Government measures and our health require it: here we are all confined, for many more days.

But this does not mean that research concerning our dearest studies should be. Surrealist texts can be read and reread; works on them can develop as much as needed since databases are still accessible, as well as the internet network to access them. So I can satisfy the legitimate curiosity of my readers, some of whom ask me what the surrealists' attitude was towards the word "confined."

For my part, I have no idea. I will simply start reading the works of surrealist authors that are available to me.

Not having the books at hand (libraries are not accessible to me), I will content myself with questioning my golem, which preserves the digitized complete works of Aragon (until 1932), André Breton (from beginning to end), René Crevel, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard (until 1938), Julien Gracq, Michel Leiris (only The Rule of the Game), Benjamin Péret, Prévert and Tristan Tzara. For conscience's sake, I will confront my data with those provided to me by Frantext, which contains the same texts since I myself provided the digital tapes (that's how we spoke then!) to this largest French language bank.

So I have constituted a list of words, from the family of the verb confine (confined/s/ed, confinement/s) and asked the machine to provide me with the attestations in the works indicated above, to which I have added, finally, the two main surrealist journals, La Révolution surréaliste and Le SASDLR.

The result will be found classified by author, with a different presentation for Éluard and Gracq (the truth is that the Hyperbase software I used to use is no longer accepted by Windows 10, and I didn't want to bother my friend Etienne Brunet to provide me with an updated version of this tool).

Of course, I leave it to the readers to form whatever idea they want of the use of the searched word. It seems to me, nevertheless, that the quantity of texts examined shows an underuse of the term in question, which would agree with the expression of freedom in our authors.

March 29, 2020. HB

I. ARAGON Louis : 2 occ.

1. Le Paysan de Paris (1926)

LE PASSAGE DE L'OPÉRA (1924) (p. 716)

To say that behind these panes is confined a double passive existence, at the limits of the unknown and adventure! For years and years the couple of doormen

holds itself in this molehill to see passing hems of dresses and pants climbing the ladder of appointments.

2. Le Paysan de Paris (1926)

LE SENTIMENT DE LA NATURE AUX BUTTES-CHAUMONT (1925) (p. 864)

TOTAL LENGTH OF STREETS,

QUAYS, BOULEVARDS, ETC.

52 KILOMETERS 383 METERS

The 19th DISTRICT CONFINED TO

18th, 10th and 20th DISTRICTS

THE GATES OF ROMAINVILLE,

DES PRÉS ST GERVAIS AND PANTIN,

DE FLANDRE AND AUBERVILLIERS,

THE EAST LINES, THE CANALS

OF L'OURCQ AND ST DENIS,

PUT IT IN COMMUNICATION

WITH THE EXTERIOR OF PARIS

CUSTOMS BUILDING, BD DE LA VILLETTE

BASIN AND DOCKS OF

II. BRETON, André : 2 occ.

1. SITUATION DU SURRÉALISME ENTRE LES DEUX GUERRES, p. 715

Valéry had confined himself to poetic exercises of a very emphatic untimely character, Proust to studies of social milieus that events did not even seem to have been able to touch; paradoxically they were not long in being paid for it by the greatest honors.

2. p. 1172 Anthol.

These are, in fact, old peoples who, under the pressure of young races in power to establish a new way of life which implies continuous evolution, have been either driven to the extremities of continents, or confined to the most ungrateful regions of the earth.

III. CREVEL René, 3 occ.

1. La Mort difficile (1926)

LE DÎNER AVEC DIANE (p. 163)

As soon as she had left him, on the days when he had confined himself to his own pain, without having an affectionate word for her, Diane dropped the mask and from the smile she had mimicked for hours, a mirror suddenly showed her that there remained only two little wrinkles. Two little wrinkles.

2. La Mort difficile (1926)

III, LE DÎNER AVEC DIANE (p. 166)

Now during dinner, the colors that suddenly beautified the too pale cheeks of the young

boy, the silence in which he has confined himself, his appetite too, have given Diane notion of a

force of which Pierre, doubtless, in his distress, had not yet become aware himself.

