Description
Manuscript by André Breton dated 8 March 1953 for Le Figaro littéraire.
Stalin is dead, and the time has come to take stock. At a distance from the official (and sincere) tears of the Communist press, Breton responds in Le Figaro littéraire, drawing an uncompromising portrait of the ‘Little Father of the Peoples’ as a Grand Inquisitor, and appealing to the Dostoyevsky of The Possessed to stigmatise the Soviet leader’s cultural negligence. Over and above Stalin, it was French Stalinism that the poet confronted, Breton having already commented with an obvious pleasure upon Picasso’s famous portrait of Stalin that had made the news some time earlier. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]
Autograph manuscript, 8 March 1953.
- 1/2 page in-4° titled in red ink, handwritten, dated, and signed by André Breton :
"Question: What appearance do you think Stalin will have, not so much in history (Russian history, for example) as in human history itself?
- At best, he deserves to pass into posterity in the guise lent by his illustrious compatriot to the Grand Inquisitor [...] What more can be added, other than what isn’t already known? Hands stained with the blood of his best companions in the struggle; the secret of an infallible means of depriving them of their honour as well as their lives; the iniquitous attack on the Word which has consisted in systematically perverting those words that carry the ideal; duplicity and terror erected as a mode of government [...]." Erasures and corrections. [Sale Catalogue, 2003].
Bibliography
- André Breton, [Staline dans l'histoire], Le Figaro littéraire, n°7, 14 mars 1953
- André Breton (Édition publiée sous la direction d'Étienne-Alain Hubert avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier et Marie-Claire Dumas), « [Staline dans l'histoire] », Perspective cavalière, Œuvres complètes, tome IV, Écrits sur l'art et autres textes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 863, notice p. 1398
2 Comments
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Le ton de ce commentaire est étrange. On pourrait croire à une certaine complaisance pour les staliniens, français ou autres... La simple et exacte retranscription du texte de Breton n'aurait-elle pas été plus adaptée ? On aurait pu tout au plus y ajouter quelques renvois au volume II des OEuvres complètes, où Marguerite Bonnet a livré nombre de précisions sur la façon dont Breton a affronté les staliniens à une époque où ce n'était pas sans danger. Comme souvent, ce commentaire anonyme est troublant.
Merci Jean-Luc Majouret,
la bibliographie a été mise à jour, le texte anonyme identifié.
ck_
