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Chance humanly/secretly influenced?

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Taos Amrouche, Sophie Babet, Elisa Claro Breton, Anne Bédouin, Georges Goldfayn, Denise Labbé, Nora Mitrani, Léon Pierre-Quint, Max Walter Svanberg, Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst

Description

Manuscript by André Breton dated 28 February (1955) and its typewritten copy.

The Max Walter Svanberg exhibition to which Breton alludes here opened in March 1955, so we can date this manuscript without fear of error to the winter of 1955. ‘We never need to retrace our steps’, such is the moral the poet draws from a series of occurrences linked by a ‘secretly’ – or ‘humanly’ – ‘influenced’ chance, in which dreams and details associated with distressing situations are juxtaposed. Dreams of persecution or dejection resulting from practical problems, latent anxiety when contemplating one of the painter’s canvases: a thread of anxiety seems to link people and the hours of a day to this memorable title. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Hand written manuscript of the night of 27 to 28 February (1955)
– 1 page in-4° written on the back of L'Étoile scellée letterhead, handwritten and titled by Breton in ink, with erasures and corrections of a text in which he relates the events occurring in the night of 27 to 28 February:
‘Returning home by taxi, a bad impression before the lugubrious velvet with the letter B, which falls on the porch of St. Honoré d'Eylau’... ‘All of the morality I might draw from this late afternoon that until now has been without incident is that we never need to retrace our steps.’
– Typescript of the same text, attached (1 page 1/2) [auction catalogue, 2003]

Bibliography

AAndré Breton, « Le hasard humainement / secrètement influencé ? », Inédits, Œuvres complètes, tome IV, Écrits sur l'art et autres textes (Édition établie par Marguerite Bonnet et éditée par Étienne-Alain Hubert avec la contribution de Philippe Bernier et de Marie-Claire Dumas), Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, pp. 1138-1139, notice p. 1471