3. Les Pieds dans le plat (1933)

VII, LE QUATORZIÈME CONVIVE (p. 254)

this unknown woman qualified as fin de siècle spread out in my dreams, as beautiful, as tall, as gay, as mad with love and touching refrains as the whole city of Paris, the city which a little boy confined to Passy, then almost the countryside, tried to imagine the dances and laughter under a rain of confetti, at the time of Mid-Lent.

IV. Desnos = 0

V. Éluard = 3

Poésie ininterrompue :

I often breathe very badly I confine myself Morally too especially when I am alone In this dream

of reason confined Broken windows scattered fire

where the rays confine boredom in the mind where

VI. GRACQ Julien

confined 5 RS 31b RS 184c FV 79b SC 102a CC 268e

confined 2 CC 68a CC 269a

confinement 9 RS 196f EC 269c EC 269c FV 13b SC 25a SC 121b SC 134b CC 33a CC 138e

confined 1 SC 24b

confines 1

SC 10b| not much. And which moreover often borders on indifference. I

confined 8

Au château d'Argol (1938)

LA CHAPELLE DES ABÎMES (p. 106)

it seemed that this place was so perfectly closed that the confined air could circulate there no more than in a long-closed room, and, swimming around the walls in an opaque cloud, and penetrated for centuries with the persistent perfumes of moss and dried stones, became like an odorous balm in which these precious relics plunged.

André Breton (1948)

III BATTANT COMME UNE PORTE (p. 102)

Far from spinning from his mental secretions a cozy cocoon, from stifling by isolating in this confined air the impossible chrysalis of man in himself, he no longer wishes to be

but hollow imprint of the hazards of the great adventure

RS 282f|. Would not inertia have bordered on lightness? Sensing

RS 300g| would have said, rather than that it was confined by them, that this air preserved

BF 181d| A nausea came to him from this confined air, from this plastery day, old

PR 65d| thousands around him, of the confined air he has breathed, of this es

SC 122c| s of a mendicant lazzaronat, confined in its alleys, its placett

confined 5

RS 31b| re, and the doubtful day, would have confined in the study of some disc

RS 184c| on so acute of this confined tranquility, like that of a herb

FV 79b| rdait in full sun the confined humidity, and almost still the penumb

SC 102a| olée, enclosed and columned, and confined in a coded dialogue without su

CC 268e| int-Germain the Verdurin energy confined until then in the Mo plain

confined 2

CC 68a|, and from where the breath of confined plants surges onto the road also i

CC 269a| strong imprisoned and confined pressures, and of free spaces capri

confinement 9

RS 196f| and dusty, similar in its confinement and its sweetish odor of p

EC 269c| mountain, it is the feeling of confinement that comes to dominate: c

EC 269c| finement that comes to dominate: cozy confinement, padded, protected

FV 13b| has always seemed to me to be that of confinement: its mean site, chosen

SC 25a| awakening — a bit like in the confinement of a windowless museum

SC 121b| others, it is the impression of confinement. City of treasures, cert

SC 134b| Florence is especially sensitive to provincial confinement, to the closed d

CC 33a| a feeling of stagnation or confinement comparable to the one that me

CC 138e| atism frozen of my habits, the confinement in a circle of relation

confined 1

SC 24b| its hills, confined compartments, like the golden caissons

VII. LEIRIS Michel : 5 occ.

1. La Règle du jeu p.91

One was astonished, listening to him, that the diaphragm did not break into pieces or, at least, that it did not star; similarly, it could seem singular that the window panes did not end up giving way, under the disturbing pulsations of the air, in all the confined places where it happened that the dentist with the cavernous voice, this giant whose size was so exactly matched to the volume of his song, was produced.

2. La Règle du jeu p.113

But the image I made, as a child, of old age appears to me as difficultly separable from confined places, closed rooms, weighed down with covers, hangings, curtains and carpets.

