André BRETON - “The Cursed Novelist. Georges DARIEN »

André Breton (1896.1966).

Signed autograph manuscript – “ The Cursed Novelist. Georges Darien »

A page in-4°. Paris. May 7, 1951 (sic for 1955).

“Darien's work is the most vigorous assault I know of against hypocrisy, imposture, stupidity, cowardice. »

Remarkable manuscript – first draft – to the glory of the anarchist writer. This text by Breton appeared in Arts in May 1955. It was then included in the preface to the Julliard edition of Le Voleur in 1964, then in Perspective cavalière in 1970.

Georges Darien, the cursed novelist: if the author of The Thief and La Belle France has regained relative notoriety today, thanks in particular to his proven influence on Céline, he was in the purgatory of posterity for more than fifty years.

Breton pays him here a strong tribute, relaying in passing the endorsement of A. Jarry.

THE CURSED NOVELIST / GEORGES DARIEN (1862.1921)

It is inexcusable and surprising that Jarry's endorsement, among those who know what an infallible detector he was of modern values, has not long ago brought The Thief of Darien out of the shadows and imposed its reissue. It was at the Jarry exhibition, organized by the Pataphysics College at the Jean Loize bookstore (May-June 1953), that the work, in an extremely rare copy of the original, had to physically take the place that the poet had assigned to him ( Gestes et Opinions du Dr Faustroll ), the sixth among the twenty-seven books to which his predilection lay. The subject of a brief but laudatory notice in the catalogue, it was supported by a collection of eleven issues of L' Escarmouche , a review written, it seems, entirely by Darien, and illustrated by Lautrec, Bonnard, Hermann Paul, Vallotton, which appeared from November 1893 to March 1894. Thus a repair began. This cannot fail to be dazzling. Our time is incomparably better prepared to receive The Thief than the “beautiful era” could be. Presented today with great care by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, the volume stands out in bookstores with a cover of remarkable economy of means which nonetheless depicts the challenge in person. The content keeps, and beyond, the promises of the container.

It is indeed a work captivating enough for the most rebellious – including myself – to the charms of any romantic section for a subject for endless objection (…) From one end to the other we are carried by the extraordinary happiness of the articulation of ideas and facts, which keeps under the impression of a natural development, of organic necessity, forming an integral part with language. “Fatal writing” in the sense that Valéry understood it, speaking of the poem “No chance, but an extraordinary chance strengthens itself”. Whether we seek the secret of such a strong spring, I have no doubt that we find it, in Darien, in exceptional qualities of heart. Aggressiveness towards all human groups formed (both for the maintenance of the bourgeoisie and against it) for which society, during its lifetime, could not fail to make it pay dearly, responds here to the wounds of this too heart. large and flapping too well not to hit the walls of the cage in all directions. That he was able to say that " the eyes of a writer, to be clear, must be dry " cannot impose hardness, except in the will to act/ Eyes bordering on light cannot claim this clarity. clairvoyance than those who, like Swift or Darien, were immediately aroused by indignation. At this level, theirs, all the shoddy morality that continues to exist offers, one suspects, no resistance. In a novel following The Thief, Mr. Auriant tells us, that Darien had planned to write, the convict gunner, once again escaped from Cayenne, had to secure the assistance of "an educated, daring man, who would be enough well brought up to behave like a savage and who would have suffocated enough scruples to dare to allow himself to act like an honest man. »

Such ambiguity, which governs Darien's work and extends to all his activity on the social level (from the founding, in 1903, of the Enemy of the People to that of the League for the Single Tax , in 1911 ) allows a humor of tension to filter through and readily burst forth, all the higher as its glimmers are set against a darker background. As early as 1890, in the Pharisees , Darien admirably described himself as Vendredeuil: “He was a kind of barbarian… massacred en masse…. how content he was…. He didn’t care.” Darien's entire life contradicts this last assertion (…) His work is at the antipodes of literature, in the sense that poets can abhor it. It is the most vigorous attack I know against hypocrisy, imposture, stupidity, cowardice . Darien, a rebellious man if ever there was one – whom Albert Camus strove in vain to bring under his gaze – remains to this day the highest incarnation of the Unique that Stirner wanted: the one who from the first to the last day aspired to be “ the free man on the free land .” " André Breton. Paris. May 7, 1951.”

André Breton (Edition published under the direction of Étienne-Alain Hubert with the collaboration of Philippe Bernier and Marie-Claire Dumas), “ Darien the cursed ”, Cavalier perspective, Complete works , volume IV, Writings on art and other texts , Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 923-925, notice p. 1411-1412