Les Champs magnétiques

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Les Champs magnétiques ( 'The magnetic fields' ) is a book by André Breton and Philippe Soupault . It was created in 1919 and was published in 1920 as the first work of literary surrealism . The text is also considered one of the most important surrealist works.

Emergence

The work was created in a few days as the result of “ automatic writing ”. Breton wrote about this in his first Manifesto of Surrealism (1924):

“Pure psychological automatism through which one tries to express orally or in writing or in any other way the real process of thinking. Thinking dictation without any control by reason, beyond any aesthetic or moral concern. "

The first chapter was written by Soupault alone, the second by Bréton. The following chapters were created together, in a kind of dialogue. The penultimate chapter comes from Bréton alone, the last from Soupault.

The two authors were initially very unsure of the value of the experiment. It was only as a result of the great popularity of Louis Aragon and Théodore Fraenkel that they published the first three chapters in the magazine Littérature , issue 8-10 (October to December) 1919. The following year the whole thing was published as a book by Au Sans Pareil, which was a publisher René Hilsum .

At first glance, the text appears to be meaningless, comparable to the works of Dadaism , but it has a rich texture and a strong imagery and poetry. It has often been compared to a dream.

Breton and Soupault later emphasized on several occasions that the text was not written under the influence of drugs, but rather in a passive state of half sleep.

The original manuscript was acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 1983 for around 150,000 francs .

structure

The book consists of nine chapters:

  • La glace sans tain - ' The transparent mirror '
  • Season - 'seasons'
  • Éclipses - 'eclipses'
  • En 80 jours - 'In 80 days'
  • Barrières - 'barriers'
  • Ne bougeons plus - ' Stop stirring'
  • Gants blancs - 'White Gloves'
  • La Pagure dit I - 'The Pagurus says I'
  • La Pagure dit II - 'The Pagurus says II'

Text sample (beginning)

French Translation into German

1
Prisonniers des gouttes d'eau,
nous ne sommes que des animeaux perpétuels.
Nous courons dans les villes sans bruits…

2
Notre bouche est plus sèche
que les plages perdues;
nos yeux tournent sans but, sans espoir.
Il n'y a plus que ces cafés où nous nous réunissons
pour boir ces boissons fraîches, ces alcools délayés
et les tables sont plus poisseuses que ces trottoirs
oú sont tombées nos ombres mortes de la veille.

1
Prisoners of the drops of water,
we are only eternal animals.
We walk through the silent cities ...

2
Our mouth is drier
than the lost beaches;
our eyes turn aimlessly, hopelessly.
There are just the cafes where we meet to
have those cool drinks, that diluted alcohol,
and the tables are greasier than the sidewalks
where our dead shadows fell from the day before.

literature

  • André Breton, Philipp Soupault: Les Champs magnétiques / The magnetic fields . Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 1990, ISBN 3-88423-045-X , epilogue: Ré Soupault : About the dreamlike writing and the fate of a manuscript , p. 177-191 .
  • André Breton: The automatic message. In: Claudia Dichter, Hans Günter Golinski, Michael Krajewski, Susanne Zander (eds.): The Message. Art and Occultism. Walther König, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-86560-342-5 , pp. 33–55 (with illustrations).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Soupault 1990, p. 177
  2. ↑ Soupault 1990, p. 182
  3. ↑ Soupault 1990, p. 181

Web links