AMENDMENTS TO THE EDITION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ANDRÉ BRETON

par Branko Aleksić

The critical apparatus of André Breton's Complete Works represents in itself an encyclopedia of the surrealist movement, its theoretical aspects as much as historical, chronological, or factual ones. Marguerite Bonnet, architect of the edition, established the texts, notes, and notices of volumes I ↑, II ↑, with the collaboration of Philippe Bernier, Etienne-Alain Hubert, and José Pierre. After the death of Marguerite Bonnet and José Pierre, E.-A. Hubert brought to completion, in collaboration with Marie-Claire Dumas, the edition of vol. III in 2003. The disproportions in the critical apparatus of the last volume are visible. The 1st volume has seven hundred and thirteen pages of commentary (p. 1063-1776), and moreover, the editor of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Jean Cottin, assured me in an interview, at the time when I was preparing my first review, that he had cut at least five hundred pages1. The commentaries in vol. II occupy five hundred and fifty-one pages (p. 1289-1840). Finally, vol. III has only three hundred and forty-two pages (p. 1131-1473). The differences stem from the major difficulty that Marguerite Bonnet had encountered in establishing the 1st volume: the discovery of two variants of the complete manuscript of the so-called automatic texts "Poisson soluble," which take up an enormous place in her critical apparatus. This discovery of the fact that Breton corrected his "automatic texts' to exhaustion is the greatest disappointment of these Complete Works, for what he kept in the drawer then carries more weight on the critical scale than what he had revealed of Poisson soluble. The difference between the so-called automatic surrealist text and that which the surrealists among themselves rather designated as a fantastic narrative (the letters of Simone Breton, published in 2003, will show this clearly), is not established in the critical apparatus.

Furthermore, the omissions in the chronology, in the biographical and bibliographical notices, in the identification of Breton's sources, require from the informed reader a critical supplement.

We suggest here a series of amendments for the critical apparatus of the first three volumes of Breton's Complete Works, hoping they will be useful to the informed amateur.

I. ERRORS IN THE CHRONOLOGY

1° Gap in the dates of joining the French Communist Party

Vol. I, p. 1717: the negotiations of a certain number of surrealists with the leaders of the French Communist Party, "result in the adhesion of Aragon, Breton, Éluard, and Unik in the course of January 1927. Péret was registered since 1926." In a note, Marguerite Bonnet adds: "Aragon gives for himself the date of January 6, 1927, 'precisely because it was the day of the Kings' (L"Œuvre poétique, vol. IV, 1927-1929, Tournai, Livre club Diderot, 1974, p. 19-20)."

Aragon"s memory is erroneous. The dating of the January adhesion must be postdated by a week. Marko Ristić noted in his Paris Journal, Saturday, January 15, 1927: "Went to café Cyrano. 1° X (?), 2° X – Bernier (?), 3° Breton, 4° Eluard, 5° Sadoul, 6° Fourrier [Marcel], 7° Noll. - Last night there was the meeting of the Montmartre Rayon, where the communists posed conditions to them. They accept them.2"

2° Contradiction regarding Breton's move 1946-1949

Vol. I, p. XLIV: Since 1922, Breton will live continuously in a studio at 42 rue Fontaine, next to Place Blanche; "he will not move until around 1949 to settle on the floor below, in a more spacious apartment." But on page 1289, it is noted that Breton "only changed floors to have a larger apartment in 1946."

3° Error in dating the chronicle on J. Delteil's Love

Angry against Joseph Delteil, Pierre Naville, and many other old friends, Breton makes a mistake in citing the "ignoble chronicle on love in issue 2 of La Révolution surréaliste (Naville's direction)." The error is all the more curious since the Second Manifesto of Surrealism, in its first version, is published precisely in the last issue of La Révolution surréaliste (no. 12, 1929; cf. p. 4).

Volume I, p. 788, reproduces this error without the editors having noticed the mistake: the "Chronicle on Love" was published not in no. 2, but indeed from the 1st issue of La Révolution surréaliste of December 1, 1924 (cf. p. 28). Pierre Naville did not direct only no. 2, and he was not alone; he signed with Benjamin Péret the first two issues. Breton took over the direction of no. 3 (April 15, 1924). Then Naville and Péret sign again no. 4 (15-VII-1925). Finally, Breton directs alone all the following issues, from no. 5 (15-X-1925) to the last, no. 12 (December 15, 1929).

II. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES

Several notices on the persons evoked by Breton mix non-critical spirit and anachronisms. Devoid of objective critical sense, these biographical notices contain gaps (example: Marcel Noll), repetitions (another example: James Brown alias Pierre Morhange), or even prejudicial opinions (a last example: Gala Éluard-Dali).

Volume I: Marcel Noll is very present from 1922 in the circle of friends who frequent the studio of Simone and André Breton, who write and travel together. "Paul Éluard, Marcel Noll and I find ourselves reunited in the countryside...", writes Breton in one of the "Five Dreams' (Clair de terre, 1923); OC I, p. 153. A notice by Marguerite Bonnet, p. 1194-1195, relative to this first evocation, enumerates Noll's collaboration with La Révolution surréaliste (no. 1, December 1924) and his role as manager of the Galerie surréaliste in 1926. Ten years later, Noll "would have disappeared in Spain during the civil war." Marguerite Bonnet mainly discusses the lack of rigor in Noll's management by citing "an allusion to this behavior in the press as in Éluard"s letters to Breton," and that "Aragon speaks of it in a veiled way to Dominique Arban (Aragon parle avec Dominique Arban, p. 60-61) and makes him play a role in his suicide attempt in Venice in 1928."

Let us first specify that Aragon dedicated to Noll chapter III of Le Paysan de Paris ↑; the significance of the character does not emerge lesser from it, quite the contrary. Breton dedicates to him the poem "L"Aigrette" in Clair de terre (OC I, p. 183), and a new notice by Marguerite Bonnet, p. 1211, explains it "by the fact that Noll spent two days in Lorient, as did Éluard, from August 29 to 31 (letter [from Breton] to Jacques Doucet of Saturday, September 1st)."

Strangely, Noll's uncertain death in the Spanish war is found as predicted in one of the texts of Poisson soluble II no. 36, of May 11, 1924: "...then but only then would I believe in Marcel Noll's death, in the harbingers of his death and in his life." OC I, p. 548 (the notice, p. 1465, simply refers to the previous one of Clair de terre).

Then, Noll enters among the surrealists of the first hour in the Manifesto of Surrealism ↑; OC I, p. 321, which the notices concerning him do not take into account.

Finally, in Nadja ↑ we see Breton going one day in 1926 "with Marcel Noll to the 'flea market' of Saint-Ouen..." For the reissue of Nadja in 1962, Breton will nevertheless suppress Noll's name (OC I, p. 676). The notice by Marguerite Bonnet, p. 1538, strives to justify this suppression, while referring for the 2nd time to the previous notice of Clair de terre:

The suppression of Marcel Noll's name in 1962 can be explained by the fact that he disappeared quite early from surrealism, under somewhat troubling circumstances (see Clair de terre, n. 2, p. 153). In 1962, his name no longer means much to readers who only know in a general way the history of a movement to which he left no work.

This last explanation is not only insufficient; Breton's reasons are of a personal order—linked to his own past, and not objective. What interests us is not a supposed reader of 1962, but the face-to-face with Breton's own reader who destroys a piece of his own past. Even if Marcel Noll "left no work" in the sense of literary tradition, he left enough existential traces in Breton's life (cf. the Letters of Simone Breton) as in Breton's texts—Poisson soluble (II, no. 37), "Five Dreams' (Clair de terre), finally Nadja—for an attempt to erase them by suppressing his name from one of these texts to seem illusory, as illusory as trying in a non-critical manner to justify this last suppression.

Gala Éluard is the dedicatee of the poem "Épervier incassable" ↑ in Clair de terre (OC I, p. 160). This should have sufficed to justify a commentary on Breton-Gala relations within the surrealist circle in the 1920s. But the notice on page 1199, three lines, dryly refers to the General Dictionary of Surrealism composed by Breton and Éluard (that is, sixteen years later...), and to Paul Éluard's Letters to Gala (posthumous, 1984)! The anachronism hides a characterized malice: the notice of the Dictionary..., is only a citation from Salvador Dali: "GALA. – Violent and sterilized woman." (Breton, OC III, p. 812). André Thirion's memoirs specify the surgical operation undergone by Gala in the 1930s (Révolutionnaires sans révolution); it has nothing to do with "the pretty joinery of sleep" in Breton's poem of 1920. Marguerite Bonnet's notice in her critical apparatus is therefore not only tendentious, devaluing, but shows an alarming lack of poetic sense.

