LETTERS TO AUBE, BY J.-M. GOUTIER, FOLLOWED BY LISTEN TO THE SHELL

par Jean-Michel Goutier

June 15, 2019

Lettres à Aube: (Revised and corrected excerpt from an Interview with Nathalie Jungerman for the Revue littéraire de la Fondation La Poste, published in December 2009).

André Breton stipulates in his will that his correspondence should not be published "at the earliest" until fifty years after his death. Complete freedom is left, however, for letters addressed to his daughter and his wife Elisa. Aube waited more than forty years before deciding to have the letters concerning her published. Spread over twenty-eight years, the primary interest of these is to reveal to us, by venturing into an intimacy capable of infinite tenderness, a Breton always equal to himself.

We can even add that, moved by the birth of his child to the point of falling ill and staying in bed, Breton wrote two letters a day to Jacqueline [Lamba], still detained at the clinic, in which he evoked little Aube who was only a few days old...

This is the opportune moment to recall that Breton was opposed to procreation insofar as it induced a bourgeois family structure that was indeed hated by the surrealists. Succeeding or taking over the paternal business was of course excluded from the individual trajectory of any surrealist. The most violent of Breton's declarations concerning procreation, published in La Révolution Surréaliste, came from a famous survey on sexuality that continued from January 1928 to August 1932. Breton had kept a file containing all the handwritten documents concerning the twelve sessions of the survey that were published by Gallimard, in a collection entitled "Archives du Surréalisme". It was during this survey that friends asked Breton what he thought of procreation. He replied that he was hostile to it, except in cases of absolute love, of a great encounter, as few exist. The woman's opinion is then primordial and if, indeed, giving birth to life is the subject of a joint decision, in this case, Breton admits being willing to reconsider his position. And that's exactly what happened. On the one hand, he writes to Jacqueline in 1935: "I have, myself, the feeling that of my own initiative this offer, I have no right to refuse it loving you as I love you." On the other hand, for his daughter then aged eight months, he writes a letter intended, in fact, for the young girl who will be sixteen in the "beautiful spring" of 1952. This is "the letter to Écusette de Noireuil" which closes L'amour fou and in which the father says to his daughter: "You will then know that all chance has been rigorously excluded from your coming, that this took place at the very hour when it had to take place, neither earlier nor later and that no shadow awaited you above your wicker cradle". Breton affirms his choice which is also a bet on the future.

"Remember that one of the greatest philosophical principles, to which both surrealists and Marxists, for example, have adhered, is that freedom is realized necessity. It is quite true, believe me, that any other 'freedom' is illusory. Think about it at length...", writes Breton to Aube in a letter from 1956...

Aube is twenty-one when Breton writes this letter to her. This correspondence is by no means a pedagogical collection and Breton never addresses morality, which he leaves to the great moralists of the 17th century whom he admired greatly. However, it is during this period when his daughter has academic difficulties and which is also the one where the choice of a career is decided, that the poet quotes to her this beautiful sentence from Hegel without wanting, in any way, to limit the powers of revolt. On the level of freedom, Breton is not in utopia; he specifies that the first conquest is freedom defined as "realized necessity". Freedom is the knowledge of necessity, as the revolutionary thinkers of the 19th century claimed. If this base is installed, it is already an opening, a tremendous possibility of life, because everything can take shape afterwards. This is an aspect of freedom chosen as an angle of attack to affirm his positions.

Who says freedom, also says refusal of literary prizes, of compromises... Two years earlier, Breton excluded Max Ernst from the surrealist movement for having received the Venice Biennale prize...

