Autograph manuscript, undated.
Torn out, copied by hand or by machine, almost all the poems in Mont de piété appear here. The guiding lights of Breton’s youth are encountered: Symbolism and Valéry, Derain, Reverdy, and, above all, Apollinaire, omnipresent in ‘Décembre’ [December] as elsewhere - from the dedication to poetic form, via this ‘bouchon de gui’ [cap of mistletoe] that one might wish to capitalise. ‘Décembre’ [December], published in L'Éventail on 15 February 1919, shortly after an article by Breton dedicated to… Guillaume Apollinaire, of course. Although for a time decisive, this influence was destined to be surpassed, and the young poet ‘purged’ himself of it by reprinting his texts in Mont de piété, which was both an acknowledgement of a debt and a farewell to his masters. A filial piety not devoid of ambiguity... He makes Apollinaire die a second time (crushed under scaffolding...) in ‘Une maison peu solide’ [An Unstable House], dedicated this time to Tzara... Similarly, ‘Pour Lafcadio’ [For Lafcadio], which appears in the same bundle, attests to an admiration for Gide's Caves du Vatican [The Vatican Cellars] - but it was published in Tzara's Zurich magazine, Dada (1919). We pass from one world to another. A text unpublished at the time, ‘À vous seule’ [To You Alone], published for the first time in the first volume of the Pléiade collected works, completes the set: this time, it is Vaché we are mourning. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]
Autograph manuscript, undated
- ‘André Derain’, handwritten poem, 1 page in-4° in blue ink. [Auction Catalogue, 2003]
André Breton (Édition de Marguerite Bonnet avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier, Étienne-Alain Hubert et José Pierre), Mont de Piété 1913-1919, Alentours I, et Inédits I, 1911-1919, Œuvres complètes, tome I, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, p. 11, notice p. 1082.
| Creation date | sd (1911 - 1919) |
| Bibliographical material | 1 page in-4° - MS - blue ink |
| Languages | French |
| Library | |
| Number of pages | 1 p. |
| Reference | 4050000 |
| Breton Auction, 2003 | Lot 2003 |
| Keywords | Painting, portraits, Poetry |
| Categories | Manuscripts, Andre Breton's Manuscripts |
| Set | [Manuscrits d'AB] Mont de piété |
| Permanent link | https://cms.andrebreton.fr/en/work/56600100999964 |
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Last symbolist poems and first Dada poems of André Breton, all constituting Mont de piété [Pawnshop] and dating from 1914 to 1919.
Fifteen images, a descriptive note, a collection.
[AB's Manuscripts] Miscellaneous Manuscripts, [Manuscrits d'AB] Mont de piété
