André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism.

1896-02-19 Tinchebray, França
1966-09-28 Paris, França
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Awards and Movements

Surrealism

Some Poems

The Spectral Attitudes

The Spectral Attitudes

I attach no importance to life
I pin not the least of life's butterflies to importance
I do not matter to life
But the branches of salt the white branches
All the shadow bubbles
And the sea-anemones
Come down and breathe within my thoughts
They come from tears that are not mine
From steps I do not take that are steps twice
And of which the sand remembers the flood-tide
The bars are in the cage
And the birds come down from far above to sing before these bars
A subterranean passage unites all perfumes
A woman pledged herself there one day
This woman became so bright that I could no longer see her
With these eyes which have seen my own self burning
I was then already as old as I am now
And I watched over myself and my thoughts like a night watchman in an immense
factory Keeping watch alone
The circus always enchants the same tramlines
The plaster figures have lost nothing of their expression
They who bit the smile's fig
I know of a drapery in a forgotten town
If it pleased me to appear to you wrapped in this drapery
You would think that your end was approaching
Like mine
At last the fountains would understand that you must not say Fountain
The wolves are clothed in mirrors of snow
I have a boat detached from all climates
I am dragged along by an ice-pack with teeth of flame
I cut and cleave the wood of this tree that will always be green
A musician is caught up in the strings of his instrument
The skull and crossbones of the time of any childhood story
Goes on board a ship that is as yet its own ghost only
Perhaps there is a hilt to this sword
But already there is a duel in this hilt
During the duel the combatants are unarmed
Death is the least offence
The future never comes

The curtains that have never been raised
Float to the windows of houses that are to be built
The beds made of lilies
Slide beneath the lamps of dew
There will come an evening
The nuggets of light become still underneath the blue moss
The hands that tie and untie the knots of love and of air
Keep all their transparency for those who have eyes to see
They see the palms of hands
The crowns in eyes
But the brazier of crown and palms
Can scarcely be lit in the deepest part of the forest


There where the stags bend their heads to examine the years
Nothing more than a feeble beating is heard
From which sound a thousand louder or softer sounds proceed
And the beating goes on and on
There are dresses that vibrate
And their vibration is in unison with the beating
When I wish to see the faces of those that wear them
A great fog rises from the ground
At the bottom of the steeples behind the most elegant reservoirs of life and of wealth
In the gorges which hide themselves between two mountains
On the sea at the hour when the sun cools down
Those who make signs to me are separated by stars
And yet the carriage overturned at full speed
Carries as far as my last hesitation
That awaits me down there in the town where the statues of bronze
and of stone have changed places with statues of wax Banyans banyans.

