Andre Breton 1896-1966



biography

coming soon...




selected works in translation



selected writing in The Dada Painters and Poets edited by Robert Motherwell (Belknap, 1981)


Earthlight translated by Bill Zavatsky and Zach Rogow (Sun & Moon Press, 1993)


The Immaculate Conceptiontranslated by Jon Graham (Atlas 1990)


Mad Love translated by M.A.C. (University of Nebraska Press, 1987)


The Magnetic Fields translated by David Gascoyne (Atlas, 1990)


Nadja translated by Richard Howard (Grove Press, 1960)


Poems of Andre Breton translated by Mary Ann Caws and Jean-Pierre Cauvin (University of Texas Press, 1982)


selected poems in The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry edited by Paul Auster (Vintage, 1982)




poetry

always for the first time


Always for the first time
Hardly do I know you by sight
You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window
A wholly imaginary house
It is there that from one second to the next
In the inviolate darkness
I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occuring
The one and only rift
In the facade and in my heart
The closer I come to you
In reality
The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room
Where you appear alone before me
At first you coalesce entierly with the brightness
The elusive angle of a curtain
It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse
With the diagonal slant of its girls picking
Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare
Before them a T-square of dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep
You as though you could be
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you
You pretend not to know I am watching you
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know
You idleness brings tears to my eyes
A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures
It's a honeydew hunt
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the forest
There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy
There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absense in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time


less time


Less time than it takes to say it, less tears than it takes to die; I've taken account of everything, there you have it. I've made a census of the stones, they are as numerous as my fingers and some others; I've distributed some pamphlets to the plants, but not all were willing to accpet them. I've kept company with music for a second only and now I no longer know what to think of suicide, for if I ever want to part from myself, the exit is on this side and, I add mischievously, the entrance, the re-entrance is on the other. You see what you still have to do. Hours, grief, I don't keep a reasonable account of them; I'm alone, I look out of the window; there is no passerby, or rather no one passes (underline passes). You don't know this man? It's Mr. Same. May I introduce Madam Madam? And their children. Then I turn back on my steps, my steps turn back too, but I don't know exactly what they turn back on. I consult a schedule; the names of the towns have been replaced by the names of people who have been quite close to me. Shall I go to A, return to B, change at X? Yes, of course I'll change at X. Provided I don't miss the connection with boredom! There we are: boredom, beautiful parallels, ah! how beautiful the parallels are under God's perpendicular.


what is surrealism?


Please click here for this link





return to the library
return to kicking giants