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The accursed novelist, Georges Darien

Darien the accursed

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Auriant, Georges Hippolyte Adrien, dit Georges Darien, Jean Loize, Hermann Paul, Max Stirner, Jonathan Swift, Toulouse-Lautrec, Félix Vallotton, Pierre Bonnard, Alfred Jarry

Description

Manuscript by André Breton of a text dated 7 May 1955 that was published in Arts in May 1955. It would be republished as the preface of the Julliard edition of Le Voleur in 1964, and then in Breton’s Perspective cavalière in 1970.

Georges Darien, the accursed novelist: if the author of Le Voleur and La Belle France has today enjoyed a measure of notoriety, notably thanks to his acknowledged influence on Céline, for nearly fifty years of purgatory he was considered an irredeemable anarchist, clamed neither by any school nor by any political tendency. Thus we can see how he might find a place in Breton’s pantheon, who here offers him a fulsome homage, in so doing also recalling Alfred Jarry’s endorsement.  [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Handwritten signed manuscript, Paris, 7 May 1951.
- 1 in-4° manuscript page in black ink, titled and signed by Breton:
‘It is inexcusable and surprising that Jarry’s endorsement, among those who know how infallibly he detected ‘modern’ values, has not long ago brought Darien’s Le Voleur out of the shadow and prompted its republication. … Darien’s life ... is to my knowledge the most vigorous assault against hypocrisy, idiocy and cowardice. Darien, a rebel if ever there was one … remains to this day the greatest incarnation of what Stirner sought in the Unique: the one who from his first day to his last aspired to be “a free man on free soil…”’ [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski

Bibliography

André Breton (Édition publiée sous la direction d'Étienne-Alain Hubert avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier et Marie-Claire Dumas), « Darien le maudit », Perspective cavalière, Œuvres complètes, tome IV, Écrits sur l'art et autres textes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 923-925, notice p. 1411-1412