Books by Andre Breton

An indispensible classic of French poetry, this is a new translation of Breton and Soupault's experiment with automatic writing, and also the first known work of literary surrealism. This edition includes the original French text.In the spring of 1919, two young men, André Breton and Philippe Soupault, both in a state of shock after World War I, embarked on an experiment. Sick of the literary cultivation of "voice," sick of the "well-written," they wanted to unleash the power of the word and to create "a new morality" to replace "the prevailing morality, the source of all our trials and tribulations." They had a plan. They would write for a week on every day of the week and they would write fast, as fast as possible, in complete secrecy. When the week was over, the writing would be done. No touching up. This was how The Magnetic Fields, the first sustained exercise in automatic writing, came to be. Charlotte Mandell's brilliant new translation reveals a key work of twentieth-century literature.

Offers an adulation of love as both mystery and revelation. This book is dedicated to defying "the widespread opinion that love wears out, like the diamond, in its own dust."

Having broken decisively with Marxism in the mid-1930s, the author addresses the horrors of the Stalinist regime (which denounced him during the Moscow trials of 1936). He argues for the autonomy of art and poetry and condemns the subservience to "revolutionary" aims exemplified by socialist realism.

A collection of critical and polemical essays.

A collection of critical and polemical essays. It features such essays as: "Refusal to Inter", "Legitimate Defense", "Surrealism and the Treatment of Mental Illness", "Introduction to the Strange Tales of Achim von Arnim", and "Picasso in His Element".

Presents the essential ideas of the founder of French surrealism.