held there a broadcasting job and arranged a surrealist exposition at Yale in 1942. On a boat ride to Martinique in 1941 Breton met the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and discussed with him artistic creation. Lévi-Strauss pointed out that Breton's definition of a work of art as the spontaneous activity of the mind opens the question of the aesthetic value of the work. Breton answered that he is "hardly interested in establishing a hierarchy of surrealist works (contrary to Aragon who once said: "If you write dreadful rubbish in an authentically surrealistic manner, it is still rubbish") – nor, as I have made clear, a hierarchy of romantic or symbolist works." (Look, Listen, Read by Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1997, p. 150)

During the war Breton wrote three poetic epics in which he dealt with the theme of exile. After WW II Breton traveled in the Southwest and the West Indies and returned to France in 1946. He soon became an important guru of a group of young Surrealists. In the 1940s and 1950s Breton wrote essays and collections of poems, among them Arcane 17 (1945), a mythological work set in Canada. Breton's last poetical work, Constellations (1959), paralleled a series of poems with Joan Miro's gouaches. André Breton died in Paris on September 28, 1966. His three-room studio at 42 Rue Fontaine became a research center, preserved by his third wife Elisa. Breton's daughter Aube from his marriage to Jacqueline Lamba decided to put his books, drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, and other items on the market in 2003 after the French government did not buy the personal collections.

Surrealism: A movement in visual arts and literature between World Wars I and II. Much used technique among Surrealists was automatic writing. The later influence of Surrealism can be seen in the works of such authors as Eugéne Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and other writers of the Theater of Absurd, the French writers of the nouveau roman of the 1950s and '60s. Breton's influence was wide and left impact on psychoanalysis and feminism through Jacques Lacan, on politics via Herbert Marcuse, on criticism through Roland Barthes - just to mention a few important names. - For further reading: André Breton by Julien Gracq (1948); André Breton by Claude Mauriac (1949); Philosophie de surréalisme by Ferdinand Alquié (1955); Le vrai André Breton by Philippe Soupault (1966); Surrealism and the Literary Imagination by Mary Ann Caws (1966); André Breton: Arbiter of Surrealism by Clifford Browder (1967); André Breton by J.H. Matthews (1967); André Breton: Magus of Surrealism by Anna Balakian (1971); Les critiques de notre temps et Breton by Marguerite Bonet (1974); André Breton and the Basic Concepts of Surrealism by Michel Carrouges (1974); André Breton: Naissance de l'aventure suréaliste by Marguerite Bonnet (1975); Breton: Nadja by Roger Cardinal (1987); Andre Breton: Sketch for an Early Portrait by J.H. Matthews (1986); Revolution of the Mind by Mark Polizzotti (1995); Andre Breton: The Power of Language by Ramona Fotiade (1999); Surreal Lives by Ruth Brandon (1999); André Breton: une histoire d'eau by Gérard Gasarian (2008); Surrealism and the Occult: Occultism and Western Esotericism in the Work and Movement of André Breton by Tessel M. Bauduin (2014); André Breton in Exile: The Poetics of "Occultation", 1941-1947 by Victoria Clousten (2017); Surrealism, edited by Natalya Lusty (2021); The Eye of the Poet: André Breton and the Visual Arts by Elza Adamowicz (2022)  Suom.: Runosuomennoksia valikoimassa Tulisen järjen aika (1962), Tuhat laulujen vuotta, toim. Aale Tynni (1974) ja André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo (2020).  See also: Guillaume Apollinaire

Selected works:

