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The poetics of Hermeticism: André Breton’s shift towards the occult in the War Years. Victoria Clouston A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Oxford Brookes University November 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My deepest thanks go to Professor Nathalie Aubert, without whom this project would never have happened, and whose inspiration and encouragement, added to unsurpassed professionalism, have guided me throughout and resulted in a uniquely precious friendship. I would also like to thank Professor Gavin Parkinson for his input and support from the moment of our surreal meeting – itself a perfect example of “le hasard objectif”. My thanks, too, to the administrative staff and librarians at Oxford Brookes, especially to Jill Organ and Charmian Hearne, who have helped me throughout efficiently, kindly and unstintingly, despite their relentlessly busy workloads. To the many friends who have given generously of their encouragement and understanding through the years, I give my thanks – especially, among many others, to Barbara, Christine and John, Elisabeth and Anthony, Jo, Marie and Naomi. Most of all, my thanks are for the memory of Lou, the best of friends, whose gift for friendship and whose inspiration in all things literary and artistic remain unique. My family has been my rock, encouraging me with love and enthusiasm. I thank them all, especially my sister and two, in particular, of my many lovely cousins. My grown- up children, their partners and even the next generation, have all been stalwart – if at times bemused – in their love and support, for which I thank them all. And last, but definitely not least, my great thanks and appreciation to Dane, who has survived with me the highs and lows of the entire project, ultimately coming full circle (I hope!) from his initial state of amazed incredulity at the whole undertaking. I thank him for his patience, his love and support and for his role as intellectual punch-bag in the occasional Surrealist debate. Conventions The MHRA style has been used in this PhD thesis. Quotations from all primary sources are taken from the editions cited in the bibliography unless otherwise indicated. ABSTRACT André Breton, leader of the Surrealist movement, which he had founded with others in 1924 in the wake of the First World War, left Nazi-occupied France in 1941. Sailing from Marseilles, with an enforced three week stop in Martinique while waiting for onward passage, he chose to carry the spirit of Surrealism into ‘exile’ in the United States until 1946, rather than risk its extinction by remaining in war-torn Europe. Following his journey into exile, this thesis traces the trajectory of Breton’s thought and poetic output of 1941–1948, studying the major works written during those years and following his ever deeper research into hermeticism, myth and the occult in his quest for “un mythe nouveau” for the post-war world. Having abandoned political action on leaving the Communist Party in 1935, he nonetheless remained preoccupied with political thought, searching to find a means of creating a better society for a shattered post-war world, while at the same time maintaining a close connection between art and life. Realizing that any political system would inflect Surrealism to its own ends, Breton sought to find a means of achieving his aim through a return to the role of the ‘poet-mage’ of Romanticism. We follow the poet on his quest during these years, revealing his in-depth exploration of the tenets of Romanticism in which he discovers the roots of Surrealism, demonstrating also how he was affected by his re-reading of Victor Hugo, with whom he identifies to a certain extent during his time in exile. We study his poetic output of these years, in which we follow from their earliest stages indications of the shift in direction, away from political action towards hermeticism and the occult. On his return to France in 1946, we see Breton come under sustained attack from his detractors for his journey into hermeticism. Undaunted, he holds to his course, apparently unaware of his misreading of the spirit of the time. Although Surrealism is far from dead, its leader seems from this time to lose his creative inspiration and while his writing continues, his poetic output dwindles to almost nothing. However, even some years after Breton’s death, Julien Gracq predicts that it is “no longer unreasonable to imagine […] that one day Surrealism will have an heir, a movement whose form we cannot predict”.1 1 Julien Gracq, ‘Back to Breton’, excerpts, translated by Stamos Metzidakis, in L’Esprit Créateur, Vol. 36, No. 4, Winter 1996, (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press), online version of Criticism &c., https://criticismetc.