We have often evoked the exclusions pronounced against certain members of the surrealist group who deviated from the requirements adopted as a line of conduct. It's part of the recurring themes. It must be recalled that since the beginnings of the Movement, there was a pact between the surrealists, a common commitment. One of Breton's greatest disappointments – I know this very well because he often spoke to us about it at the end of his life – is that he did not understand how, for example, Aragon, who was his best friend, had scandalously betrayed all the positions of his youth by blindly engaging in Stalinism. All the ruptures were painful for him and not only in the moment. Some haunted him for a long time. He said that he often dreamed of friends from whom he had had to separate, but he could not accept their betrayals. These exclusions were not always brutal and for some, Breton had later made honorable amends (Artaud, Desnos or Matta for example). As for Dalí, he got himself excluded from the group because his political positions were intolerable. He admired Hitler to whom he sent letters and, profascist, he also supported Franco; these facts and gestures, need it be specified, were in no way pure provocation. When republicans were sentenced to death, he declared that more could have been shot. Dazzling creator Dalí, for me, is a greater poet than painter, I think in particular of his erotic poems. There was a memorable session at rue Fontaine where Dalí, who expected measures to be taken against him, presented himself on his knees, a thermometer in his mouth. With such a number, everyone burst out laughing and the exclusion could not take place that day. But the next day, Dalí resumed his counter-revolutionary acts and the rupture took place. In reality, most exclusions came from the behavior of people who broke the pact themselves.

To return to the letters addressed to his daughter, we must speak of the recurring anxiety that assails Breton in the face of her mediocre academic results, without taking into account, as Aube insisted on specifying to me, that her father forgot that the three languages she practiced from the age of nine: French, English and Spanish could pose some problems. She lived for nearly two years in Mexico where she translated the exchanges between her mother and Frida Kalho. She navigated from one language to another, which explains, in large part, the grammar and spelling mistakes that her father points out to her in his letters. It must also be said that the material instability in which Breton found himself accentuated this anxiety.

Indeed, his poetry collections were printed in less than three hundred copies and did not sell; this is the fate of poetry since always. The royalties were therefore ridiculous. Breton always lived meagerly, fortunately he benefited from the support of his friends. It must also be said that surrealist painting was not worth much on the art market in the fifties and that in addition, when he tried to part with a painting by Max Ernst or Miró, he sometimes tells his daughter, he felt a real heartbreak. Before going on vacation, he tried to sell a painting according to the sum he needed for the summer, but most of the time, he was deceived by the dealer.

When he returned from the United States, and despite his celebrity, Breton did not even have enough money to pay for a train trip to Antibes where Elisa and he were invited to a friend's house. Jean Paulhan imagined the creation of a collection that Breton would have directed, in order to justify the advance he had made to help him. Until the end, Breton had financial difficulties. In a letter, he says that he will even borrow money from Benjamin Péret, that wonderful surrealist poet; but Péret not only never had a penny but, moreover, he regularly lost his housing! André Thirion had intrigued with the city of Paris to have a prize given to André Breton who refused it. He always rejected honors. Accepting them was the beginning of compromise.

But this situation in no way prevented Breton from becoming passionate about objects that constituted a collection that has become, today, famous. He was interested in "art brut" for example, well before everyone else, and he participated in the foundation, with Dubuffet, of the Compagnie de l'art brut. He often went to the Saint Ouen flea market. In the last years of his life, he realized, while browsing, that many objects he had bought in the past had become very sought after and very expensive. He then wondered which of these objects others had not yet "discovered" and which he could buy at an affordable price. It was at that moment that he began collecting holy water fonts for the quality of these old earthenware. He became passionate about waffle and host molds, completely neglected objects, some of which date from the 13th century and possess alchemical legends, drawings or coats of arms.

As for the writing of Breton's letters in his correspondence... There are marvels that we discover today and always an incomparable height of tone. For example, he writes to his daughter on December 27, 1948, at the time of wishes: "May the year 1949 open enchanted doors for you and may it be given to me to see you enter through one of these doors to find you near me. I hold you with all the ivy in the world". We are immediately in poetry. The first letter of this collection, accompanied by collages and drawings, is superb. We are not surprised that Aube became a passionate collagist. Some of her illuminated envelopes were moreover presented at the Musée de La Poste, in 2005, in a large exhibition entitled "When art becomes postal". José Pierre wrote about her: "Should Aube Elléouët's modesty suffer from it, I like to say that she belongs to this family of amazed-amazing people and to no other."

The interweaving of life and work is constant in these letters. Breton speaks there of his private life, of surrealism, of collective activities such as the implementation of a new game like that of "L'un dans l'autre" that he invented, of the preparation of a new magazine or an exhibition, of the publication of an art brut almanac, of butterfly hunting, of the purchase of a pre-Columbian object... He shares with Aube his occupations, his readings, his positions...

