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Intervention at the Club du Faubourg

Indictment of Arthur Meyer

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Charles Baudelaire, Benjamin Constant, Gustave Flaubert, Isidore Ducasse, dit comte de Lautréamont, Charles Meyer, Alfred de Musset, Gérard de Nerval, Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred de Vigny, Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Desnos, Valentine Hugo

Description

Text of a talk scheduled to be given by Breton on 23 April 1923.

This text, known and published under the title of ‘Indictment of Arthur Meyer’, was copied in André Breton's hand. It was delivered on 23 April 1923, at the Théâtre de la Fourmi, as part of the activities of the Club du Faubourg. Arthur Meyer, editor of Le Gaulois, is accused of wanting to burn a rather inconsequential letter from Gustave Flaubert; on several occasions Breton took a stand against the tendency descendants and posterity in general have to mitigate the work of writers and artists. We know how angry he was with Paul Claudel and those, following Isabelle Rimbaud, who tried to concoct a Catholic Rimbaud; here, Breton is coming to the rescue of Gustave Flaubert, even though he held him in far less esteem.Handwritten manuscript, sd [1923].
- 4 handwritten pages in-12, handwritten manuscript of André Breton with erasures and corrections in blue ink on blue paper.
Arthur Meyer, the editor of the daily newspaper Le Gaulois, was accused of wanting to buy a rather uninhibited letter by Flaubert in order to burn it. ‘The surrealists could not let prudish censorship conduct an autodafé without protest.’ Despite this, André Breton's text is essentially a vigorous charge against Alfred de Vigny and Gustave Flaubert (Œuvres complètes, Volume I,Inédits II, pages 637-8.)

*This entry was translated from the French by Michael Richardson.

Bibliography

André Breton (Édition de Marguerite Bonnet avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier, Étienne-Alain Hubert et José Pierre), « [Mise en accusation d'Arthur Meyer] », Inédits II, Œuvres complètes, tome I, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, p. 637-638.