Chapter 11 the Critical Reception of René Crevel

Chapter 11 The Critical Reception of René Crevel: The 1920s and Beyond Paul Cooke Born in 1900, Crevel was slightly too young to participate fully in the Dada movement.1 However, while fulfilling his military service in Paris’s Latour-Maubourg barracks, he met a number of young men – including François Baron, Georges Limbour, Max Morise and Roger Vitrac – who shared his interest in Dada’s anarchic spirit. On 14 April 1921 Crevel, Baron, and Vitrac attended the visite-conférence organized by the Dadaists at the Parisian church of Saint-Julien-le- Pauvre. Afterwards the three of them met up with Louis Aragon, one of the organizers of the afternoon’s event. As a result of this meeting the periodical aventure was born, with Crevel named as gérant. Only three issues would appear, with the editorial team splitting in February 1922 over the preparation of the Congrès du Palais (with Vitrac supporting Breton and the organizing committee, while Crevel and the others refused to abandon Tzara). Crevel would again defend Tzara against the proto-Surrealist grouping during the staging of Le Cœur à gaz at the Théâtre Michel in July 1923. At the very start of his career as a writer, therefore, it is clear that Dada was a significant influence for Crevel.2 However, despite siding with Tzara in the summer of 1923, it would not be long before Crevel was reconciled with Breton, with the latter naming him in the 1924 Manifeste as one of those who had “fait acte de SURRÉALISME ABSOLU” (Breton 1988: 328). It is as a Surrealist novelist and essayist that Crevel is remembered in literary history. However, more than seventy years after his death, his status remains problematic: perhaps more than for any other figure 168 Cooke associated with Dada and Surrealism, a legend has grown up around the man that has tended to colour awareness of his work. A good example of the mythmaking surrounding Crevel was provided in the summer of 1999 when Le Figaro Magazine ran a series of weekly articles under the heading “Les Perdants magnifiques” dealing with Billie Holiday, F. Scott Fitzgerald, René Crevel, Amedeo Modigliani, Jim Morrison, and Camille Claudel. Whether juilletistes or aoûtiens, vacationing readers were being reminded that cultural prestige could come at a high cost. The author of the third article in the series, Arnould de Liedekerke (1999: 65), defined his subject as follows: “Crevel, que tout le monde connaît et que personne ne lit”. The idea that Crevel enjoyed iconic status had already been articulated seventy years previously. In a review published in 1929, the critic Bernard Faÿ (1929: 301) described Crevel as “une légende vivante”, with the context suggesting that this legendary status had more to do with Crevel’s public image than with his significance as an author. This public image would become even more powerful six years later when Crevel took his own life. This death (so easily recuperated into the Romantic stereotype of the tormented artist) had the effect of deflecting interest away from his work and of freezing his image in the pose of the-Surrealist-who- committed-suicide, especially as the polemic surrounding his death served to fuel public interest. Hence de Liedekerke’s assertion that Crevel’s works have sunk without trace. This too is an assertion that receives some support from earlier commentators. As Léon-Gabriel Gros (1935: 606) observed shortly after Crevel’s death, his books were “autant de machines de guerre contre la pensée bourgeoise. Jamais la critique ne leur fut indulgente”. No wonder then that Crevel went straight to writers’ purgatory. The first concerted attempt to release him from this limbo of neglect was undertaken by the American academic Carlos Lynes. In the mid-1950s Lynes was working on a book entitled René Crevel ou le quatorzième convive. Although this never appeared, Lynes (1956: 336) did publish a few articles on Crevel during the period 1956–58 and, in one of these, he refers to the author’s works as “quelques livres bouleversants, qui n’ont guère rencontré que l’indifférence, l’incompréhension ou la haine”. Here, then, is the other aspect of the Crevel legend (and one that is equally assimilable to the myth of the misunderstood creative genius): not only did he commit suicide, but .

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