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Robert Desnos' sleeping fit of 28 September 1922

Manuscript

Author

Author Robert Desnos
People cited Dr Théodore Fraenkel, Simone Kahn, ép. Breton puis Collinet, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia
Notes by André Breton

Description

Second sleeping fit of Robert Desnos dated September 28, 1922 noted by André Breton and accompanied by a poem in alexandrines.

‘Do you like Breton?’ This is what the sleeping Desnos is asked. And the poet twice answers ‘yes’. These pages, which include a retouched manuscript in alexandrines, were never published by Breton. In them phrases in English are mixed with ironic oracles (‘Will she die soon? - Opera opera.’), the funniest of which concerns Éluard as the slumbering Desnos begins to reveal that he isn’t all that fond of him. So what will he do in five years? ‘1,000,000 francs.’ And what will he do with this million? ‘Warfare in the rain’ - was this a pun at the time, designating a drinking party, or a creation by Desnos? Simone Breton is placed under the sign of the convolvulus - a pretty flower, but also a climbing plant, a sort of parasite. The word appeared next to the ‘hypotenuse’ in another ‘sleeping fit’. In this sleeping fit Max Ernst is still the one most favoured, pledged to madness by Desnos, and he is defined here as ‘the diver and the grammar book’, before becoming, in an even more enigmatic way, ‘an F sharp’!

First hypnotic sleeping fit.
28 September 1922.
27 pages in-4° on ‘Congrès de Paris’ letterhead paper folioed 1 to 27, handwritten in black pencil by Desnos and Breton, who records his questions and summarises the answers Desnos has written or transcribes a poem.

The whole thing is enclosed in an identical sheet of paper folded in half and labelled by Breton:
‘Thursday, 28 September Desnos, 2nd sleeping fit.’
‘No one has ever conquered the right to enter as a master
‘In the concrete city where the gods mate,
‘He’d like to reinvent these abstract lusts
‘And dead finger plants in the centre of our eyes,
‘With beating heart we go up to attack the borders,
‘The populous suburbs are full of champions,
‘Let’s go up the current of the nocturnal arteries
‘To the impassive heart of our vows.’
The text transcribed by Breton includes erasures and corrections.
(Robert Desnos, Nouvelles Hébrides et autres textes - 1922-1930, NRF, 1978, edition presented and annotated by M.-C. Dumas; pages 153, 154 and 155 - Some variations in the pagination).

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