Compare with the notice on Ève Francis, dedicatee of another text by Breton: in Marguerite Bonnet's eyes, the dedication "is explained not only by the personality and notoriety of the actress or her occasional links with Aragon and Breton, but also by the friendship that unites Aragon to Louis Delluc" (this concludes the eleven lines of this superfluous notice, p. 1402).

Vol. I, notice on the reception of the Manifesto of Surrealism, p. 1342: the criticism by John Brown alias Pierre Morhange (1901-1972) in the journal Philosophie, no. 3, 15-IX-1924, earned him a collective threat from the surrealists, published in Le Journal littéraire of October 18, 1924, forbidding him (sic) to "write the word Surrealism" under penalty of "cruel correction." – Marguerite Bonnet repeats this fact in the notice on the Second Manifesto of Surrealism, p. 1605, instead of referring the reader there.

III. IDENTIFICATION OF BRETON'S SOURCES: KANT, SADE

The meanderings of bookmarks, and marginal notes, in the books that Breton left in his private library, have been of essential help in identifying his sources. Philosophical citations have obviously presented more difficulties than literary ones. The use that Marguerite Bonnet made of the reception of Hegel's philosophy through a critical work by Vera is the most enlightening example of the utility of these identifications. But many other sources have remained unknown. A paraphrase of Descartes, a citation from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, etc., are examples that we add. The other examples given in the Notes—as supposed references to Pascal—on the other hand, must be refuted.

Vol. I, p. 251: the 1920 text on the artist of pittura metafisica, Giorgio de Chirico, opens with a citation:

Olivier When Galileo made balls roll on an inclined plane whose weight he had himself determined, or when Torricelli made the air bear a weight he knew to be equal to a column of water known to him, then a new light came to illuminate all physicists.

Notice by Marguerite Bonnet, page 1272:

This paragraph appears to come from a popularization work or a dictionary page; these rapprochements may have been suggested to Breton by the subject of certain works by Chirico: scholars, inclined planes, balls evoking the best-known experiment of Galileo, barometer of the Dream of Tobie referring to Torricelli's experiment. Be that as it may, this initial reference to two scholars who revolutionized the scientific conceptions of their time signals from the outset that in Breton's eyes Chirico's paintings propose a new mode of representation of the world.

Indeed, Breton extracted his citation from the preface to the 2nd edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (of 1787)3.

Kant"s transcendental aesthetics is also evoked in the phrase (loc. cit., p. 251) where Chirico revises "the sensible data of time and space." Notice ↑, p. 1272, also lacks this reference and refers to another "article on Max Ernst."

Kant puts another evocation of Pascal in doubt. "The philosopher's aberration..." (example of a duality of mind in Les Pas perdus, p. 294) is attributed by Marguerite Bonnet to Pascal's character (p. 1323). But this could well be some other philosopher, Kant himself for example.

Breton cites the capital Kantian work in his "Project for Jacques Doucet's Library": as Kant could not be hidden from the poetic mentality of his generation, writes Breton, "it was he who was commissioned to save us." And he adds a peremptory judgment:

Although today it is scarcely more than for two chapters barely of the critique of pure reason, the Transcendental Aesthetics, that this philosopher remains alive, there is nothing less negligible than this spirit who knew how to be the first to become aware of the opposition between the principles of Leibnizian rationalism, to which he always remained firmly attached, and the very existence of Newtonian science.

For Kant, "it was a question of explaining the objectivity of the internal data of reason," and Breton concludes here that "this immortal problem is sensibly the same as that which poses itself today [in 1923] to more purely scientific minds, who encounter the same opposition as Kant." (OC I, p. 631; again without any commentary in the notices).

