André BRETON – Working manuscript of his poem “Lumière ai-je dit”.

André Breton (1896.1966)

Autograph manuscript.

One page in-4°.

Slnd [Circa 1930]

Working manuscript, with erasures and corrections, of his poem Lumière ai-je dit .

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Light, did I speak the truth? The shadow is too likely

She even has blue eyes, doesn't she?

And all roads lead to ancient

The words also fade away when I stay (did I speak the truth?)

In my place, there are men who go hunting

And who look behind them as if the birds they have already killed were waiting for them

The moss, rolling as it does, is jealous of the dust of the stones

It seems that children resemble their mirror image 

And that it is only later that they have the opposite illusion

There is no image in the mirror or anywhere else

There are only lengths, according to equestrian vocabulary

That's why obstacles are sometimes deadly

But what about the rider who would take a hundred years to emerge from his own shadow?

Where his horse's hoof has passed, the shadow of that hoof makes the grass grow back

As if that shadow alone were real

But a smile has no homeland