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/andre-breton-1968-1996-2012/. C O N T E N T S Acknowledgements Page i Abstract ii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Breton’s poetic quest for “le point sublime” 23 1. André Breton : hermeticism, myth and “le point sublime” 23 2. The new route to action: the role and influence of Pierre Mabille 38 3. Pleine marge 45 4. Fata Morgana 55 Chapter 2: Transit Marseilles: August 1940 – March 1941 65 1. André Breton : “Le Grand Indésirable” 66 2. The Villa Air-Bel community 72 3. The role of “le quotidian” at the Villa Air-Bel 75 4. Collaborative projects at the Villa Air-Bel and Surrealist games 78 5. Le Jeu de Marseille – a Game of Magic 82 6. Wifredo Lam and the development of Surrealist influence 85 Chapter 3: Arrival New York: The New Direction 98 1. “La Rencontre” – Claude Lévi-Strauss 99 2. Encounter with Aimé Césaire 108 3. “Le lieu” 114 4. New York – un rendez-vous manqué 119 5. Prolégomènes à un troisième manifeste ou non : New beginnings? 136 Chapter 4: Looking back to the future: Breton, Hugo and the poet as “seer” 149 1. Breton’s re-discovery of Victor Hugo 151 2. Hermeticism and the occult 159 3. The poet as “voyant” 166 4. Les États généraux 171 4.1 Il y aura 178 4.2 toujours 180 4.3 une pelle 181 4.4 au vent 181 4.5 dans les sables 184 4.6 du rêve 187 Chapter 5 : Arcane 17 – Towards mythical harmony 188 1. Novalis and Nerval – towards the myth of Isis 193 1.1 Novalis’s path 194 1.2 The connection with Gérard de Nerval, poet of dreams 200 2. The role of the myth 205 2.1 The myth of Isis 208 2.2 The merging myth of Mélusine 215 3. Darkness – the crucible for metamorphosis 222 3.1 “L’alchimie du verbe” 224 3.2 Romanticism in Géographie nocturne 229 4. Reception of the text 231 5. Conclusion 234 Chapter 6: L’Ode à Charles Fourier – A new social perspective in the wake of the “grands visionnaires” 238 1. The route to Charles Fourier and the Ode 242 1.1 In praise of marginality 250 2. The Hopi Indian culture – a real utopia? 256 3. For a “futur édénique” 267 4. Conclusion 273 Chapter 7: Breton’s situation “at the eye of a storm” 277 1. Breton’s “lumière noire” versus “Le Surréalisme en Plein soleil” 279 2. Post-war politics and the fight for symbolic domination 285 3. The future of Surrealism: a new myth? 289 4. Georges Bataille: in defence of poetry as myth 304 5. Martinique charmeuse de serpents : a justification of the exile years 308 6. Conclusion 316 Conclusion 319 Appendix I 329 Appendix II 330 Bibliography 331 INTRODUCTION From the time of its inception, Surrealism was intent not only on protesting,1 but also on transforming the society and those ideologies which had contributed to the destruction and chaos of the First World War. Indeed, it was the trauma of the Great War which in the first instance made Surrealism “one of the more historically conscious artistic and intellectual movements of the twentieth century”.2 Defining themselves as “en insurrection contre l'Histoire”,3 the Surrealists were always finely attuned to historical events and the politics of the moment.4 Very early on in the history of the movement, and in order to move away from Dada’s perceived nihilism, Breton had declared that poetry must “mener quelque part”,5 with the aim, for the Surrealists, of achieving their own revolution: Nous sommes la révolte de l’esprit […]. Nous ne sommes pas des utopistes : cette Révolution nous ne la concevons que sous sa forme sociale.6 Thus, if Surrealism’s main goal was first of all the reconciliation of conscious and unconscious thought, the overcoming of the separation of art and life in a poetry which was to be made by all,7 it also meant that parallel with a confidence in the self-sufficiency of an autonomous, unconscious thought process which could unleash unprecedented surges of creativity, political action was needed in order to work on the kind of social revolution that was necessary to fully “changer la vie”: 1 The Surrealists continued to be active in the wake of the Dada movement, which had presented perhaps an even more acute state of protest against society. 2 Steven Harris, ‘Introduction’ to Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s: Art, Politics, and the Psyche, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.1 3 La Révolution d’abord et toujours ! (Surrealist tract published in 1925), La Révolution surréaliste (Paris: Gallimard (reproduction : Éditions Jean Michel Place), 1981) pp. 31–32. 4 The La Révolution d’abord et toujours ! tract made reference to an earlier text, a “Manifeste”, written by a “Comité d’action contre la guerre du Maroc” which had declared against the 1925 colonial war in Morocco where both Spain and France were involved.