  • Mont de piété, 1919
    - Panttilainaamo: 'Ikä,' ym. (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • Les Champs magnétiques, 1920 (with Philippe Soupault)
    - The Magnetic Fields (translated by David Gascoyne, 1985) / The Magnetic Fields, 1920 (translated by Charlotte Mandell, 2020)
    - Magneettikentät (suom. Timo Kaitaro & Janne Salo, 2014)
  •  Clair de terre, 1923
    - Earthlight (translated by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow, 1993)
    - Maan kajo: 'Viisi unta,' ym. (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  •  Manifeste du surréalisme, 1924
    - Manifesto of Surrealism (translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, 1969)
    - Surrealismin manifesti (suom. Väinö Kirstinä, 1970)
  • Les Pas perdus, 1924
    - The Lost Steps (translated by Mark Polizzotti, 1996)
    - Liukenenva kala: 'Näihin aikoihin puisto...' ym. (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • Poisson soluble, 1924
  • Un Cadavre, 1924 (André Breton, Louis Aragon, et al.)
  • Légitime défense - Legitimate Defense, 1926
  • Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, 1926
    - Surrealism and Painting, 1926 (translated by Simon Watson Taylor, 1972)
  • Nadja, 1928 (rev. ed. 1963)
    - Nadja (translated by Richard Howard, 1960)
    - Nadja (suom. Janne Salo, 2007)
  • Le Trésor des jésuites, 1929 (with Louis Aragon)
  • L’Immaculée conception, 1930 (with Paul Éluard) - The Immaculate Conception (tr.  Jon Graham, 1990)
  • Second manifeste du Surréalisme, 1930
  • Ralentir travaux, 1930 (with René Char and Paul Éluard)
  • Le Revolver à cheveux blancs, 1932
    - Valkohiuksinen revolveri: 'Ruusunpunainen kuolema,' ym. (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • Les Vases communicants, 1932
    - The Communicating Vessels (translated by Mary Ann Caws & Geoffrey T. Harris, 1990)
  • Violette Nozières, 1933
    - 'Kaikki maailman verhot' (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • Qu'est-ce que le surréalisme?, 1934
    - What Is Surrealism? (tr. anon. 1936; David Gascoyne, 1974)
  • L'Air de l'eau, 1934
    - Veden ilmaa: 'Maailm suudelmassa,' ym. (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • Point du jour, 1934 (rev. ed. 1970)
    - Break of Day= Point du jour (translated by Mark Polizzotti & Mary Ann Caws, 1999)
  • Position politique du surréalisme, 1935
  • Notes sur la poésie, 1936 (with Paul Éluard)
  • L'Amour fou, 1937
    - Mad Love=L'amour fou (translated by Mary Ann Caws, 1987)
    - Hullu rakkaus (suom. Janne Salo, 2010)
  • Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme, 1938 (with Paul Éluard)
    - Surrealismin taskusanakirja (suom. Janne Salo, 2023)
  • Manifesto: Towards A Free Revolutionary Art, 1938 (with Leon Trotsky)
  • Fata morgana, 1940
    - Fata Morgana (tr. 1969)
    - 'Tänä aamuna v uoren tytär...' (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • Anthologie de l'humour noir, 1940 (ed.)
    - Anthology of Black Humor (translated by Mark Polizzotti, 1997)
  • Les états généraux, 1943
    - Säädyt: 'Sano mitä alla on...' (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • Arcane 17, 1945
    - Arcanum 17: With Apertures, Grafted to the End (translated by Zack Rogow, 1994)
  • Prolégomènes à un troisième manifeste du surréalisme ou non, 1946
  • Jeunes cerisiers garantis contre les lièvres, 1946 (bilingual edition, illustrated by Arshile Gorky)
    - Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares=Jeunes cerisiers garantis contre les lièvres (translated by Edouard Roditi, 1946)
  • Ode à Charles Fourier, 1947
    - Ode to Charles Fourier (translated by Kenneth White, 1969)
  • Yves Tanguy, 1947
  • Poèmes 1919-48, 1948
    - Runoja: 'Haitissa yöllä...' ym. (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • La Lampe dans l'horloge, 1948
  • Martinique, charmeuse de serpents, 1948
    - Martinique: Snake Charmer (translated by David W. Seaman, 2008)
  • Entretiens 1913-1952, 1952 (rev. ed. 1973)
  • La Clé des champs, 1953
    - Free Rein=Le clé des champs (translated by Michel Parmentier and Jacqueline d’Amboise, 1995)
  • Toyen: par André Breton, Jindrich Heisler, Benjamin Péret, 1953
  • Farouche à quatre feuilles, 1954 (with Lise Deharme, Julien Gracq, Jean Tardieu)
  • Adieu ne plaise, 1954
  • L’Art magique, 1957
  • Constellations, 1959
    - Konstellaatioita: 'Fosforinhohtisten etanavanojen opastamia ihmishahmoja yössä,' ym. (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • Le La, 1961
    - Virityssävel: 'Tuon "ajattelun (vai jonkin muun?) sanelun"... (suomennoksia teoksessa André Breton: Unen hiekkarannoilla: Dans le sables du rêve. Valitut runot. Poèmes choisis, koonnut, suomentanut & viittein varustanut Janne Salo, 2020
  • Manifestes du surréalisme, 1962 (contents: Preface à la réimpression du Manifeste; Manifeste du surréalisme; Poisson soluble; Avertissement pour la réédition du seconde Manifeste; Second Manifeste du surréalisme; Lettres aux voyantes; Position politique du surréalisme: extraits; Prolégomènes à un troisième Manifeste du surréalisme ou non; Du surréalisme en ses œuvres vives)
    - Manifestoes of Surrealism (translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, 1969)
  • Selected Poems, 1969 (translated by Kenneth White)
  • Perspective cavalière, 1970 (ed. Marguerite Bonnet)
  • What Is Surrealism?, 1978 (ed. Franklin Rosemont)
  • Poems of André Breton, 1982 (translated by Jean-Pierre Cauvin, Mary Ann Caws)
  • Lettres à Aube: 1938-1966, 2009 (ed. Jean-Michel Goutier)
  • My Heart Through Which Her Heart Has Passed: Poems of Love and Desperation, 1926-1931(third rev. edition; translated and prefaced by Mark Polizzotti, 2016)
  • Lettres à Simone Kahn: 1920-1960 / André Breton, 2016 (présentées et éditées par Jean-Michel Goutier)
  • Lettres à Jacques Doucet: 1920-1926 / André Breton, 2016 (présentées et éditées par Étienne-Alain Hubert)
  • Correspondance: 1920-1959 / André Breton, Benjamin Péret, 2017  (présentée et éditée par Gérard Roche)
  • Correspondance: 1919-1938 / André Breton, Paul Éluard, 2019 (présentée et éditée par Étienne-Alain Hubert)
  • Potlatch André Breton, ou, La cérémonie du don, 2020 (envois réunis et commentés par Henri Béhar)
  • The Magnetic Fields / André Breton and Philippe Soupault, 2020 (New York Review Books; translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell; originally published in 1920)
  • Correspondance, 1918-1962 / André Breton, Jean Paulhan, 2021 (présentée et éditée par Clarisse Barthélemy)


In Association with Amazon.com


Some rights reserved Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen. 2008-2024.


Creative Commons License
Authors' Calendar jonka tekijä on Petri Liukkonen on lisensoitu Creative Commons Nimeä-Epäkaupallinen-Ei muutettuja teoksia 1.0 Suomi (Finland) lisenssillä.
May be used for non-commercial purposes. The author must be mentioned. The text may not be altered in any way (e.g. by translation). Click on the logo above for information.