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**Homage to M. W. Svanberg**

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Hyeronimus Bosch, Dom. Neroman, Arthur Rimbaud, Max Walter Svanberg, Ludwig Achim von Arnim

Description

Signed manuscript by André Breton dated 12^th February 1954. 

Connected back momentarily to his native Sweden by this impassioned comparison with the Vikings, Breton devoted two texts to Max Walter Svanberg between 1954 and 1955. In the first, ‘Homage to M. W. Svanberg’, Breton evokes the ‘fascination’ (a word that appears rather late on in his critical vocabulary, and one that he uses sparingly) that a body of work plunging the viewer into ‘the absolute of danger’ can exert upon him. The second text, written on the occasion of the painter’s exhibition at the À l'Étoile scellée gallery between March and April 1955, sets out subtle analogies with the ‘pungency’ of Paalen’s work and with that still present in folk art. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Signed handwritten manuscript, Paris, 12^th February 1954 
- 1 in-4° page manuscript in ink, titled ‘Homage to M. W. Svanberg’, signed and dated by Breton 12^th February 1954, with deletions and corrections, of the first draft of this text. 
- 2 in-4° pages of manuscript in ink, titled and signed by Breton, of the second draft of this text:
“Svanberg, it must be said, acts as our host in a world which is nothing less than that of the ‘scabrous’, in the most subversive sense of the word. I have always thought, for my part, that the purely erotic aspect of the scabrous, the kind that enraptured us so deeply in certain dreams that we retained a desperate yearning for it on awakening, has alone allowed mankind to form a notion of paradises.” [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Bibliography

André Breton, « Hommage à Max Walter Svanberg », Médium, communication surréaliste n° 3, mai 1954, p. 2.

André Breton (Édition publiée sous la direction d'Étienne-Alain Hubert avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier et Marie-Claire Dumas), « Hommage à Max Walter Svanberg », Alentours, Œuvres complètes, tome IV, Écrits sur l'art et autres textes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 1049-1051, notice p. 1443.