André BRETON
"L'An Suave" : poème autographe de jeunesse dédié à Marie Laurencin : « Ai-je omis la Nymphe miraculeuse, / Icare au buissons neigeux [...] »
circa 1917-1918, 22,3x27,6, une feuille sous chemise et étui.
«L'An suave»: autograph youth poem dedicated to Marie Laurencin. «Have I neglected the miraculous Nymph, Icarus in the snowy shrubs...»
[ca 1917-1918] | 22.3 x 27.6 cm | single sheet in custom chemise and slipcase
A remarkable autograph poem of youth by André Breton dedicated to Marie Laurencin entitled «L'an suave». 15 verses in ink on vergé paper, composed in April 1914. This manuscript was copied between March 1917 and the beginning of 1918.This poem is offered for sale in a chemise and case with paper boards decorated with abstract motifs, the spine of the chemise in green morocco, pastedowns and endpapers of beige suede, a sheet of flexible plexiglass protecting the poem, case edged with green morocco, piece of green paper with caption «poème autographe» to bottom of upper cover of case, the whole by Thomas Boichot.
Key poem of the author's pre-Dadaist period, it formed part of the set of 7 manuscript poems by Breton (known as coll. X. in the
Œuvres complètes d'André Breton, volume I in La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, 1988, p. 1071). These poems of his juvenilia are carefully copied out in black ink on watermarked vergé paper. The small collection was addressed to his circle of friends and writers, most notably including Valéry, Apollinaire, Théodore Fraenkel, and his brother in arms André Paris. They were later published in his first collection,
Mont de piété, which appeared in June 1919, published by Au Sans Pareil, established not long before by his friend René Hilsum.
The precise dating of this set of autograph poems is made possible by the composition of the final poem in the set («André Derain»), written on 24 March 1917, which provides a definitive terminus post quem. An earlier version of the poem «Age», dedicated to Léon-Paul Fargue, appears in our collection under its original name, «Poème». Dated by the author 19 February 1916, the day of his 20th birthday, and composed 10 days previously (according to his letters), it was not retitled and reworked until its publication in July 1918 in Les Trois Roses. Judging by the similarities to things published before this last poem, the seven autograph poems were probably written during 1917 or at the beginning of 1918, while Breton was doing his residency in Val-de-Grâce and where, significantly, he made the acquaintance of Louis Aragon.
The poems that make up Mont de piété represent a rare and valuable insight into his youthful influences at the dawn of his joining the Dada movement and his discovery of automatic writing. Quite short and sometimes sibylline, one detects Symbolist highlights borrowed from Mallarmé, whom he rediscovered at poetry mornings in the théâtre Antoine and the Vieux-Colombier accompanied by his schoolfriend Théodore Fraenkel. During the first month of the War, Breton also dedicated himself to Rimbaud, plunging into
Les Illuminations, the only work he carried with him in the confusion and haste that followed the outbreak of war. From his readings of Rimbaud were born the poems «Décembre», «Age», and «André Derain», while he borrowed Apollinaire's muse Marie Laurencin to whom he dedicated «L'an suave». The author's poetic inheritance was particularly marked by Paul Valéry, with whom he corresponded from 1914. Valéry played a considerable role in the writing of the poems of
Mont de piété with the advice he gave the young poet. Admiring his disciple's audacity, who addressed each of these poems to him, he characterized the poem «Façon» (1916) thus: «The theme, language, scope, meter, everything is new, in the style, the manner of the future» (Letter of June 1916,
Œuvres complètes d'André Breton, vol. I in La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, 1988, p. 1072).
These essential buds of Breton's youth were written between his seventeenth and twenty-third year. Taken by surprise in Lorient by the declaration of war, he became a military nurse, serving in several hospitals and on the front during the Meuse offensive. In Nantes, he met Jacques Vaché, who inspired him to undertake a project of collective writing, as well as encouraging him to have illustrated the future collection that was to become
Mont de piété, a task eventually undertaken by André Derain. His intimacy with this «dandy revolting against art and war» who shared his admiration for Jarry and his contact with the mental patients of the Saint Dizier neurological and psychiatric centre, marked a decisive stage in the birth of Surrealism. Posted to the Val-de-Grâce from 1917, Breton found in Paris the necessary literary vibrancy for his poetic quest and began reciting Rimbaud in the company of Aragon. It was thanks to Apollinaire that he became friends with Soupault, the future co-author of
Champs magnétiques, and Reverdy, founder of the review
Nord-Sud, which went on to publish the poems of
Mont de piété. The seven poems of the collection were printed in avant-garde reviews (
Les Trois Roses,
Solstices,
Nord-Sud) between 1917 and the beginning of 1919.
Four of the seven poems were dedicated to friends and masters of the author: Léon-Paul Fargue, and above all Apollinaire, to whom Breton devoted a paper in
L'éventail. Breton also paid homage to Marie Laurencin and André Derain, creators of «plastic works that are still completely new, exposed to an almost unanimous rejection and intolerance» that were dear to Breton throughout his life (XXe siècle, n°3, June 1952). With these dedications, he increased the number of complex allusions, dedicating to one a poem inspired by the other, as in for instance «Age», dedicated to Léon-Paul Fargue, which echoed Rimbaud and his poem «Aube» (
Les Illuminations, 1895).
This poem is dedicated to «Madame Marie Laurencin», whom Breton only knew at the time through her art and her connection to Apollinaire. Valéry gave it a warm welcome: «This sonnet...is a delicious artifice: it is a charming choice of words».The work was first published after our manuscript was copied, in the review Nord-Sud, n° 6-7, in August 1917 and re-published in 1922 in an issue of L'Éventail dedicated to the artist. Written in the first month of the War in 1914, it is among the oldest poems in Mont de piété. One can easily see the influence of Mallarmé in the mythological allusions with which the third stanza is awash: «Did I forget the miraculous Nymph, Icarus among the snowy bushes, you [know, among The gentle arrows - the suave year, [what a friend! And, riddled with song, through Echo, [silence.» Like other Mallarmé-esque pieces of the time («Hymne», «Rieuse» «D'or vert«), Breton decided on a precious mode of expression and one marked by recurring visions, blanched by the «moon», the «snowy bushes», the «desire of feathers», and the «white hat». Breton devoted the first of his three critical essays to Marie Laurencin - followed by Jarry and Apollinaire, as well as an astounding poem to his dog, «Coquito». An extremely rare youthful Symbolist manuscript by the young Breton, dedicated to Marie Laurencin, Apollinaire's «miraculous Nymph» and Breton's imaginary muse, at least for a poem.
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