French Modernist Library Series

"The Lost Steps" ("Les Pas perdus") is Andre Breton's first collection of critical and polemical essays. Composed between 1917 and 1923, these pieces trace his evolution during the years when he was emerging as a central figure in French (and European) intellectual life. They chronicle his tumultuous passage through the Dada movement, proclaim his explosive views on Modernism and its heroes, and herald the emergence of Surrealism itself. Along the way, we are given Breton's serious commentaries on his Modernist predecessors, Guillaume Apollinaire and Alfred Jarry, followed by his not-so-serious Dada manifestoes. Also included are portraits of Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Breton's mysterious friend Jacques Vache, as well as a crisis-by-crisis account of his dealing with Dada's leader, Tristan Tzara. Finally, Breton offers a first glimpse of Surrealism, the movement that was forever after identified with his name and that stands as a defining force in twentieth-century aesthetics. Mark Polizzotti, editorial director of David R. Godine, Publisher, is the author of "Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton".
He is also the translator of Jean Echenoz's "Double Jeopardy" (Nebraska 1994) and "Cherokee" (Nebraska 1994) and of Andre Breton's "Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism". Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of French at Hunter College and at the City University of New York. Her most recent work is "Robert Motherwell: What Art Holds". She is the translator of Andre Breton's "Mad Love" (Nebraska 1987) and "Communicating Vessels" (Nebraska 1990).

Communicating Vessels

by Andre Breton

Published 1 December 1990

What Freud did for dreams, André Breton (1896–1966) does for despair: in its distortions he finds the marvelous, and through the marvelous the redemptive force of imagination. Originally published in 1932 in France, Les Vases communicants is an effort to show how the discoveries and techniques of surrealism could lead to recovery from despondency. This English translation makes available "the theories upon which the whole edifice of surrealism, as Breton conceived it, is based."

In Communicating Vessels Breton lays out the problems of everyday experience and of intellect. His involvement with political thought and action led him to write about the relations between nations and individuals in a mode that moves from the quotidian to the lyrical. His dreams triggered a curious correspondence with Freud, available only in this book. As Caws writes, "The whole history of surrealism is here, in these pages."

Break of Day

by Andre Breton

Published 1 September 1999

Originally published in France in 1934, "Break of Day" is Andre Breton's second collection of critical and polemical essays, following "The Lost Steps" (Nebraska 1996). In fewer than two hundred pages, it captures the first full decade of the surrealist movement. The collection opens with an essay composed in 1924 that examines key elements of surrealism and concludes with Breton's harsh revaluation in 1933 of automatic writing. Among the other essays in the volume are 'Refusal to Inter' and 'Legitimate Defense', two pieces that, in translator Mark Polizzotti's words, 'mark surrealism's conscious break from the mainstream and the beginning of its attempts to work alongside the French Communist Party'.Also included are 'Surrealism and the Treatment of Mental Illness', which addresses Breton's complex, ambivalent views on mental illness and the emerging psychiatric establishment; 'Introduction to the Strange Tales of Achim von Arnim', which reveals surrealism's debt to such precursors as the German romantics and delineates a surrealistic aesthetic of the macabre; and 'Picasso in His Element', in which Breton demonstrates his formidable talents as a critic of the visual arts.
Mark Polizzotti is the editorial director of David R. Godine, Inc. He is the translator of numerous works and the author of "Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton". Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School of the City University of New York and the author or editor of some forty-one books, most recently "The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter".

Free Rein

by Andre Breton

Published 1 March 1996

Free Rein is a gathering of seminal essays by Andre Breton, the foremost figure among the French surrealists. Written between 1936 and 1952, they include addresses, manifestoes, prefaces, exhibition pamphlets, and theoretical, polemical, and lyrical essays. Together they display the full span of Breton's preoccupations, his abiding faith in the early principles of surrealism, and the changing orientations, in light of crucial events of those years, of the surrealist movement within which he remained the leading force.

Having broken decisively with Marxism in the mid-1930s, Breton repeatedly addresses the horrors of the Stalinist regime (which denounced him during the Moscow trials of 1936). He argues for the autonomy of art and poetry and condemns the subservience to "revolutionary" aims exemplified by socialist realism. Other articles reflect on aesthetic issues, cinema, music, and education and provide detailed meditations on the literary, artistic, and philosophical topics for which he is best known. Free Rein will prove indispensable for students of Breton, surrealism, and modern French and European culture.

Mad Love

by Andre Breton

Published 1 May 1987

Mad Love has been acknowledged an undisputed classic of the surrealist movement since its first publication in France in 1937. Its adulation of love as both mystery and revelation places it in the most abiding of literary traditions, but its stormy history and technical difficulty have prevented it from being translated into English until now.

""There has never been any forbidden fruit. Only temptation is divine,"" writes André Breton, leader of the surrealists in Paris in the 1920s and '30s. Mad Love is dedicated to defying ""the widespread opinion that love wears out, like the diamond, in its own dust."" Celebrating breton's own love and lover, the book unveils the marvelous in everyday encounters and the hidden depths of ordinary things.