Free Rein (La Clé des champs)

310 Pages·1996·5.204 MB·English

by  André Breton

FREE RE IN
(La Cle des champs)
ANDRBiR ITON
Translated by MICHEL PARMENTIER
and JACQUELINE D'AMBOISE
Free Rein
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FRENCH
MODERNIST
LIBRARY
Series Editors
Mary Ann Caws
Richard Howard
Patricia Terry

F R E E
R E N
(L a Cle d e s c hamps)
Andre Breton
Translbayt ed
Michel Parmentier and
Jacquedl'iAnmeb oise
UniverosfiN teyb rasPkrae ss
LincoalnnLd o ndon
Publication of this translation
was assisted by a grant from the
French Ministry of Culture.
Andre Breton, La Cle des champs
© 1953E,d itions du Sagittaire
© 1979S,o ciete Nouvelle
des Editions Pauvert
Translation© 1995b y the University
of Nebraska Press
@ The paper in this book meets
the minimum requirements of
American National Standard
for Information Sciences­
Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials
ANSIZ 39.48-1984.
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publica­
tion Data Breton,
Andre, 1896-1966.
[Cle des champs.
English]
Free rein = La de des
champs I Andre Breton ; trans­
lated by Michel Parmentier and
Jacqueline d'Amboise.
p. cm. -(French modernist library)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISB0N- 8032-124(1c-l:0 a lk. paper)
I. Parmentier, Michel, 1950-. II. Amboise,
Jacqueline d', l 948- . III. Title. IV. Series.
PQ26o3.R35I 3C 5 1996
844', 9I 2 -dc20
95-22793
CIP
Contents
Introduction v11
Marvelous versus Mystery r
Nonnational Boundaries of Surrealism 7
Gradiva 19
Memory of Mexico 2 3
Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art 29
Visit with Leon Trotsky 35
The Marseilles Deck 48
Situation of Surrealism between the Two Wars 5 r
Declaration VVV 68
Golden Silence 70
Profanation 75
A Tribute to Antonin Artaud 77
Before the Curtain 80
Surrealist Comet 88
Second Ark 98
Magloire-Saint-Aude 102
Ascendant Sign r 04
The Lamp in the Clock 1 08
Thirty Years Later 122
Caught in the Act r 2 5
Oceania qo
Fronton-Virage 175
The Night of the Rose-Hotel 196
Predescription 204
The Engineer 206
The Art of the Insane, the Door co Freedom 2 I 7
Pont-Neuf 221
Open Letter to Paul Eluard 229
The Donator 2 32
As in a Wood 235
Foreword to the Germain Nouveau Exhibition 241
Yellow Sugar 244
Alfred Jarry as Precursor and Initiator 24 7
Why Is Contemporary Russian Painting Kept
Hidden from Us? 2 5 7
Tower of Light 265
Letter to a Young Girl Living in America 268
Of "Socialist Realism" as a Means of
Mental Extermination 2 74
Notes 279
Introduction
First published in l 95 3 under the title La Cit! des champs, Free
Rein comprises a series of texts written by Andre Breton between 1936
and 1952. Similar collections were published in 1924 (Les Pas perdus) and
in 1934 (Point du jour), and in 1970 Marguerite Bonnet edited a volume
(Perspective cava!iere) of texts written between 1952 and Breton's death in
1966. A5 in those other collections, the texts included in Free Rein vary in
nature and purpose: addresses, manifestos, prefaces, exhibition pamphlets,
and theoretical, polemical, and lyrical essays, they display the range of
Breton's preoccupations and his enduring faith in the early principles of
surrealism, as well as the changing orientations, in the face of that period's
crucial events, of a movement of which he remained the leading force and
prime embodiment.
The publication of his (first) Manifesto ofS urrealism in 1924 proclaimed
the birth of the surrealist movement and led Breton to assume a leadership
role that would remain uniquely his for the duration of the movement. Many
of the generation's most gifted poets and artists joined the movement or came
under its sway as its momentum progressively increased and its influence
spread outside French and European borders. Crises, estrangements, bitter
disputes punctuated the evolution of surrealism as it searched for a way
to reconcile its own revolutionary intent with political issues. Meanwhile,
Breton evolved his most influential theoretical positions in Nadja (1928),
the Second Surrealist Manifesto (1930), Communicating Vessels (1932), and
Mad Love (1937).
In 1936, as Breton rightly observed in "Nonnational Boundaries of
Surrealism," the International Surrealist Exhibition in London marked the
highest point of surrealism's influence. Indeed, it would never regain such
ascendancy, eclipsed as it was after the war by new intellectual movements
and coming under the attacks of such new luminaries as Sartre and Camus.
Moreover, ever since he had denounced che Moscow trials of 1936, Breton
had made an enemy of the Communist parry, a parry pledged co Stalinism
and whose sway over the French intellectual scene was to increase for many
years after the war. Overshadowed by new intellectual and artistic fashions
and discredited by a powerful political organization that gave pride of
place to former surrealists such as Aragon and Eluard who had faithfully
espoused the cause of Stalinism, surrealism was unable effectively co reenter
the struggle for intellectual dominance.
le comes as no surprise, therefore, that one of Breton's main concerns
throughout these essays is to reaffirm rime and again the necessity for rev­
olutionary artistic and literary pursuits to stay clear of political "commit­
ment" and to prevent at all costs their enslavement by a parry or a state.
While maintaining his support for the social Revolution, Breton had never
ceased to emphasize the need for a concurrent revolution of the mind:
this was the goal and central focus of the surrealist adventure. His refusal
to comply with the subservience expected by the self-proclaimed official
revolutionary parry was to bring him into direct conflict with that party's
minions-at times some of his former closest friends. By chance, his trip
to Mexico in 1938 gave him the opportunity to broach chis issue with
Trotsky and to find in the theoretician of the "permanent Revolution" a
supporter of his views. Their discussions resulted in the formation of an
International Federation oflndependent Revolutionary Art, for which they
jointly wrote the manifesto. It proclaims the need co establish, as far as
artistic creation is concerned, an anarchist regime of individual freedom,
against all attempts at harnessing creativity by totalitarian regimes. Indeed,
throughout this volume, Breton attacks and derides the socialist realism
enforced by Stalinism as the very negation of freedom: chat it should have
been extolled by someone like Aragon was evidence enough of "true deca­
dence" resulting from a blind allegiance to the articles of faith of a repressive
ideology.
v111 Introduction