Jacques Vaché

Jacques Vaché (born September 7, 1895 in Lorient , † January 6, 1919 in Nantes ) was a friend of André Breton , the founder of Surrealism .

Jacques Vaché in the English Army

Even at high school, he had the reputation of being an eccentric. At the beginning of the First World War he was drafted in 1914 and wounded shortly afterwards. He came to Nantes for treatment , where he was in the hospital on Rue du Bocage (in what is now the Guist'hau high school ). He made the acquaintance of André Breton , who was an assistant doctor there. This is the place where the pioneering days of surrealism are settled in the Breton sense. It all began with Jacques Vaché and a few ballads in the Parc de Procé, according to Breton. Vaché returned to the front in 1916 as an interpreter and translator for the British troops. Between 1916 and 1918 he wrote several surrealist letters to his friends, the co-founders of Dadaism André Breton and Louis Aragon . These letters were found after his death. Breton published them under the name "Lettres de Guerre" ( War Letters ).

On January 6, 1919, Vaché died of an opium overdose in a hotel room in Nantes (place Graslin) .

He entered literature as one of those young European writers who, in the spirit of Werther, put an end to their lives prematurely. The immediate post-war period after 1918 brought many of these acts with it.

Voices on Jacques Vaché

• "En littérature, je me suis successivement épris de Rimbaud, de Jarry, d'Apollinaire, de Nouveau, de Lautréamont, mais c'est à Jacques Vaché que je dois le plus."
  • “In literature, I'm very fond of Rimbaud , Jarry , Apollinaire , Nouveau and Lautréamont . - But I owe Jacques Vaché most of all. ”( André Breton, 1924 )

bibliography

• Bertrand Lacarelle: Jacques Vaché . Grasset, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-246-68231-2 , (French).
• Jacques Vaché: Lettres de guerre . Préface d'André Breton, première édition au Sans Pareil en 1919. Réédition Mille et une nuits, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-84205-599-3 , ( La petite collection 355), (sans la préface, French).
• Jacques Vaché: War Letters. Followed by a novella . André Breton (foreword), Pierre Gallissaires (translator), Hanna Mittelstädt (translator). Edition Nautilus Verlag Lutz Schulenburg, Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-921523-37-0 , ( Poetisches Depot cassette ), ( Poetic Action ).