Returning from five years of teaching at the National University of Côte d'Ivoire, Michel Décaudin, who had ensured the direction of the Surrealism Research Center at Paris III, handed me the keys, if I may say so. It was then that I launched, with the master's students, a research program on the reception of surrealism in the press. Having taken cognizance of an article by Yves Bridel on the same subject, I invited him to give a presentation before our team. On which we exchanged at length, to the point that I proposed to him to edit it in the collection that I had just founded at L'Age d'Homme editions. Yves Bridel (1930-2017), who resided in Lausanne, was then ordinary professor of French language and literature at the School of Higher Economic, Social and Legal Studies of Saint-Gall, Switzerland, and literary chronicler of French-speaking Switzerland at the daily "24 heures" (until 1990). He had passed his thesis on the spirit of childhood in Bernanos and, after his research concerning surrealism, studied the Bibliothèque Universelle, journal published in Switzerland.

Yves Bridel, Mirrors of Surrealism. Essay on the reception of surrealism in France and French-speaking Switzerland (1916-1939), preface Henri Béhar, Lausanne, L'Age d'Homme, 1988, 208 p.

Summary: Through an investigation in provincial journals, French-speaking Switzerland and, for Parisian publications, in the NRF, this book seeks to describe the critical reception reserved for surrealism, to measure the true impact of the movement.

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Extensions: See other text H.B.: At the Palace of Mirrors (pdf)

Surrealism in the Left-Wing Press, ed. Paris-Méditerranée, 2002, 347 p. How was surrealism received and perceived in left-wing circles between the moment of its birth and the beginning of the Second World War?
In order to allow judgment, Henri Béhar and his team gathered all the articles concerning it in Le Populaire, the great socialist daily, L'Humanité, Europe, Commune, Marianne, La Critique sociale, La Flèche...
If judgments differ according to the moments and tendencies proper to the various organs, it nevertheless appears that the surrealist movement did not leave the Left indifferent and that it was not for it an ally of complete rest. See the digital version on this site: Surrealism in the Left-Wing Press Read the review by Guy BORDES, L'Ours, n° 320, July-August 2002

Yves Bridel, La Bibliotheque Universelle (1815-1924). Mirror of French-Speaking Swiss Sensibility in the 19th Century, 1998.