Always for the First Time

Always for the First Time

Always for the first time
Hardly do I know you by sight
You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window
A wholly imaginary house
It is there that from one second to the next
In the inviolate darkness
I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring
The one and only rift
In the facade and in my heart
The closer I come to you
In reality
The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room
Where you appear alone before me
At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness
The elusive angle of a curtain
It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse
With the diagonal slant of its girls picking
Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare
Before them a T-square of dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep
You as though you could be
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you
You pretend not to know I am watching you
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know
You idleness brings tears to my eyes
A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures
It's a honeydew hunt
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the
forest
There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy
There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time
Andre Breton (19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) Born to a family of modest means in Tinchebray (Orne) in Normandy, he studied medicine and psychiatry. During World War I he worked in a neurological ward in Nantes, where he met the devotee of Alfred Jarry, Jacques Vaché, whose anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition influenced Breton considerably. Vaché committed suicide at age 24, and his war-time letters to Breton and others were published in a volume entitled Lettres de guerre (1919), for which Breton wrote four introductory essays. Breton married his first wife, Simone Kahn, on 15 September 1921. The couple relocated to rue Fontaine # 42 in Paris on 1 January 1922. The apartment on rue Fontaine became home to Breton's collection of more than 5,300 items: modern paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, books, art catalogs, journals, manuscripts, and works of popular and Oceanic art. From Dada to Surrealism In 1919 Breton initiated the review Littérature with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault. He also associated with Dadaist Tristan Tzara. In 1924 he was instrumental in the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research. In a publication The Magnetic Fields (Les Champs Magnétiques), a collaboration with Soupault, he implemented the principle of automatic writing. He published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, and was editor of the magazine La Révolution surréaliste from 1924. A group of writers becameassociated with him: Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, René Crevel, Michel Leiris, Benjamin Péret, Antonin Artaud, and Robert Desnos. Anxious to combine the themes of personal transformation found in the works of Arthur Rimbaud with the politics of Karl Marx, Breton joined the French Communist Party in 1927, from which he was expelled in 1933. During this time, he survived mostly by the sale of paintings from his art gallery. In 1935, there was a conflict between Breton and Ilya Ehrenburg during the first "International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture" which opened in Paris in June. Breton had been insulted by Ehrenburg—along with all fellow surrealists—in a pamphlet which said, among other things, that surrealists were "pederasts". Breton slapped Ehrenburg several times on the street, which resulted in surrealists being expelled from the Congress. Crevel, who according to Salvador Dalí, was "the only serious communist among surrealists" was isolated from Breton and other surrealists, who were unhappy with Crevel because of his homosexuality and annoyed with communists in general. In 1938, Breton accepted a cultural commission from the French government to travel to Mexico. After a conference at the National Autonomous University of Mexico about surrealism, Breton stated after getting lost in Mexico City (as no one was waiting for him at the airport) "I don't know why I came here. Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world". However, visiting Mexico provided the opportunity to meet Leon Trotsky. Breton and other surrealists traveled via a long boat ride from Patzcuaro to the town of Erongaricuaro. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were among the visitors to the hidden community of intellectuals and artists. Together, Breton and Trotsky wrote a manifesto Pour un art révolutionnaire indépendent (published under the names of Breton and Diego Rivera) calling for "complete freedom of art", which was becoming increasingly difficult with the world situation of the time. 1940s Breton was again in the medical corps of the French Army at the start of World War II. The Vichy government banned his writings as "the very negation of the national revolution" and Breton escaped, with the help of the American Varian Fry and Harry Bingham, to the United States and the Caribbean during 1941. Breton got to know Martinican writer Aimé Césaire, and later composed the introduction to the 1947 edition of Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. During his exile in New York City he met Elisa, the Chilean woman who would become his third wife. In 1944, he and Elisa traveled to the Gaspé Peninsula in Québec, Canada, where he wrote Arcane 17, a book which expresses his fears of World War II, describes the marvels of the Rocher Percé and the extreme northeastern part of North America, and celebrates his new romance with Elisa. Later life Breton returned to Paris in 1946, where he opposed French colonialism (for example as a signatory of the Manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian war) and continued, until his death, to foster a second group of surrealists in the form of expositions or reviews (La Brèche, 1961–1965). In 1959, he organized an exhibit in Paris. By the end of World War II André Breton decided to embrace anarchism explicitly. In 1952 Breton wrote "It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself." "Breton was consistent in his support for the francophone Anarchist Federation and he continued to offer his solidarity after the Platformists around Fontenis transformed the FA into the Federation Communiste Libertaire. He was one of the few intellectuals who continued to offer his support to the FCL during the Algerian war when the FCL suffered severe repression and was forced underground. He sheltered Fontenis whilst he was in hiding. He refused to take sides on the splits in the French anarchist movement and both he and Peret expressed solidarity as well with the new FA set up by the synthesist anarchists and worked in the Antifascist Committees of the 60s alongside the FA." André Breton died in 1966 at 70 and was buried in the Cimetière des Batignolles in Paris Eserleri: Mont de piété (1919) S'il Vous Plaît (1920 – If You Please) Les Champs magnétiques (1920 – The Magnetic Fields) Manifeste du surréalisme (1924 – The Surrealist Manifesto) Les Pas perdus (Breton) (1924 – The Lost Steps) Poisson soluble (1924 – Soluble Fish) Un Cadavre (1924 -- A Corpse) Légitime Défense (1926 – Legitimate Defense) Le Surréalisme et la peinture (1926 – Surrealism and Painting) Nadja (1928 – Nadja) L'Immaculée Conception (1930 – The Immaculate Conception) Deuxième Manifeste du surréalisme (1930 – The Second Manifesto of Surrealism) Ralentir travaux (1930 – Slow Down Works) L'Union libre (1931) La Revolver à cheveux blancs (1932 – The Revolver Has White Hair) Les Vases communicants (1932 – The Communicating Vessels) Le Message automatique (1933 – The Automatic Message) Qu'est-ce que le surréalisme (1934 – What Is Surrealism) L'Air de l'eau (1934 – Looks Like Water) Point du Jour (1934 – Break of Day) Position politique du surréalisme (1935 – The Political Position of Surrealism) Notes sur la poésie (1936 -with Paul Éluard – Notes on Poetry) L'Amour fou (1937 – Mad Love) Point du jour (1937) Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme (1938 --with Paul Éluard – Abridged) Dictionary of Surrealism Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art (1938 -with Leon Trotsky) Fata Morgana (1940) Anthologie de l'humour noir (1940 – Anthology of Black Humor) Arcane 17 (1945 – Arcane 17) Jeunes Cerisiers garantis contre les lièvres (1946 – Young Cherry Trees Secured against Hares) Ode à Charles Fourier (1947 – Ode to Charles Fourier) Yves Tanguy (1947) Poèmes 1919–48 (1948) La Lampe dans l'horloge (1948 – The Lamp in the Clock) Martinique, charmeuse de serpents (1948) Entretiens, (1952 – Discussions) La Clé des champs (1953 – The Key of the Fields) Farouche à quatre feuilles (1954 with Lise Deharme, Julien Gracq, Jean Tardieu – Wild to Four Leaves) Les Manifestes du surréalisme (1955 – Manifestoes of Surrealism) L'Art magique (1957 – The Magic Art) Constellations (1958) Le la (1961) Le Surréalisme et la Peinture (1965) Selected Poems (1969) Perspective cavalière (1970) What is Surrealism? Selected Poems (1978) Poems of André Breton (1982)
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Surrealism in 5 Minutes: Idea Behind the Art Movement
Surrealist Manifesto - Andre Breton - 1924 - Part 1 #surrealism #surrealist #surrealart #avantgarde
Dada and Surrealism: Europe After the Rain documentary (1978)
En 1961, André Breton raconte et explique le mouvement surréaliste
How to unlock the creative power of unconsciousness – by André Breton
ANDRÉ BRETON UN JOUR A LA FOIS
Five Ways To Kill A Man | Surreal Poem | André Breton - Self Love
Nadja - Andre Breton BOOK REVIEW
André BRETON – Documentaire légendaire : Passage Breton (1970)
André Breton 1960
3ML: Surrealism in Literature & Surrealist Writing | 3 Minute Literature
Lit chat - Nadja by André Breton - book 'review'
Andre Breton: The Founder of Surrealism
Andrè Breton e i surrealisti
Andre Breton & Paul Eluard - Surrealist Poem
André Breton - Entretiens (1952)
Entretien avec André Breton (1960)
Surrealism's Occult Infusion and the Magic of Imagination: André Breton's Surrealism!
Manifesto of Surrealism by Andre Breton, 1924, a reading by Lynn Cole
Portrait André Breton (1896-1966) [DE] - 1991
Who is Andre Breton? Andre Breton biography and timeline
Surrealist Manifesto - Andre Breton (1924) Audiobook #surrealism #avantgarde #surrealist #manifesto
André Breton
« Nadja », André Breton, Folio ! 📚
Arte André Breton L'or du Temps Partie 1 Breton par Breton
Dada bir zihin durumudur. | Andre Breton
Entrevista a André Breton, 1961 (Subtítulos en español)
Breton über Breton (Surrealismus, der Dichter André Breton)
Une Vie, une œuvre : André Breton (1896-1966), la recherche du point sublime
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#Comentando: Nadja (André Breton)
Always For The First Time by Andre Breton (Read by A Poetry Channel)
Plot summary, “Nadja” by Andre Breton in 4 Minutes - Book Review
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O MANIFESTO SURREALISTA DE ANDRÉ BRETON
Amour : Nadja d'André Breton.
Vida y obra de André Bretón
Nadja d'André Breton
Andre Bretons 4,100-piece collection has been put up for auction
André Breton, o pensador que impulsionou o Movimento Surrealista
Nadja, André Breton// L'invitée : Saphia Richou.
J. Gracq et A.-P. de Mandiargues à propos de André Breton
Les Cavaliers du ciel - André Breton
André Breton! (Official Video)
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André Breton - Tu es mon soleil - album: 20 country de chez-nous
Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art by Andre Breton and Leon Trotsky
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