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About Minou Drouet

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Robert Browning, Claude Drouet, George Du Maurier, Léo Ferré, Jean Piaget, Gisèle Prassinos, Arthur Rimbaud, Victor Hugo, Marie-Noëlle, dite Minou Drouet

Description

Manuscript signed by André Breton and published on 20 December 1955.

The name of Minou Drouet is hardly known today but for a few months in 1955 it resonated like a revelation: a ten year old child published poems of astonishing quality and modernity of form whose only weakness was its depth of feeling for life... In short, it was a fraud, as Breton underlined when asked to consider these texts as a kind of legal expert. The poet is categorical on this point, but still admits to being fascinated by the personality of the probable author of the texts, the child's stepmother. The text was published in Paris-Presse on 22 December 1955. [Site Atelier André Breton, 2005]

Hand written manuscript signed by André Breton and published on 20 December 1955 in Paris-Presse.
2 pages in-8° handwritten on green paper in ink by Breton, with erasures and corrections of a text published in Paris-Presse, relating to the publication of the Minou Drouet’s Poèmes. ‘That said, can such texts be a child’s work?’
‘No child at such an age or even older could by herself and on her own write what has been imputed to Minou Drouet... It doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable to speak of an imposture. My personal interest was drawn to Mme Claude Drouet rather than to Minou.’ [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Bibliography

André Breton, « [La grande entreprise de Mme Drouet] », Inédits, Œuvres complètes, tome IV, Écrits sur l'art et autres textes (Edition établie par Marguerite Bonnet et éditée par Étienne-Alain Hubert avec des contributions de Philippe Bernier et de Marie-Claire Dumas), Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 1057-1058, notice p. 1445.

See also

1 Work

 

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Madame Drouet's Great Undertaking

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André Breton

Cutting from Paris-Presse dated December 20, 1955.

An image, a descriptive note, an associated work.