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Response to an enquiry by France-Observateur

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Robert Faurisson, Jacques Lebar, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine

Description

Handwritten manuscript signed by André Breton, dated 25 December 1961, concerning a polemical interpretation of Rimbaud in answer to an enquiry by France Observateur.

It was on Christmas Day 1961 that Breton answered an enquiry of France Observateur about a new and polemical interpretation of Rimbaud, by a certain R.F. This was none other than Robert Faurisson, who would later distinguish himself by other theses, just as polemical but that Breton would probably not have approved.
He thinks that the erotic reading the revisionist critic gives to certain poems (in ‘A-t-on lu Rimbaud?’, in Bizarre, 4th quarter 1961) errs at times only due to an ‘excess of ingenuity’, but on the whole, Breton states that he agrees. Étiemble, Antoine Adam and a few others discussed Faurisson's article in the Observateur and elsewhere. Their contributions were collected in the July 1971 issue of La Bibliothèque volante.[Site Atelier André Breton, 2005]


Handwritten manuscript signed, Paris, 25 December 1961.
- 1 page in-4 handwritten in ink by André Breton transcribing the handwritten questions and 3 pages in-4 in ink of Breton's answers, with a few erasures and corrections relating to the publication of a special issue of the journal Bizarre entitled ‘A-t-on lu Rimbaud?’[sale catalogue de la vente, 2003]

A letter to J. Lebar of France-Observateur with a typescript questionnaire attached.
- 2 pages in-4. ‘Mr. R.F.'s thesis has a remarkable lacuna: it doesn’t mention an important shock-event, that is the gunshot in Brussels that led to Rimbaud having recourse to the police, the sordidness of the judicial investigation and Verlaine's sentence. For Rimbaud, it is about an irretrievably lost childhood, about life according to poetry being struck by the worst disaster, and about the pursuit of this life being forever prohibited.
‘Following such a drama, I see no other way for him to survive than with broken wings.’

*This entry was translated from the French by Michael Richardson.

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[Les Éditions Jean-Jacques Pauvert ont publié...]

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Jacques Lebar

Lettre de J. Lebar à André Breton, datée de Paris, le 16 décembre 1961.

Deux images, une notice descriptive, une bibliothèque.