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Interview for _View_

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Louis Aragon, Maurice Barrès, Thomas Bouchard, Jacques Brunius, Paul Bénichou, Nicolas Calas, Giorgio De Chirico, Thomas De Quincey, André Derain, Esteban Francès, Sigmund Freud, Morris Hirshfield, Adolf Hitler, Edward Hopper, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Georges Hénein, Wifredo Lam, Georg-Christoph Lichtenberg, Pierre Mabille, Nostradamus, Gordon Onslow-Ford, Wolfgang Paalen, Jean-François Revel, Paul Valéry, Guillaume Apollinaire, Victor Brauner, André Breton, Robert Desnos, Oscar Dominguez, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Louis Poirier, dit Julien Gracq, Alfred Jarry, Franz Kafka, André Masson, Roberto Echauren Matta, Édouard-Léon-Théodore Mesens, Pablo Picasso, Benjamin Péret, Raymond Roussel, Kurt Seligmann, Philippe Soupault, Yves Tanguy
Letter to Charles Henri Ford

Description

Manuscripts of replies to an interview with Charles-Henri Ford for the magazine View, published in New York on 1^st August 1941.

Carried out by Charles-Henri Ford for View magazine in New York, this interview evokes in turn the most awful realities (Hitler) and the most bucolic ones, such as the countryside around New York. André Breton is encouraged to develop the thesis according to which ‘A new spirit will be born from the present war,’ referring to the precedents of 1870 and 1914. Also giving evidence of his interest in American art, noting the works of Hopper and Hirschfield, he nonetheless equally refers back to Europe, and to the latest contradictions of the communists in general, Aragon in particular. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Handwritten manuscripts, one of them signed, New York, June 1941. 
- Interview for View, two pages of a first draft manuscript, titled by André Breton, with deletions and corrections, part of the interview organised by Charles-Henri Ford, director of View magazine: ‘I liked enormously what I have seen of the Hudson and its green islets – the Floating island – which doubtless retain something secret and menacing from the books of my childhood.’ (La Pléiade, vol. III, pages 576 to 581).
- 2 in-4° pages of first-draft manuscript, dated New York, 23 June 1941, relating to the interview. [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), « Interview de Charles-Henri Ford », Réponses à d'autres questions (1941 - 1952), Entretiens 1913-1952, Œuvres complètes, tome III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, pages 576-584.