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[To Pierre Mabille]

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Pierre Mabille, Stéphane Mallarmé

Description

Manuscript destined for Arts magazine, 24 October 1952 in homage to Pierre Mabille, who died on 13 October.

The funeral oration we find here is not the kind that André Malraux would soon be giving, with their grandiose and official rhetoric, but on the contrary one that is intimate and resonant with emotion, its modesty residing in the simple use of the formal ‘vous’ form of address. An old friend, and among those who most supported Breton during his years of exile, Pierre Mabille passed away on 13 October 1952. Breton’s homage would appear in Arts on the 24 October; here we have two successive versions. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Handwritten signed manuscript, undated (October 1952).
- 2 in-4° pages of manuscript in ink devoted to Pierre Mabille, the first page constituting the first draft of the second, signed by André Breton:
‘You, Pierre, in the shadows? I can no longer see my door, which your entry through it so often pierced with light. It is still much too close and the brightness is all a blur.’ [Auction catalogue, 2003, translation Krzysztof Fijalkowski, 2022]

Bibliography

André Breton (Édition de Marguerite Bonnet avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier, Marie-Claire Dumas, Étienne-Alain Hubert et José Pierre), « À Pierre Mabille », Alentours II, Œuvres complètes, tome III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, p. 1076, notice p. 1458-1459