André Breton

André Breton, c1929.
Born	February 19, 1896(1896-02-19) Tinchebray, France
Died	September 28, 1966(1966-09-28) (aged 70) Paris, France

André Breton (1896–1966) was a French writer and poet. He is best known as the founder of Surrealism, with Paul Éluard, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.

In 1924 he published his Manifeste du surréalisme, defining surrealism as "SURREALISM, noun, masc., Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations." [1].

Works

(in French unless noted otherwise)

Essays

• Manifeste du surréalisme. Poisson soluble, Paris: Éditions du Sagittaire, Oct 1924, 190 pp. [2]
  • "Manifesto of Surrealism (1924)" & "Soluble Fish (1924)", in Breton Manifestoes of Surrealism, 1969, pp 1-47 & 49-109. (English)

• "Le Surréalisme et la peinture", 4 parts in La Révolution surréaliste: Part 1, No. 4, pp 26-30, Jul 1925; Part 2, No. 6, pp 30-32, Mar 1926; Part 3, No. 7, pp 3-6, Jun 1926; Part 4, No. 9-10, pp 36-43, Oct 1927; repr. as Breton, Le surréalisme et la peinture, Paris: NRF, 1928, 72+77 pp; new ed., Paris: Gallimard, 1965, 427 pp.
  • "Surrealism and Painting", trans. David Gascoyne, in Breton, What is Surrealism?, 1936, pp 9-24. Excerpt. (English)
  • Surrealism and Painting, trans. Simon Watson Taylor, New York: Harper & Row, 1965, 16+416 pp. (English)
  • Il surrealismo e la pittura, trans. Ettore Capriolo, Firenze: Marchi, 1966, 427 pp. (Italian)

• "Lettre aux voyantes", 1929.

• "Second manifeste du surréalisme", La Révolution surréaliste, ed. Breton, Paris, 15 Dec 1929, pp 1-17.
  • "Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1930)", Breton Manifestoes of Surrealism, 1969, pp 117-194. (English)

• Qu'est-ce que le surréalisme ?, Brussels: R. Henriquez, 1934, 29 pp.
  • What is Surrealism? Selected Writings, ed. & intro. Franklin Rosemont, trans. David Gascoyne, London: Faber & Fabe, 1936, 90 pp. (English)
  • Co je surrealismus? Tři přednásky, trans. & afterw. Vítězslav Nezval, Brno: J. Jicha, 1937, 157 pp. (Czech)

• "Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme", 1938.

• La Situation du surréalisme entre les deux guerres. Discours aux étudiants français de l'université de Yale, [1942], [18] pp. [3]

• "Du surréalisme en ses œuvres vives", 1954.

Fiction

• with Philippe Soupault, Les champs magnétiques, Paris: Au Sans pareil, May 1920; 2nd ed., Paris: Au Sans pareil, 1920, 111 pp, KHZ. [4] (French)
  • The Magnetic Fields, trans. & intro. David Gascoyne, London: Atlas Press, 1985. (English)

• Nadja, 1928; 1963; 1964; Gallimard, 1998.
  • Nadja, trans. Richard Howard, New York: Grove Press, 1960. (English)

• Les Vases communicants, 1932; 2nd ed., Paris: Gallimard, 1955, 207 pp.
  • Communicating Vessels, trans. Mary Ann Caws and Geoffrey T. Harris, notes & intro. Mary Ann Caws, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990, 159 pp. (English)

• L'Amour fou, Paris: Gallimard, 1937.

Poetry

• Mont de piété: 1913-1919, ills. André Derain, Paris: Au sans pareil, 1919, [22] pp, KHZ. (French)

• Fata morgana, 1939.

Selected works

• Muž a žena čisto bieli, trans. Vladimír Reisel, Bratislava: Slovenský spisovateľ, 1967, 156 pp. Poems. [5] (Slovak)

• Position politique du surréalisme, Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1971, 32 pp. Collection of texts and interviews by Breton. Special issue of La Bibliothèque Volante 2, May 1971.

• Manifestes du surréalisme. Éditions complètes, Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1972.
  • Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969. (English)

• What is Surrealism: Selected Writings, Pathfinder Press, 1978. (English)

• Je vois, j'imagine: poèmes-objets, pref. Octavio Paz, Paris: Gallimard, 1991, 187 pp.

Collected works

• Les œuvres complètes d’André Breton, Paris: Gallimard, 1988.

Correspondence

• Lettres à Aube. 1938-1966, ed. Jean-Michel Goutier, Paris: Gallimard, 2009.

Literature

• Mary Ann Caws, Surrealism and the Literary Imagination: A Study of Breton and Bachelard, 1966. (English)
• Philippe Lavergne, André Breton et le mythe, José Corti, 1985.
• Gérard Legrand, André Breton en son temps, Le Soleil Noir, 1976.
• Paule Plouvier, Poétique de l'amour chez André Breton, José Corti, 1983.
• Emmanuel Rubio, Les Philosophies d'André Breton (1924-1941), L'Âge d'Homme, 2009.
• Gavin Parkinson, Enchanted Ground: André Breton, Modernism and the Surrealist Appraisal of Fin-de-Siècle Painting, Bloomsbury, 2021, xvii+352 pp, EPUB. Publisher.

Links

• http://dantebea.com/category/collages-photomontages-2/andre-breton-collages-photomontages/
• Breton at French Wikipedia