Perspective cavaliere (André Breton)

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Description

Second draft of the manuscript of ‘Perspective cavalière’, originally titled ‘Qu'à cela ne tienne’ (‘Never mind’), published in no. 5 of La Brèche in October 1963.

‘The bar is set low’ with Impressionism and Fauvism... to say nothing of that ‘derisory’ Parnassianism! In this ‘Knight’s Perspective’, originally titled ‘Qu'à cela ne tienne’ (‘Never mind’), published in no. 5 of La Brèche in October 1963, and that would lend its title to a collection of essays, Breton once again devotes himself to setting the surrealist adventure in perspective, by emphasising its internal coherence and the continuum stemming from Romanticism within which it is inscribed. This inevitably leads him, in a spirit that rather recalls the first Manifesto, to deal quite roughly with those schools and movements that arose to interrupt this continuity.

Signed handwritten manuscripts, Saint-Cirq-la-Popie, August 1963.
- 2 in-4° manuscript pages, titled, dated and signed in ink by André Breton, with deletions and corrections making up the second draft of this text relating to the history of the development of Romanticism (from 1830 to 1870) as well as the history of surrealism of the previous forty years (1924 to 1963).

- 3 numbered manuscript pages, titled and signed by Breton of the final version of this text:
‘Among the fashioning of mass sensibilities, the words ‘Twenty years later’ (what about twice that!) bring to mind a lot more cloak than dagger. […]
The first explosion of Romanticism is conventionally dated as 1830 (leaving aside certain premonitory phenomena such as Rousseau, Sade, the Gothic novel, Novalis). [...]
Forty years later, what has this meant, what does it mean? Hugo, all things considered, doesn’t really put a foot wrong. […] On the threshold he started to open up for them arises Rimbaud, with the power of resources implicating the whole of life that up until him had been impossible to countenance, while Lautréamont prophetically takes on that same threshold with explosives, even if it means smashing himself in so doing. […]
The most challenging enigmas, those most apt to spur on the mind’s appetite, are then named Roussel, de Chirico and Duchamp, all a decade younger. But since then? The impending year of 1964 has given surrealism a latitude equivalent to the one that a consideration of Romanticism in 1870 poses.’
(Published in La Brèche, no. 5, October 1963, pages 1 and 2)
Republished as the eponymous essay of a collection of texts by André Breton edited by Marguerite Bonnet, Gallimard, 1970.

The first draft of ‘Perspective cavalière’, under the title ‘Qu'à cela ne tienne’.

Translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski

Bibliography

- André Breton, « Pesrpective cavalière », La Brèche, n°5, octobre 1963, pages 1 et 2
- André Breton (dir. Marguerite Bonnet), « Pesrpective cavalière », in Pesrpective cavalière, Gallimard, 1970, 252 p. + 8 ill. hors texte.

Creation date	août-63
Date of publication	1963
Languages	French
Physical description	Ms - encre noire
Breton Auction, 2003	Lot 2516
Keywords	Work notes, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, Surrealism
Categories	Andre Breton's Manuscripts
Set	[AB's Manuscripts] Manuscripts 1958-1966, [Journal] La Brèche
Permanent link	https://cms.andrebreton.fr/en/work/56600100083230