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Regarding (and guard against) impatience

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
Person cited Garry Davis

Description

Manuscript dated 25 January 1949 of a speech by André Breton in support of Garry Davis, first ‘Citizen of the World’.

In the face of ‘the anguish of barracks and arsenals,’ here Breton extols the virtues of impatience, in all of its revolutionary possibilities. The context is that in January 1949, what needs supporting is a young American – but a ‘Citizen of the World’ – Garry Davis, much talked about since he interrupted a session of the United Nations. Breton’s article would appear in Peuples du monde on 5 February; it gives evidence for the writer’s growing engagement with the Global Citizens’ cause at the close of the 1940s. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Signed handwritten manuscript, 25 January 1949.
- 3 pages of in-4° manuscript in blue ink, dated and signed by André Breton.
This is a first draft manuscript for the first part of the text (1 page) and of the complete and definitive version of it (2 pages) relating to the social condition of humanity and the actions of Garry Davis.
‘This activity in support of a world government (one, I might add, that we would refuse to countenance other than in the sense of the authorised management and equitable distribution of the world’s properties) had already, in 1946 and 1947, been conveyed in a viable programme…’. 

Deletions and corrections. (La Pléiade, volume III, Alentours II, pages 990-991). [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Exhibition

Cahors, Musée de Cahors Henri-Martin, La Maison de verre, André Breton, initiateur découvreur, 20 September – 31 December 2014

Translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski

Bibliography

- André Breton (Édition de Marguerite Bonnet avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier, Marie-Claire Dumas, Étienne-Alain Hubert et José Pierre), Alentours II, Œuvres complètes, tome III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, p. 990-991, notice p. 1437.