- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > Literary Criticism
Full Description
The final book by the founder of Surrealism, translated into English for the first time.
"Cavalier Perspective shows us the lion in winter, André Breton near the end of his life, trying to reconcile all the contradictions of his extraordinary career. It is unexpectedly moving to watch him wrestling with his ghosts, aiming for magic, fitting himself uneasily into the new alien landscape of the 1960s."—Lucy Sante, author of I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition
As leader and chief theoretician of Surrealism, director of myriad publications from the 1920s through the 1960s, poet André Breton was a prolific writer of prose. Author of numerous books, essays, and manifestoes, Breton periodically collected his most significant short essays into carefully arranged volumes. His last such collection, Cavalier Perspective, appeared posthumously in 1970; in it, editor Marguerite Bonnet assembled "articles, prefaces, responses to surveys, interviews," written between 1952 and 1966. Modeled on its predecessors, Cavalier Perspective is considered Breton's final book.
Over 50 years after its initial publication, its appearance in English today is a crucial cultural event; here we encounter Breton writing on topics nearest to our present day and most relevant to current social and political issues. Cavalier Perspective finds Breton steadfastly pursuing his anti-fascist, anti-colonialist revolutionary aims in the age of weapons of mass destruction, climate change, and space exploration, concerns largely unknown during Surrealism's more notorious interwar period. Far from conceding the movement's claim to contemporary relevance, and pointedly refusing the imposition of "strict temporal limits," Breton insists on Surrealism's dynamic and dialectical position in the book's titular manifesto, asserting its continuity through its perpetual capacity to respond to the needs of the hour.
More than simply a poet and theoretician, Breton is best considered an "inaugurator of discourse" on the level of a Marx or Freud, and Cavalier Perspective is an essential capstone to his lifetime as the guiding hand behind the worldwide surrealist movement.
Contents
Cavalier Perspective: Last Essays, 1952-1966
André Breton
Translated by Austin Carder
Introduction by Garrett Caples
Link
"You have the floor, young seer of things..."
On André Gide
Stalin in History
At the Right Time
Farewell, If I May
Shadow Not of a Serpent, but of a Flowering Tree
Letter to Robert Amadou
On Astrology
One in the Other
Examples of Definitions of the Game "One in the Other"
Implications of "One in the Other"
Appendix
New Elements of the Combined Dictionary "One in the Other"
I. — General Repertoire
II. — Historical and Geographical Section
Position of Melmoth
Suspension Bridge
Initial Small Talk
Darien the Damned
Everyday Magic
Forward to Ultramarines
Speech at the Meeting "In Defense of Freedom"
Surrealism and Tradition
Embers at Ceridwen's Cauldron
Response to a Survey: "Is sublime love the only one?"
On Magic Art
The Language of Stones
Flora Tristan
Too Much for Us?
Letter to Guy Chambelland Regarding Xavier Forneret
Speech at the "Conscientious Objectors Relief Gala"
On Robert Desnos
On Antonin Artaud
Far from Orly
Preface to Oscar Panizza's The Council of Love
Phoenix of the Mask
Response to a Survey on Space Exploration
Tribute
Drawbridge
Interview with Madeleine Chapsal
Belvedere
First Hand
Cavalier Perspective
Interview with Guy Dumur
Acknowledgements