Indeed, these "commonplaces' come from the biographical work of Borowski, Kant"s former secretary: Darstellung des Leben und Charakters Immanuel Kants, conveyed by Thomas de Quincey in his account of "The Death of Immanuel Kant."

Then in 1945: "Testimony 45," on Marcel Duchamp: "It has been said that from its publication, it became impossible to think as if the Critique of Pure Reason had never existed." (OC III, p. 144). And the critical apparatus of vol. III remains silent regarding this last reference.

Let us note that the cut-up poem of newspaper titles in Poisson soluble II no. 61, of April 23, 1924, had marked the occasion of the celebration of the bicentenary of the philosopher's birth: "EMMANUEL KANT / was born 200 years ago / The Intellectual Youth / It resisted him / By seeking snails / on the confines / of the world..."; these cut-up "verses' are preceded by a sort of title at the head of the page: "The safety head' (OC I, p. 586). We willingly consider it as a poem on Kant, confronted with "the poetic mentality of our generation," as Breton formulates it in 1923.

The other anecdotal references on Kant are nevertheless commented on—"the woman's distraction in Kant" (Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924; OC I, p. 346) would be, according to the notice p. 1364, the biographeme on the old bachelor, conveyed "by the famous remark of Henri (sic, for Heinrich) Heine in his book On Germany." But Breton returns to it more seriously in "Les 'Enfers artificiels'": "there is nevertheless something unfortunate in the life of certain great philosophers like Kant who create a world apart for themselves and put themselves at the mercy of a commonplace such as a woman's smile" (OC I, p. 625; without commentary in the notices).

Commentary on Kant in Breton's surrealist thinking could analyze his use throughout Breton's texts, who declared wanting to "reproduce for [his] own account the entire course of modern thought, this thought which came normally to Marx through Hegel, as it had come normally to Hegel through Master Eckhart and through Kant." (Conference on "Surrealism," 1946, OC III, p. 156). Then, this Kantian thinking also exists in Aragon's Le Paysan de Paris.

The other philosophical themes, like Heidegger's existentialism ("Devant le rideau" in La Clé des champs, 1947; OC III, p. 747), have not been commented on in any notice.

Volume I, p. 263: the Dadaist manifesto "Lâchez tout" ↑, speaks to us of the passion of ideas. "Forgive me for thinking that, contrary to ivy, I die if I attach myself." This is probably a paraphrase of Descartes: ("there exist ivy men, who do not think for themselves')

Volume II, p. 1194, the poem Fata Morgana ↑, "The action takes place in the veil of Isabeau de Bavière's hennin..."; a long notice, p. 1794-1795, discusses Henri Desoubeaux's proposal (Mélusine, no. XI, 1990), according to which Sade's narrative, Histoire secrète d'Isabelle de Bavière, reine de France, can be identified as the source of Breton's verses. E.-A. Hubert concludes that "for the whole of the tradition Isabeau de Bavière is not, at the time of her marriage, the monster of seduction and perversity that she is in Sade." But Breton will cite Sade in the article "Isabeau," Lexique succinct de l'érotisme surréaliste, 1959!

Vol. III, p. 746: Troisième Convoi, a post-war journal, is evoked by Breton through a citation from Jean Maquet demanding the "new skin" of surrealism ("Devant le rideau," La Clé des champs). Notice ↑ by E.-A. Hubert, p. 1370, locates only the title of Maquet's article: "Les Anges pleurant." It is necessary to add basic information on the journal itself which borrows its title from Breton (in Les Vases communicants, he speaks of the "travelers of the second convoy"). Le Troisième Convoi was published between 1945 and 1951, with five issues in all (reissued by Fourbis, 1998). Jean Maquet and Michel Fardoulis-Lagrange were its founders. They had invited Breton to collaborate. He had responded favorably, when, in preparing his submission, he was surprised by Maquet's attack in the very journal!4

IV. FIVE POEMS BY BRETON PREPUBLISHED IN L'IMPOSSIBLE

For the bilingual Yugoslav surrealist almanac, in Serbian and French, Nemoguće – L'Impossible, Breton sends to Marko Ristić a manuscript of five poems which will be published in May 1930, on two large pages (p. 106-108), in the following order: "Les écrits s'en vont" (p. 106), "La forêt dans la hache" (p. 106-107), "Hôtel des étincelles' (p. 107-108), "Toutes écolières ensemble" (p. 108), finally "Le verbe être" (id.). Breton will insert them, two years later, in his book Le Revolver à Cheveux blancs, printed on June 25, 1932. It is interesting to observe there a different order of presentation, almost inverse to that respected in L'Impossible.