3. La Règle du jeu : 1 : Biffures (1948)

IL ÉTAIT UNE FOIS… (p. 164)

This one [old times] continued, certainly, to exist in the depths of the countryside, more faithful to old things than cities, but it had deserted the latter and was now warming itself frizzily in the hearth of smoky hovels, confined in the lost places where it had had to take birth formerly, somewhere in Romanized Gaul, on the side of the first Frankish petty kings.

4. Or, this day that I expected to be the most open to all comers and the least confined was for me, in truth, not even a day in the open air since I remained until quite late in the evening with Levantine merchants who were celebrating Victory with my hosts of noon and some of their acquaintances.

5. La Règle du jeu : 3 : Fibrilles (1966)

LA FIÈRE, LA FIÈRE…, I (p. 60)

For the young city dweller usually confined, the garden of the house one occupies in summer or of the one permanently inhabited by such a member of the family circle is not only a place with less strict policing, but — as familiar as it may be — a territory with multiple folds always to explore and propitious to the manifestation of many singular things.

VIII. PERET : 1 occ.

tome III, p. 216

He stopped, listening to his voice that the echoes reverberated to the confines of the world, then he launched his gutter on the portal of Notre-Dame, which sank into the darkness. The gutter crossed the entire nave and came to replace the crucifix that dominated the high altar.

IX. PREVERT = 0

X. SOUPAULT = 0

XI. TZARA Tristan = 5 occ.

1. Personnage d'insomnie (1934)

VIII RAPPORTS ENTRE LA FEMME ATTENDUE,, LA VIE ERRANTE ET LE DÉPEUPLEMENT D'UNE ÎLE (p. 193)

she alternates with the miserable hours and confines herself in the heat of hives and hairy nests she lacks dimensions and when she disperses and takes part in the movement of vibrating eyelashes day and night mix with wine

2. Grains et issues (1935)

DES RÉALITÉS NOCTURNES ET DIURNES (p. 54)

Seen through the rarefied air of mirages, in their rings that lift to the height of murders the ventripotent sense of refined worlds, the calm of mountains confines itself in the underwater branches of instantaneously immobilized fears and entire villages crawl

3. Grains et issues (1935)

DES RÉALITÉS NOCTURNES ET DIURNES (p. 67)

Again the flower confines itself in the sullen heat of the game bags. No window awakens in the head. No desire assumes the responsibility of the wind.

4. Le Surréalisme et l'après guerre,

Note IV: p.125

If words are born only when the idea they designate has confined itself in an image limited and stable enough for the triggering of a minimal mechanism of representation to affect them, the very forms of the sentence through which the possibilities of thought manage to express themselves are included in miniature in the process of word formation and reproduce on a larger scale the global sum of lived and conclusive experiences.

5. The mists of his native Brittany have done much harm to Corbière. They have long confined his memory to the picturesque of a somewhat conventional regionalism.

XII. COLLECTIF – La Révolution surréaliste. N° 2, première année. 15 janvier 1925 (1925)

1. LEIRIS,, Michel, Le pays de mes rêves (p. 27)

If I trace around me a circle with the tip of my sword, the threads that

nourish me will be cut and I will not be able to leave the circular dungeon, having forever separated myself from my spatial pasture and confined in a small column of immutable spirit, narrower than the cisterns of the palace.

COLLECTIF – La Révolution surréaliste. N° 3, première année. 15 avril 1925 (1925)

2. MANIFESTES, Adresse au Pape (p. 16)

We are not in the world. O Pope confined in the world, neither earth nor God speak through you.

The world is the abyss of the soul, Pope twisted, Pope exterior to the soul, let us swim in our bodies, let our souls in our souls, we have no need of your knife of clarities.

COLLECTIF – La Révolution surréaliste. N° 9-10, troisième année. 1er octobre 1927 (1927)

3. ARAGON, PHILOSOPHIE DES PARATONNERRES (p. 45)

It is not without interest to evaluate the restricted field in which a man in possession of the essential means of a civilization of which much is made confines himself today.

Henri BÉHAR