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Response to a game: Will you open?

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Author André Breton
People cited Alphonse Allais, Honoré de Balzac, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Bettina von Arnim, Auguste Blanqui, Jean-Paul Brisset, François-René de Chateaubriand, Gustave Courbet, Paul Cézanne, Darwin, Thomas De Quincey, Stanislas Drouet, Charles Fourier, Sigmund Freud, Fulcanelli, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Francesco Goya, Caroline de Günderode, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Vladimir Ilitch Oulianov, dit Lénine, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean-Paul Marat, Karl Marx, Gustave Moreau, Gérard de Nerval, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich von Hardenberg, dit Novalis, Edgar Allan Poe, Maximilien Robespierre, Henri, dit le Douanier Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri Beyle, dit Stendhal, Frédéric Tristan, Vincent Van Gogh, Lewis Carroll, Charles Cros, Paul Gauguin, Valentine Hugo, Germain Nouveau, Georges Seurat, Léon Trotsky, Paul Verlaine

Description

Manuscript of a game called ‘Will you open?’ to be published in Médium, autumn 1953.

Published in the new series of Medium, which became a ‘journal’ in autumn 1953, before being republished in the third volume of the Complete Works, this worksheet shows the return of surrealist games. This one, called ‘Ouvrez-vous ?’ (‘Will you open?’) interrogates several well-established cultural figures, which sets up a few surprises: that Cézanne might be refused entry to Breton’s studio would be no surprise, but Poe, that hero for Baudelaire, is also left out on the landing because of his ‘detective slant’. As for Marx, ‘one’ – in other words, Breton – no longer opens the door to him, ‘out of weariness’. Breton’s intellectual culture, made up of deep loyalties, is nevertheless still in play, in both sense of this word: liable to be available for ludic readings, and always ready to replay itself, to reinvent its space – a playground… [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Handwritten manuscript, between 29 July and 22 August 1953.
1 in-4° manuscript page by Breton in black ink, titled and with deletions and corrections of a list of poets, painters and writers to whom Breton would or would not open his door if they knocked on it.

This list of 36 famous names, from Novalis to Robespierre, put into alphabetical order, was published in issue 1 of the journal Médium (November 1953), following a text titled ‘Ouvrez-vous ?’ [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski

Bibliography

- Jean Schuster (dir.), Médium, communication surréaliste, n° 1, novembre 1953, p. 1.
- 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, pages 1101 et 1102

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Médium, 1

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Numéro 1 de la nouvelle série de la revue Médium, publiée en novembre 1953 sous la direction de Jean Schuster.

Sept images, une notice descriptive, une exposition, un lien. 

[Journal] Médium