These five poems are reissued within the framework of the complete reissue of the fifty-five texts of Le Revolver, in Breton's Complete Works, vol. II, p. 74-80 (in the following order: "Hôtel des étincelles," "Le verbe être," "Les écrits s'en vont," "La Forêt dans la hache" and "Toutes les écolières ensemble").

José Pierre, who comments on them in the Complete Works, was unaware of the prepublication of these poems in L"Impossible, whereas the journal Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution no. 1 had presented L"Impossible as "a publication to which have collaborated: Aragon, Breton, Char, Éluard, Péret, Thirion...5", and that Marko Ristić had subsequently spoken of it in his memories of Breton, published under the title "La Nuit du Tournesol' (paraphrase of a poem by Breton), in the special issue of La Nouvelle Revue Française: "André Breton 1896-1966 et le mouvement surréaliste – Hommages – Témoignages – L'œuvre – Le mouvement surréaliste" (no. 172, April 1, 1967, p. 699-706):

For our almanac L'Impossible, published in May 1930, Breton had sent us five poems (later reproduced in Le Revolver à cheveux blancs) and one of which had been that incomparable Verbe être ("Je connais le désespoir dans ses grandes lignes..."). (p. 704n)

The Belgrade effect of this prepublication, clearly noted in Ristić's commentary, is not taken into account in the notice on the reception of the collection Le Revolver à cheveux blancs (p. 1321-1322).

Vol. II, p. 1331: the poem "Hôtel des étincelles' is cited as "without prepublication"; the same error is observed regarding the four other aforementioned poems, described summarily in José Pierre's notes (p. 1331-1332).

But some 300 pages further in the same volume, José Pierre finds himself contradicted by Marguerite Bonnet who, commenting on Breton's only "Response" to the Survey on Desire launched by Ristić (and Vane Bor) in the journal Nadrealizam Danas i Ovde – Le Surréalisme Ici et Aujourd'hui6, adds ample information (p. 1612-1616) on the collaboration between Breton and Ristić, without forgetting the "five poems sent for Nemoguće" (spelled: "Nemogucé," three times, p. 1613)7. Marguerite Bonnet specifies in a note that these five poems "will be taken up again in Le Revolver à cheveux blancs' (id.). She evokes Ristić's memory in La NRF of 1967 on these poems, especially on "Le Verbe être," as well as other memories, on Breton's conflict with Aragon for example ("communicated by Marko de Ristić to Marguerite Bonnet on January 23, 1975"; id.).

For an informed reader to draw the right deductions from this information, a posteriori, it is then necessary to go through a negative critique of José Pierre's previous erroneous remarks, collaborator of volume II: to note a lack of coordination, even an absence of rereading and homogenization of the critical apparatus in Breton's Complete Works in the Pléiade.

1. Interview with Jean Cottin, in the Pléiade editorial office, rue Sébastien Bottin, 1988. See my review of the Complete Works edition, vol. I, in the journal Pitanja, Zagreb.

2. M. Ristić, "Pariski dnevnik" in Uočinadrealizma, Belgrade, Nolit, 1985, p. 201. Translation B. Aleksić.

3. See E. Kant, Œuvres philosophiques published under the direction of F. Alquié (vol. I-III); vol. I, Critique de la Raison pure, collective trans. J. Barni, Delamarre and Marty, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1980, p. 737.

4. See: Branko Aleksić: "The driving force of the negative in the journal Troisième Convoi (1945-1951)," Mélusine, no. XIX, p. 368-389. Paris, December 1999.

5. Article "L'Impossible," L.S.A.S.D.L.R., no. 1, Paris, July 1930 (p. 11-12); p. 11.

6. Journal mentioned in Breton and Éluard's Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism ↑ (OC II, p. 839).

7. Dušan Matić's first name is also mangled ("Dujan," p. 1612 N and 1614n).