André BRETON invites Paul ÉLUARD to the Certâ café meetings. 1919.

André Breton (1896.1966)

Autograph card signed to Paul Éluard.

A page in-12° on the back of a folkloric view.

Paris. December 1919 [according to postmark]. Wednesday evening.

Important document from Breton, in the midst of the Dadaist period and at the dawn of his friendship with Éluard, indicating to the latter the address of the Certâ café which would host the bi-weekly meetings of the future surrealist group.

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“My dear Paul Eluard, this café definitely lacks comfort. In the future, on the following Wednesdays and Saturdays, we will be from 5 ½ to 7 at Certa , passage de l'Opéra gallery du Baromètre (it is at the entrance to the Théâtre Moderne). I think these meetings could be quite pleasant. Especially since Madame Grindel does not hesitate to come there, whenever she feels a little sensible. Would you like to pay my respects to him. I am very much yours. See you soon ? André Breton. »

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It was in the spring of 1919 that André Breton sought to enter into a relationship with Paul Éluard. He thus invites her to the reading of Anicet , by Aragon, at the Hôtel des Grands Hommes, Place du Panthéon. Subsequently, Breton contributed several texts to the small magazine Proverbe , founded by Éluard.

At the end of 1919, in the midst of the transition from the Dadaist movement, Breton decided to bring together his friends at Certâ , a café and wine bar in the Passage de l'Opéra immortalized the day after his death by Aragon in Le Paysan de Paris : “ It is this place where, towards the end of 1919, André Breton and I decided to bring together our friends, out of hatred of Montparnasse and Montmartre, also out of a taste for the ambiguity of the passages and undoubtedly seduced by an unusual decor which was to become so familiar to us; it is the place which was the main seat of the Dada assizes .”