Until the last days of his life, Breton respected the options taken in his youth. The famous Manifeste des 121, subtitled "Declaration on the right to insubordination in the Algerian war" is at the origin, what many ignore, an initiative of the surrealists. Jean Schuster and Dionys Mascolo, drafted the first versions reviewed by Breton and Gérard Legrand who brought some corrections, it was then Maurice Blanchot who completed the whole text. For greater effectiveness, the Manifesto was presented to Sartre, who endorsed it and guaranteed it, which could have led to believe that he was the author. Because they had many difficulties with the Left manipulated by the Stalinists who distrusted them since Breton's condemnation of the Moscow Trials, the surrealists stepped back a bit. At the time, this publication had the effect of a bomb. Several people including painters and actors were prosecuted as well as the surrealist Jehan Mayoux, teacher, who was suspended.

These positions and this fight for freedom are already very present in the first letters that Breton addresses to Aube even if he speaks more freely about them as she approaches her twenties.

It is in a letter from 1952 that he relates to her a rather comical incident, but which could have turned out very badly. With the surrealist painter Adrien Dax and his wife Simone who had come to see him at Saint-Cirq-la-Popie, one of the most beautiful sites in the Lot valley, they went to visit the Cabrerets cave, not far from there. Breton, who was wary of the exploitation of tourist sites, often managed by priests, whom he did not appreciate much, doubted the authenticity of certain supposedly prehistoric drawings. He noticed by putting his finger on one of the lines drawn on the wall that it tended to fade. The guide, an authentic M.R.P deputy, furious, struck Breton's hand with a stick, and the latter retaliated with punches. Abbé Breuil had said, at the time, in Le Figaro: "If scoundrels like Monsieur André Breton start destroying the national heritage!..." There were then expertises that did not succeed and a trial that was much talked about in the press. Breton was sentenced to pay a large sum of money, but fortunately there was an amnesty. Malraux had been sensitive to this affair, by definition, because many years before, when he had had trouble in Indochina, Breton had taken his defense. The way Breton tells this episode to Aube is indeed quite funny. There was this capacity for exaltation in the author of the Manifestos that was admirable, and that was often reproached to him. For me, it was linked to poetic fury. The exaltation of poetry can, indeed, lead to beautiful storms.

The surrealist group was an egregore, to use an old alchemist's word, a gathering of different spirits who work together. And this egregore practiced the sharing of thought, this inexhaustible source of creation.

When all of Breton's correspondence is accessible, it will be fantastic to be able to meet Apollinaire, Picasso there... He exchanged letters with Valéry, Saint-John Perse and many others like Lévi-Strauss with whom he went to what one could call the New York flea market, to try to find Native American objects. The great ethnologist asked Breton, "André, in your opinion, are these objects authentic?" Breton answered "yes" for some, and "don't touch" for others. The poet's eye always sees further.

It is thanks to Aube's insistence with the publisher that we were able to obtain reproductions of color postcards and reproductions of Breton's drawings and collages in the very strict "Blanche" Collection of Gallimard. This correspondence is placed under the sign of the marvelous. Breton wrote in the first Manifesto of Surrealism: "Let's cut it short: the marvelous is always beautiful, any marvelous is beautiful, there is even only the marvelous that is beautiful."

Jean-Michel Goutier

André Breton Lettres à Aube, Gallimard 2009 (p. 24-26).

LISTEN TO THE SHELL

I hadn't started to see you you were DAWN
Nothing was revealed
All the boats were rocking on the shore
Untying the favors (you know) of those candy boxes
Pink and white between which ambles a silver shuttle
And I named you Dawn trembling

I would have liked to bring you the tropical flower
That opens at midnight
A single snow crystal that would overflow the cup of your two hands
It's called in Martinique the ball flower

She and you share the mystery of existence
The first grain of dew far ahead of all others madly
  iridescent containing everything

I see what is hidden from me forever
When you sleep in the clearing of your arm under the butterflies of your hair

And when you are reborn from the phoenix of your source
In the mint of memory
From the enigmatic moiré of resemblance in a bottomless mirror
Pulling the pin of what will only be seen once

In my heart all the wings of the milkweed
Freight what you tell me

You wear a summer dress that you don't know yourself
Almost immaterial it is constellated in all directions with horseshoe magnets
of beautiful red minium with blue feet

André Breton

(at sea between Havana and [La] New Orleans, March 17, 1946)