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Sleeping fit

Drawing

Author

Author Robert Desnos
People cited Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst
Notes by André Breton

Description

Drawings by Desnos made during a sleeping fit session in 1922.
In this series of drawings by Desnos, leaving behind the fairly formal representation of his earlier works to go back to a rapid ‘scribbling’, the figure of Duchamp returns three times.  While Duchamp was an unchallenged master among the extant surrealists, in the form of his alter ego Rrose Sélavy he would soon become the interlocutor for a sleeping Desnos: the poet claimed to enter into communication with the artist, who at this time was living in New York, and received his directions for drawings and word games. One section of this dialogue involves Desnos’ audience (‘And Ernst?’), since the experience of the hypnotic sleeping fits is always collective in nature. Breton, constantly anxious, despite the ever less vigorous denials as the years go by, to attain a magical domain of consciousness, asks: ‘When will I die?’ The sleeping Desnos’ answer, as a kind of homage, is: ‘Never.’ 

First sleeping fits.
8 captioned original drawings by Desnos with questions from Breton in black pencil, some of them on the headed notepaper for the ‘Congrès de Paris’ (8 in-4° pages):
‘What is that? – Duchamp’s name.
And Ernst, are you forgetting him? - Ernst.
When will I die? - Never.
What does [this drawing] represent? - André Breton.
What does this [drawing of a circle] represent? – The sailor without a veil
And this one [a drawing of a rotorelief]? - Marcel Duchamp
What does this one show? - Marcel Duchamp’s gears [?].
Duchamp’s glass? – The landscape of perpetual movements. Duchamp.’