TABLE OF CONTENTS

Address by Mr. MOREL on behalf of the Scientific Council of Paris III 9
Henri BEHAR: On the Title Page
Roger NAVARRI: Institutions – Movement – Group – Journal: The Case of Surrealist Journals after 1945
Viviane COUILLARD: An (Almost Surrealist) Journal of the Years 1928-30: Le Grand Jeu
Anna BALAKIAN: Reception of Surrealism in Latin American Poetry
Patrick IMBERT: Reception of Quebec Surrealists
Henri BEHAR: Place Names: Surrealist Titles
Stéphane SARKANY: Nadja or the Reading of the Objective World
Suzanne LAMY: Breton-Duras. B.D. – My Comic Strip or Reading a Confluence
Jean ARROUYE: Photography in Nadja
Marie-Claire DUMAS: The Graphic Appointments of Robert Desnos
Nicole BOULESTREAU: The Photopoem Facile: A New Book in the 1930s
Arturo SCHWARZ: Love is Eroticism
Mary Ann CAWS: Contradictory Reading of Illustrated Relationships
Jean-Charles GATEAU: Cutting, Cutting Oneself, Recutting
Renée RIESE HUBERT: Miró and the Surrealist Book
Pierre LAURETTE: Alfred Pellan and the Surrealist Text
Anne-Marie AMIOT: New Impressions of Africa: Text, Blank, and Image
Fernand DRIJKONINGEN: The Function of the Narratee in Le Paysan de Paris
Karlheinz BARCK: Reading Surrealist Books by Walter Benjamin
Danielle BONNAUD-LAMOTTE and Jean-Luc RISPAIL: Re-edition of the S.A.S.D.L.R. on Computer or the Ordeal of a Text
Boris RYBAK: The Surrealist Iterator
Michel LAUNAY: Physics of the Book: A Short Suite Eluard-Char-Butor
The “Makers” of the Surrealist Book, round table led by Michel DECAUDIN
Exhibition Catalogue: Surrealist Books

ON THE TITLE PAGE

In 1975, a conference was held entitled: “Surrealism in the Text.” We are following in its footsteps by organizing these events on the Surrealist book. Our friends in Grenoble started from the premise: “Let’s take a specific page from one of the great Surrealists” and offer our reading. For the purposes of their argument, they pretended to believe that the books from which this page was taken existed once and for all. For my part, I thought it would be necessary to begin by showing, not just a page, but the entire collection and, if possible, all Surrealist books.

Failing to gather them all, we were able, thanks to the hospitality of the B.P.I., the diligence of Pascaline Mourier and her team, and the kindness of many lenders, to show a few, among the most characteristic, limiting ourselves in time and space for reasons… of limited space.

And now, it is a matter of reflecting on the book as an object. Three directions are immediately open to us. They mark the stages of these three days.

(1) From manuscript to re-edition, the book lives, it has a history. What happens between the manuscript and its printed version? What can be read in the thickness of notes and erasures, in what J. Bellemin-Noël called the “pre-text”? What do the protestations of fidelity to the initial text and the modifications for the sake of good expression introduced by Breton from one edition to another of his books tell us? Not long ago, Claude Martin indicated some fruitful avenues.
But this book, whether we understand it in the broad sense of a collection of printed sheets (including brochures, pamphlets, journals) or, more narrowly, as a bound volume, needs to be characterized quantitatively and qualitatively. What is the importance of Surrealist production in relation to the era? Who publishes the most? Which years are prosperous, which are not? In 1936 and 1937, I note, in French catalogues, 15 titles each year: this is the maximum point of a bell curve shaped like a gendarme’s hat. Who are the preferred (or resigned) publishers of the Surrealists? In my count, out of 280 volumes, 40 were published by Gallimard, 22 by Kra, 17 by G. Lévis-Mano, 13 by Corti. But the Surrealists themselves financed 43 collections under the label of Surrealist Editions or more openly at their own expense. What do we know about the sale and distribution of these books? In 1965, Eric Losfeld told me he had never made a penny from this sector of his bookstore; but current reprints seem to me a not insignificant bonus for publishers! It would have been necessary to talk about these re-editions and especially about the ongoing publication of complete works (Aragon, Eluard, Tzara, Breton…) which raise new problems and many questions of principle for the editors.
On the sociological level, the role of patronage, very active in the 1930s, should be considered. Perhaps the exchange of views following the presentations will clarify its function.
As for the strictly material aspect of the book, its “manufacture” will be the subject of a round table this evening, to which we have invited technicians and practitioners who are also historians and theorists, around Michel Décaudin.

(2) The second phase of our discussions should address the reception, fortune, and acceptance of the Surrealist book. These are not, in my opinion, three synonyms, as the implications of each type of study are very different. Still, they require new investigations, at least in the French-speaking world. What implicit reader do Surrealist works postulate, what real reader have they encountered? How is the dialectic of reading organized, which should lead to a transformation of the reader? What audiences has Surrealism reached through its publications, in which regions of France and the world, in which sectors of culture, at what age?
So many questions for which the answer does not come immediately.
Perhaps we will learn more through reading the critics, the press, and the Surrealists themselves as agents of the press or as an internal, privileged public of their own productions.

(3) The third direction of our work, which is obviously not independent of the other two, concerns the semiotics of the book and, since we must be brief, leads us to highlight the particular physics of the material and plastic object called the book. We will insist, at least the summary of the presentations suggests so, on this abnormal relationship that is established, in some stories, between photography, the press clipping, the surrounding letter, and the text itself. And, of course, the main focus will be on what has been called collaborative writing, the dialogue that is established between the typographic surface and the illustrated surface, between black and white in the space of the page, between the title and the body of the work, etc.
The question is therefore posed, clearly I hope: is there a Surrealist book or only a conglomerate of books produced by Surrealists, which by metonymy are called Surrealist books (in the plural)? In other words, what criteria would allow us to say, from the outset, this is, this is not, Surrealist? There are strong reasons to think that some books become Surrealist, fall into the category in question, not by natural evolution but by a series of coups de force and diversions, which it will be up to us to evaluate. Hence this assumed hesitation between the plural and the singular to designate the enterprise that brings us together. Is not Surrealism itself a singular plural?