André BRETON motto on Marxism, surrealism and literature. 1933.

André Breton (1896.1966).

Autograph letter signed to a contributor to the Revue Surrealiste.  

Two pages in-4° on blood-red paper.

Paris. March 2, 1933.

« For half a century, no Marxist has understood Marx. »

Very dense letter from Breton to a comrade seizing the opportunity of his contribution to ASDL.R Surrealism to deliver him an extract from his conference given a few days earlier, at the Grand Orient de France, on proletarian literature and Marxism. Breton imagining the creation of a Marxist manual of general literature.

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“Dear friend, in the absence of Paul Eluard from Paris (being treated in a sanatorium in Haute-Savoie and who is due to return in a week or so) I have only read your letter. Thank you from the heart. The text that you send us, accompanied by the indication of the circumstances in which it must exist, seems to me of the greatest interest and, if you allow, I will publish it with part of your comments in one of the numbers 5 and 6 from Surrealism ASDLR [Surrealism in the service of the revolution], which I intend to publish very soon. Tell me if I can use your name without harming you, I will naturally be sorry.

I am very happy to know you are closer to Paris and look forward to seeing you at Easter. Please call me at trinité 38-18 as soon as you arrive.

Far from finding the question you ask yourself singular and even more so annoying, I am on the contrary very sensitive to the trust it shows us. I will answer it as simply as you ask it.

It is very interesting that you are currently teaching French literature and also very striking that you are considering consulting us on this subject. During a conference that I gave on February 23 [Breton spoke on proletarian literature in the Grand Orient of France], under the auspices of the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists and of which perhaps you have read extremely tendentious report l'Humanité I specifically focused on the need to remedy the inadequacy of school programs in this area, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to react against the tendency that we observe in revolutionary circles to consider with too exclusive and often too blind sympathy the works of writers who have taken the proletariat as their theme or who have been able to take advantage of simple revolutionary verbalism. I cited, in support of this proposition, the very unfavorable judgment made by Engels on Vallès and Zola and his very favorable assessments on Balzac and Ibsen (he learned, he said, more in the “Human Comedy” than “in all the books of historians, economists, professional statisticians of the time, taken together”, “Ibsen has enormous historical importance”, etc.) For lack of being able to send you a copy of this conference (which I also count publish) would you allow me to quote this passage for you, – excuse me:

“In the same way that we thought it necessary to set as the first practical task for the philosophical subsection created within the literary section of our organization the writing of a manual of dialectical materialism ( there is no need, for make us feel its profound necessity, than to quote this aphorism of Lenin , taken from his Reading Notes on Hegel , still unpublished in French: “We cannot completely understand Marx's CAPITAL and particularly the V ^th chapter if we do not 'has not studied thoroughly and understood all of Hegel's logic. This is why, for half a century, no Marxist has understood Marx ')  ; in the same way, I say, that our role is to remedy, even if only in very modest proportions, this state of affairs, it seems to me that one of the tasks which should be imposed on the section more particularly literary aspect of our Association would be the development of a Marxist manual of general literature tending to clearly situate, to the exclusion of all others, the authors and works whose historical importance, under the very broad angle from which we engages Engels to consider them, appears undeniable today. As such a manual would necessarily have to be very summary, I would very well see it being supplemented, for our already more informed comrades, by a series of Marxist courses in general literature taught at the Workers' University and which would seem to me to very usefully complement the courses in Marxist literature . We could, for example, successively study the French materialists, the political literature of the French Revolution, the Romantic era, the main schools of historians, realism, naturalism, which truly deserves the name of French poetry in the 19th century. ^century , etc. I add that it would be very appropriate to take place at the beginning of these presentations a critique and, if possible, an attempt to revise the only Marxist theses that we have on the question and which are the theses of Plekhamov. Our Russian comrades, by presenting them to us in numbers 3 and 4 of Literature of the World Revolution , have already brought extreme reservations to these theses concerning the political and philosophical opportunism of their author and I consider that great reservations literary and artistic would also be appropriate. Nevertheless, these theses, almost all the examples of which were borrowed from French literature and art, would provide us with a unique opportunity to define in relation to them and to objectify our position.

I think it will be easy for you to deduce from this fragment the position that my friends and I consider should be taken in the face of a problem such as the one you pose. If you take into account what is necessarily elementary in the indications below, which are addressed to a much more primary audience than yours, and if you only retain from these suggestions what can enter into the limits of a program like the one which is undoubtedly imposed on you and which I am unaware of, it seems to me that you can exercise in this domain the same salutary influence as in that of philosophy .

I am naturally at your disposal to provide you with any useful information, if necessary. All that remains is to let me know what your lessons should be about. Very touched by your confidence, I ask you to believe me, dear comrade, your most devoted André Breton. »

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The magazine “Surrealism at the service of the revolution” or “Surrealism ASDLR” succeeded the magazine “The Surrealist Revolution”. This will have 6 issues from July 1930 to May 1933.