BRETON André. - Lot 87

BRETON André. REPLY TO QUESTIONNAIRE ON MOBILIZED WRITERS. AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT AND AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED. Poitiers, École militaire, February 25, 1940. 3 pages in-4 in green ink. Response to a questionnaire by Luc Estang for a Figaro publication on the subject of mobilized writers. From the very first days of the war, initiatives multiplied to offer books to soldiers, but what were they reading? We sent out the following questionnaire to a number of young writers who had been mobilized: "Did you take any books with you or receive them? Why did you choose them? The questionnaire is attached on a typewritten page in-4. André Breton was a doctor at the Poitiers flying school at the time: ... Machinically, my first choice was the two books that helped me the most during the other war: Pascal and Rimbaud. I could do no less than take with me Lautréamont, which for the last twenty years has been part of all my travels... then the two works that to this day represent for me the most evolved expression in verse or pose: Benjamin Péret's Je Sublime, and Julien Gracq's Au château d'Argol... two or three highly emancipating phrases from Ubu roi have reached me, articulated as they should be... a sign of the times, this sudden entry of Jarry into favor... I have every reason to admit that they are not alone in knowing how to debate, outside the tumult and obscurantism, what makes the hold of real life, I mean life before this war and beyond... Breton ends his reply with a short bibliography. Enclosed is the April 1940 issue of L'invention collective, founded by René Magritte, in which Breton's full text appears, Le Figaro having improperly reworked his response to the questionnaire.