Thursday, March 02, 2006

a cover of Litterature (c. 1922-1924)

Continuing a curiosity fundamental to my thought about poetry, after research in the last two months over surrealism -- pertaining to my review for American Book Review of George Kalamaras' very fine Even the Java Sparrows Call Your Hair (Quale, 2005), where I'd been gladly able once again in life to review surrealism's foundations and cultural-crosscultural contexts--el maravilloso as central and as mimicked and/or appropriated, (see this LiP article for a sense of the) exigence, all close ideational-friends of my thinking ever since high school... which means quite a while ago! And now I'm looking into new ways to think and write about some of the interrelations between the primary texts, the criticism, the reception, and what we see today in contemporary US poetics. That is my project. Then there is surrealismo's subsequent *dissemination* or criss-crossing nominal paths, such as what today we call "neosurrealism." I might make a book out of it--indeed, if anyone out there has leads or commentary that way, please let me know...

So, following here on Tex is something from a rare book I found in the UTA library, a book that is falling apart--spine is crumbling, but it still holds... when I return it I will suggest they send it to the book doctor (there is such a thing, yes) but I'm so glad to see that so many students have apparently availed themselves of this book's exigence?--hah, i thought on finding it buried in the stacks, well I hope many minds's fingers have thumbed through this wonderful little book, which is also full of photographs (on beautifully thick, glossy pages), mostly snapshots of picnics and group photos I'd not seen before, and Duchamps et al artwork, and all the kinds of clowning around that Breton and folk loved to do, and which upset a wide range of authorities, all of which seem now so innocently full of good critical-responsive fun -- well, yes, and I do so-love a well-used book, Y'all :)

Writing shortly after his friend's death, here is a resonant excerpt from critic
Andre Parinaud's poignant Hommage a Andre Breton * :


Today when he is no more -- his blue gaze, his voice, his presence no longer invested with the power to provoke even the slightest wave of immediate action -- I know very well that it is his immeasurablility which has escaped the measure of all, the measure of the specialists in order.

And I know that his _raison d'etre_ has gone beyond the reasoning powers of the more powerful, the more powerful but by no means the better. Who was Andre Breton? What role did he play in this western world... ?

. . .

It seems to me that the best way to render homage to this man who has left me so many beautiful things to remember, is to give him a kind of meditation ... in the company of his old friend, Duchamp to take up again our conversations and our dialogs with the man who was perhaps his spiritual brother, notwithstanding their almost total difference in ways of life, in actions, in the formation of human relationships, in the very use of the word. Breton explained everything, even when there was nothing to explain. Duchamp contents himself with suggesting and uses silence as one of the elements of his dialectic.

He listens... perhaps better to recall his memories, "The essential thing about Breton ..." -- [Duchamp] tells -- "I have never known a man who had a greater capacity for love, a greater power for loving the greatness of life, and you don't understand anything about his hates if you don't realize that he acted in this way to protect the very quality of his love for life. Breton loved like a heart beats. He was the lover of love in a world that believes in prostitution. This was his sign."

(19, 20, 24)

* Andre Parinaud in collaboration with Arturo Schwartz, Homage to Andre Breton (Milano: 17 gennaio, Centro Francese di Studi, 1967).