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Sixth Lecture

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Charles Asselineau, Théodore de Banville, Charles Baudelaire, Louis Jacques Napoléon Bertrand, dit Aloysius Bertrand, Petrus Borel, Albert Béguin, Alexandre Dumas père, Nicolas Flamel, Charles Fourier, Alphonse de Lamartine, Isidore Ducasse, dit comte de Lautréamont, Charles Marie Lecomte de Lisle, Stéphane Mallarmé, Gérard de Nerval, Praroud, Arthur Rimbaud, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de Vigny, Théophile Gautier, Valentine Hugo, Alfred Jarry

Description

Manuscript of the sixth lecture given by Breton at Port-au-Prince (Haiti) on February 5th, 1946, and which would be published in 1992 by Gallimard [Publishing] House.

A little shorter than its predecessors, this is the sixth of a series of eight lectures published by Breton at Port-au-Prince (Haiti) in December 1945 and January-February 1946. Devoted to the origins of modern poetry, from Nerval to Baudelaire, the text is a audacious piece of writing (evoking the “gravestone chill” of such poems as those of Vigny...). We see Breton the pedagogue, being careful to share his knowledge, which is also a sensibility [taste]; he does so in order to share his love of minor authors like Petrus Borel, or overlooked authors like Aloysius Bertrand. Such is recounted in the third volume of the Pléiade, in the section Inédits I (Unpublished Works I). [Atelier Andre Breton website, 2005]

Lectures (Haiti, Martinique) 1945-1946
Sixth lecture, original manuscript, February 5th, 1946.
-9 pages, folio in-4°, original manuscript of the first draft with words crossed out and corrections by Breton’s pen of this 6th lecture, regarding poetry.

“No one will contradict, for example, that for the European the foundation of this treasure is represented by the Iliad and the Bible. It is clear that even he who would not have directly been in contact with these two monuments of human thought, or from which, for deliberate reasons, would disagree with them in the greatest deference, wouldn’t be any less in their unknown and whatever their existence, largely dependent upon the manner of conceptualization and response. It is this strong lineage, these ties, which, one has to admit, are proving to be nowadays still unbroken [...]

This is thus what I consider the works for which I have chosen to make the object of this talk. Certain texts have been systematically seen by the opposite end of the spyglass, this is the case, we have said, of that of Victor Hugo, of others who pull great consequence in the social sphere, with those like Charles Fourier, who have long been the prey of irony, others during the lifetime of their authors have passed almost unnoticed like that of Aloysius Bertrand, others have been dismissed as insane like that of Nerval or of Lautréamont, and others finally have been deemed an opprobrium, like that of Borel, Baudelaire, or Rimbaud.”

This manuscript includes some clippings of which a few are printed matter. [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Bibliography

- André Breton, (Édition de Marguerite Bonnet avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier, Marie-Claire Dumas, Étienne-Alain Hubert et José Pierre), Inédits I, Œuvres complètes, tome III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, p. 295-311.

Place of origin