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[Contribution to the encyclopedic Da Costa]

Dictionary project with Benjamin Péret

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Élie Bonjour, Louis-Philippe Ier, Riemann, Henri, dit le Douanier Rousseau

Description

Manuscript for the Da Costa journal, for a booklet to be published in 1947.

These three pages probably date from 1953 [sic], from a dictionary project which would have been carried out in collaboration with Benjamin Péret. Epidote, Élie Bonjour, Evagination, but also Eskimo here side by side. Compared to the Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme published with Éluard in the 1930s, this opus that will never be published has a more relaxed character, with longer articles and a freer choice. The approach is surrealist, the cultural choice belongs more properly to Breton, in particular with the Élie Bonjour (Hello Elias) which comes from research undertaken by Breton in 1940 around the time he was composing the poem Pleine Marge. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Hand written texts [July or October (and not November) 1947].
2 1/2 pages large octavo handwritten in blue ink relating to the six notices written by Breton for the Da Costa Encyclopaedia (on which Marcel Duchamp collaborated): Epidote, Élie, Ethics, Evagination, Exageration, Eskimo:
‘Forever predestined for the future phenomenon, the Eskimo with ivory glasses in the everlasting snowstorm is, par excellence, the artist-sculptor, engraver and poet, who plunges us ‘into forgetting about existing at an age that survives beauty.’
‘Europeans, recently affected by freezing temperatures, would benefit from adopting this perspective, establishing a clear discrimination between what, from this standpoint, might and might not endure. Things that might endure include: Joyeux Farceur by Henri Rousseau; the Obelisk, Riemann's ribbon [later corrected by Breton: ‘the Moëbius strip’], La Dragonne by Alfred Jarry, Main forte by Benjamin Péret. » Numerous deletions and corrections. [auction catalogue, 2003]

The 2003 Auction catalogue indicates ‘November’; Étienne-Alain Hubert adds ‘probably October’, based on an advert in Revue Fontaine in November 1947, and Les Revues littéraires records a section from the Da Costa in July 1947. [André Breton website, 2021]

Bibliography

– Da Costa Encyclopedique, Section VII, volume II, n.d. [July 1947] [32 p./ p. 207-238] (thanks to the Les Revues littéraires website)
– André Breton, ‘[Collaboration au Da Costa encyclopédique]’, Alentours II, Œuvres complètes, Volume III, (Edition established by Marguerite Bonnet and edited by ––Étienne-Alain Hubert with contributions from Philippe Bernier, Marie-Claire Dumas and José Pierre), Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, pages 965-8 et notes pages 1429-31.

– Alastair Brotchie, ed. Encyclopaedia Acephalica. London, Atlas Press, 1995 (includes the texts of the Da Costa in translation).

Le Da Costa encyclopédique dans Les Revues littéraires